This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Stressful Living -- A refreshing piece on how to achieve a stressful life...
1. Attempt to control absolutely everything
This is one of the more practical ways of achieving high levels of stress, and can be applied in a variety of ways in almost every situation you are likely to encounter. The key to this method is the fact that you never really have much control over anything, and so it generates stress in proportion to your illusion of control and the imagined responsibility you have as a consequence...
...Try to control other people; both what they do, and also what they think. The reason why this is so effective is that we can easily perceive other people to be difficult, incompetent, and unreliable, which gives us plenty of reasons why we need to control everything ourselves. The stress factor here lies in the fact that trying to control other people is much like herding cats; requires enormous effort, and you know deep down that it’s futile and ridiculous to even attempt. But if you manage to hold onto the illusion that you can actually gain and preserve absolute control over other people, this can be easily integrated into your everyday life as a reliable source of stress.
More on simply embracing and enhancing stress rather than namby pamby advice for reducing it.
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