Burdens and blessings
I'll tell you something: I'm stressed. The deadline is looming and I still haven't written an editorial. At least not one that I would be happy with. But I know that feeling well after almost 20 years as an editor. Whenever things get tight, I finally come up with a brilliant idea. Not that I would not like to do without this (often self-inflicted) lack of time. But experience teaches me: Take it easy, it'll be fine.
Apparently I'm one of those employees who can count themselves lucky. Because I usually succeed in seeing the good in the pressure of deadlines and countering it with ideas and motivation. I don't know exactly why this is the case. Anyway it helps.
As the industrial and organizational psychologist Roman Briker and the journalist Jan Schwenkenbecher explain in the title story from p. 12, stress is largely in the eye of the beholder. What is helpful for one person is a burden for another. This makes it all the more questionable that researchers have long viewed time pressure at work as a "beneficial" stressor that stimulates employee performance. Almost a carte blanche for superiors to put a lot of pressure on their people.
Briker and Panning Mug straighten this image. In most companies, tough deadlines and heavy workloads are more likely to lead to declining morale-among employees as well as their bosses./p>
<but what if I actually had a lot of idle time in the office and didn't see any real purpose in my work? Would I also state this freely here? Hardly likely! What should my colleagues think of me then - let alone my boss! The psychologist Corinna Hartmann reports from p.18.
From all the stress you wish only the best
Steve Ayan
