In This Article
The demands that block you and the demands that stretch you need opposite fixes. Here's how to tell which is which, and what to do about each.
Most workplace stress advice is about coping better: breathe differently, block your calendar, log off at six. That’s genuinely useful, and it still leaves the job itself untouched. Some demands at work push you forward. Others stand in your way, and those two need opposite responses. Sorting yours is where the real change starts.
What Is Workplace Stress?
Workplace stress is the strain a person feels when their job asks for more than they can give, whether that’s more hours, more clarity, more skill, or more patience than the situation allows. It’s also called job stress or occupational stress, and it’s a response to the work itself.
It shows up in ordinary ways:
- Deadlines that arrive faster than you can clear them.
- A stack of tasks that keeps growing, with no extra hands in sight.
- Office dynamics that take real effort to navigate.
- The low hum of wondering whether your role is safe.
Research on work demands sorts them into two groups: the ones that help you reach a goal and the ones that get in the way.1 That split is the backbone of everything below.
If you want the physiology of good stress versus bad stress, that’s covered here. For techniques to calm yourself down in the moment, start here. This guide is about the job.
A note before the tips: If work stress has you struggling to find the help you need, please note that all content found on this website is not to be considered professional medical advice. It is always best to consult a doctor or licensed therapist with any questions or concerns in regards to your physical or mental health. For a good resource for therapists, you can check out Mental Health America’s helpful list.
Sort Your Stressors Into Two Piles Before You Fix Anything
Write down every recurring source of pressure in your job, focusing on the ordinary weekly friction. Then put each one in a pile.
Pile one: it blocks you. Something outside your control has to change before you can move, whether that’s a manager who hasn’t defined what “done” looks like, two higher-ups who want opposite things, or a tool you’ve been asking for since March.
Pile two: it stretches you. The path is clear and there may just not be enough of you to walk it, because the work is genuinely hard, the volume is high, or the clock is tight.
Action Step: Circle the single item in your blocking pile that shows up most often. That’s your first conversation.
Pro Tip: The two piles have names in the research, hindrance and challenge stressors, and they don’t behave alike.2 The blocking kind is reliably tied to worse outcomes at work. The stretching kind, despite its reputation, shows no dependable link to satisfaction, commitment, or performance, and it still tracks with more strain and more intent to quit.1
Clear the Blockers First
These show up most in the research and most in real jobs. Each has the same shape: the work can’t move until something outside you changes. That also makes them the most fixable, because a blocker is usually a conversation nobody has had yet.
When You Don’t Know What “Done” Looks Like
You get an assignment, it makes sense in the room, and then you sit down to start and realize you have no idea what your manager actually pictures. So you guess, and then spend the week braced for the moment they tell you it’s wrong.
Research calls this role ambiguity, the gap between what you’re accountable for and what you’ve actually been told, and it’s been measured in organizational research since 1970.3 It’s a blocker by definition: you can’t work your way out of a question only someone else can answer.
Action Step: Ask the question that collapses most of it: “What does this look like when it’s done well?” Then ask who else has to be happy with it.
When Two People Want Opposite Things
Your manager wants the launch pulled forward. The client wants the extra review cycle. Both have to sign off, neither will move, and you’re the one holding the calendar.
This is role conflict, the sibling of role ambiguity in the same body of research.3 Ambiguity means nobody told you; conflict means two people told you different things. Both are blockers because the resolution isn’t yours to make.
It’s tempting to treat this as a personal time-management problem. You can’t schedule your way out of two incompatible instructions, though, and trying tends to make you the person who quietly absorbed the conflict.
Action Step: Put both requests in one message, to both people, and ask them to choose: “I can hit Thursday without the second review, or do the review and deliver Monday. Which would you rather have?” Let the tradeoff belong to them.
When You’re Missing What the Job Needs
Being handed a job without the tool, the training, or the access it requires is its own kind of stress, and it’s the one people are most likely to blame on themselves, when the gap is usually in the setup.
Years ago, I worked as a data analyst, and I remember when I was new on the job, I’d receive assignments for complicated SQL queries (which are formulae you enter to get data from a database) without really knowing what I was doing. I remember the panic that would arise at doing it wrong, falling behind, or being unable to figure it out.
Thank goodness a SQL sage in the office named Ryan Minato took genuine pleasure in guiding lost SQL souls like myself back on track. Had he not been there, I may have perished from the stress.
Action Step: Name the specific missing piece before you ask for help, because “I’m struggling” is harder to act on than “I need someone to review my queries for a month.” Ask for the person, the training, or the access by name.
When You Can’t Tell If You Still Have a Job
Not knowing whether your role survives the quarter is a blocker with a long reach. It changes how you speak in meetings, whether you push back, and how much of yourself you’re willing to invest in work that might evaporate.
I used to write content for a YouTube channel, and for a while, we had no formal agreement over how many scripts I’d write. I always felt that it could be my last if I stumbled on any given script.
Once I noticed this source of stress, I negotiated a deal with my boss where he’d hire me for eight scripts at a time, and then we’d explore if we both wanted to renew or not. This dramatically lifted the weight of anxiety and made me feel more safe.
Might there be any shifts you can make to give yourself the feeling of more safety and stability?
Action Step: Ask for terms. “Can we agree on a check-in every eight weeks, so I know where I stand?” gets you something durable, where “Is my job safe?” gets you a sentence.
When the Friction Is With Your Boss
Interpersonal friction at work is ordinary. What seems to decide whether it costs you is whether the person above you is in your corner.
One study linked the survey answers of a national sample of Norwegian workers to the country’s sick-leave register and followed them for a year. The people who reported poor support from their leader had odds of hitting more than sixteen days of doctor-certified sick leave the following year about 40% higher than everyone else, and being pulled between conflicting demands did something similar.4 Friction with a peer is unpleasant. Friction with the person who controls your assignments, your review, and your schedule is structural.
Years ago, I worked as a landscaper, and my manager struggled with anger management. He was going through a particularly trying period in breaking up with his wife, which made it genuinely challenging for him to control his anger.
As much empathy as I had for his situation, it was remarkably stressful to know that any minor mistake I made in trimming a bush could result in him losing his temper and berating me. While this was a valuable experience for me in conflict resolution, it also brought an unpleasant amount of stress into my life.
Your options are to get as much space as possible from the person at work or to resolve the conflict. If you go with the first, you could ask to be transferred to another team. If the second, consider asking for external support to help mediate your situation. Here’s a fuller guide on dealing with toxic coworkers.
Action Step: Write down the last three incidents with dates and what specifically happened. A pattern on paper is something HR or a skip-level manager can act on, where “my boss is difficult” tends to go nowhere.
When the Pay Doesn’t Match the Work
Oof. This is a big one. You aren’t making enough money. You may have student loans or credit card debt. Or perhaps you never learned how to save money, and no matter your paycheck, your bank account always hovers around zero.
The experience of financial scarcity can give an existential weight to a decision as simple as if it’s worth the extra $1.50 for the large french fries.
This one is a blocker because the lever you control, your own effort, isn’t the one that moves your pay. Working harder is the response it invites, and the one that rarely works.
If money always feels tight regardless of your paycheck, that’s worth treating as its own project, separate from the job. The Richest Man in Babylon is a decent starting point.
Action Step: Price the role before you price yourself. Find three current postings for your job at your level, then open the conversation with the range.
Renegotiate What Stretches You
The stretching pile needs a different move. These demands aren’t obstructions, so a manager hearing about them often hears a complaint, and you can only absorb them for so long.
When There’s More Work Than Hours
If your work expectations are too large, your options are to work more hours to get your tasks done or stick to your work-life boundaries and feel like you need to catch up. Neither option is sustainable.
I have a friend who has a coveted job at a prestigious finance company. However, he has consistently worked 60-80 hour weeks for years. He’s let go of most of his hobbies and cut his sleep to 5 hours a night to make time for everything. It wasn’t until his child was unexpectedly admitted to the hospital, and he couldn’t see her because he was working, that he got the wake-up call that something needed to change.
Special Note: Workload is the awkward case in this whole framework. It’s usually filed as a stretching demand, and it behaves unusually badly for one. Asked directly, people tend to appraise a heavy workload as both stretching and obstructing at the same time.1 If volume is your biggest stressor, expect it to act like a blocker past a certain point, and treat it as one.
Action Step: Have the honest conversation with yourself about how much you can consistently work and still feel well. Then bring your supervisor a specific number.
When Every Deadline Feels Urgent
A deadline that gives shape to a week is doing you a favor. The trouble starts when they overlap with no way to sequence them, and urgency stops carrying information because everything has it.
A 2024 meta-analysis pooling 78 samples of workers tracked day to day found that stretching demands carried a direct upside for performance while also producing strain that pulled performance back down.5 Both effects showed up at once, which is close to how a run of tight deadlines feels from the inside: you’re delivering, and it’s costing you.
Action Step: Put every deadline you’re carrying into one list with its date. Then ask your manager which one moves, because the answer is rarely “none” once the collision is visible on paper.
When You Never Fully Log Off
When the line between professional responsibilities and personal downtime becomes blurred, it’s like being on-call 24/7. The inability to detach from work robs one of personal relaxation and strains relationships and personal pursuits outside of work.
When you light a candle, you eventually get used to its scent and stop smelling it. But if you leave the room for 10 minutes and then return, you can smell the candle’s scent again with a renewed nose. The same is true of work. You must take a break to renew and restore yourself.
Action Step: Designate clear boundaries between work hours and personal time. Are there days of the week you want to ensure that your work email stays closed? Or times of the day? Clarify your boundaries and write them down to make them official.
What Managers Can Do to Remove Blockers
Most of what’s on the blocker list sits inside a manager’s control and outside the employee’s. A 2022 editorial on this literature makes the point directly: piling on more of the stretching kind of demand may do little to offset the harm the blockers are already doing, while reducing those blockers does more.1
Define “Done” Before You Assign It
One sentence at handoff prevents a week of guessing. Say what finished looks like and who else has to approve it.
Settle Conflicting Priorities Yourself
When two people above you want opposite things, the tradeoff is a management decision. Passing it down as “figure it out” hands someone authority they don’t have.
Ask About Stress Out Loud
A culture where employees can raise concerns without fear of reprisal takes real pressure off, and it starts with who speaks first.
It can be challenging and scary for many employees to tell their employers that they are burning out, so if the employer initiates the conversation, this can go a long way.
Action Step: Hold regular check-ins where employees can discuss challenges and seek solutions. It can change the whole conversation if you ask, “How have your feelings of stress at work been recently? Be honest, I want to know.”
Watch the Hours
Overwork drives burnout, and hours are one of the few stressors a manager can see directly. Try one of these:
- Implement flexible working hours
- Offer opportunities for remote work
- Monitor employees’ hours to ensure that employees aren’t consistently working beyond their designated hours
- Ensure that employees take at least three weeks of vacation per year
Then Add the Support
Once the blockers are gone, wellness benefits land on people who can actually use them. Supporting employees’ mental and physical health conveys the message that their well-being is a company priority, and it works best on top of a job that already makes sense.
If you’d like more ideas on building one, here’s a guide to creating an employee wellness program.
Frequently Asked Questions About Workplace Stress
What is workplace stress, and how does it affect employees?
Workplace stress is the strain an employee feels when job demands exceed their capacity to manage them. It tends to show up as lower job satisfaction, reduced productivity and harder decision-making. It helps to separate demands that block progress from demands that stretch capacity, because the two respond to different fixes.
What are the common causes of workplace stress?
The most common causes fall into two groups. Blockers include unclear expectations, contradictory instructions from different people, missing tools or training, job insecurity, friction with a manager, and pay that doesn’t match the work. Stretchers include a heavy workload, overlapping deadlines, and never fully logging off.
How can I tell if my work stress is a problem?
Look at the situation itself. Ask whether the pressure comes from a demand you can act on or from something outside your control that hasn’t shifted in weeks, and whether you know what success looks like in your role. Ongoing pressure you can’t influence is the pattern worth acting on, and it’s a reason to talk to your manager or a professional.
What are some effective strategies for managing workplace stress?
Start by identifying which demands are obstructing you and which are stretching you. Obstructions usually need a conversation with whoever controls them, because you can’t resolve them alone. Stretches are usually a negotiation about scope or resourcing. Personal techniques like firm boundaries and protected recovery time help most once the structural pieces have been addressed.
How can employers contribute to reducing stress in the workplace?
Employers reduce stress fastest by removing obstructions: defining what finished work looks like, settling conflicting priorities themselves, providing the tools and training a role needs, and being straight about job security. Support programs and flexible hours help most on top of that foundation.
Is some workplace stress actually good for me?
Demands that stretch you often get called good stress, and the evidence is weaker than the phrase suggests. Pooled across studies, stretching demands show no dependable link to job satisfaction, commitment, or performance, and they still track with more strain.1 Being stretched can be worth it when the work matters to you, and it’s a trade rather than a free benefit.
When should I seek professional help for managing workplace stress?
If work stress is persistent and affecting your daily life, it’s worth talking to a professional. A therapist or counselor can offer approaches tailored to your situation, and that’s a reasonable step at any point.
Takeaways on Workplace Stress
- Sort before you solve. Write your recurring work stressors down and split them into what blocks you and what stretches you.
- Take one blocker to the person who controls it. Pick the most frequent item in that pile and ask the one question that would clear it.
- Ask what finished looks like. On your next assignment, get “done” defined and find out who else has to approve it.
- Put competing instructions in one room. When two people want opposite things, message both and let them choose the tradeoff.
- Bring a number to the workload conversation. Decide what you can sustain in a week, then say that figure out loud.
- Write your off-hours down. Pick the days and times work email stays closed, and record them so they’re real.
If the pressure has already tipped past stress into something heavier, start here.
