Maintaining Mental Wellness Through Stressful Workweeks

Jack is a customer onboarding manager at Acme Corp. Jack is young, ambitious, and passionate about his work. Overseeing customer onboarding, handling irate customers, and coordinating with his remote team keeps him busy all day.

Long working hours have become a norm. Monotony has kicked in. Life looks wired with very little time to spend on what he cares about. Family, social circle, hobbies, and interests have taken a back seat. For Jack, it’s a temporary price he is willing to pay today for a better career trajectory and paycheck in the future.

All work and no play has made our Jack a dull boy.

How do you ensure that you don’t fall into the same trap as Jack? How can you balance your work with mental and physical well-being?

We asked our Preflight members to share their daily regime and tips to cool off and to make work more productive and less stressful.‍

Jeff Kushmerek, Founder - Jeff Kushmerek Consulting

1. Start your day with meditation
2. Have a routine of healthy activities
3. Sleep for 7 hours
4. Avoid excess coffee 

Richard Benavides, Customer Onboarding Manager - Crew

1. Follow the 90/10 principle - focus on the 90 that gives you joy and ignore the ten that’s difficult
2. Build systems and automate processes to lighten the load

Aditya Maheshwari, Head of Customer Success - AppsFlyer

1. No meetings before 11 am
2. Over-communicate, both internally and externally, while keeping things organized and documented
3. Take lunch breaks 
4. Keep a small task list and prioritize ruthlessly

Dean Paskos, Customer Onboarding Manager - Bynder

1. Spend time with your kids
2. Move your body (for me, it’s 10-mile indoor cycling)

Guru Prasanna, Customer Success Manager - inFeedo

1. Bring in gamification elements to treat yourself after accomplishing something
2. Break your day into 90-minute sprints
3. Block an hour for chit-chat and divide it into three 20-minute sessions
4. Find a place to share whatever you’ve consumed, making it useful for others who seek to consume anything new

James Stuart, Customer Success Executive - Reed.co.uk

1. Plan your work and break times for the next day in advance and stick to it
2. Don’t have any work emails/Slack on the phone. If something is urgent, let people ring you

Alex Scholz, Lead SI Partner Enablement - Freshworks

1. Have blocks in your calendar for your morning and evening routines such as family time, journaling, exercising, meditating, and learning
2. Move not-so-important internal meetings to have some personal time
3. If you are a parent, appreciate a proper 8-hour sleep
4. Don’t negotiate your personal time for work. That’s the easiest way to burn out
   

Now that you’ve all the ammo, experiment with these tips for a week and track the results. Your body and mind will drop hints on what works best for you. Listen to those signals and build your own personalized daily routine.

Join Preflight today for more such insights and best practices from the industry stalwarts.