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Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979

Section 25
Creating a Stress-Free Activity Director's Desk

Table of Contents | NCCAP/NCTRC CE Booklet

You may not be able to control every single aspect of your job, but you do have the power to control your personal work area. Your workspace can (literally) give you a pain in the neck, straining your muscles and tiring your body. The culprit may be an awkwardly-placed computer monitor, uncomfortable seating, poor lighting, or simply a totally cluttered desk that’s hiding that memo you remember writing and now urgently need. Your life is stressful enough as it is. You don’t need your workspace adding to your daily dose of stress. This section shows you a few ways to make your workspace a lot more stress-resistant.

• Don’t get tied down. One of those headsets that attaches to your tele­phone can free up your hands to do other things, like look through your e-mail, lift those weights, or play that computer game. The better ones are cordless and let you move around your office so that you can file, play Nerf basketball, or rearrange your books in order of their color.

Does your desk look like a wreck?
Your desk can cause you stress. Yes, that polished piece of mahogany (lami­nated particleboard?) can be your enemy. Take this short true or false quiz to see if it’s time to de-stress your desk.
1. When your Administrator or other Department Heads first see your desk, do you feel they may want to ask, "Has your office been vandalized recently?" True or False?
2. Your desk smells funny. You distinctly remember leaving half a tuna sandwich under some folders last month, but haven’t seen it since. True or False?
3. If you had to find an important phone number on your desk in the next hour, and let’s say your job depended on it, you would be better off spending that time calling an employment agency. True or False?

Answering True to any of the above suggests that too much of your stress may be desk-induced.

How can a neater desk reduce stress? Well, because the source of many types of stress comes from a feeling of being out of control, of being overwhelmed. When your Activity Room looks like a battlefield, you feel the tension growing. And when you can’t find that volunteer phone number you need, your stress level soars even higher. By organizing your files and piles, you get a sense (perhaps mistaken1y) that there is some order in all the chaos. So, at the end of your workday straighten things up. Doing so takes only a few minutes, but the rewards are large.  We offer a DVD course entitled "How to Make Time for your Low-Functioning Alzheimer's Residents", and a CD course entitled "Time Saving Tips for the Busy Activity Director."
- Elkin PhD, Allen; “Stress Management for Dummies”; Wiley Publishing, Inc: Indiana; 1999