Anyone who knows me will know that I’m something of a stress head. I tend to worry about things and have, in the past, let it get the better of me.

But I feel that over the last few years I’ve managed to get a handle of dealing with stress. As a DBA, dealing with stressful situations comes as part of the job. I’ve had to deal with issues where a server has been down and I’ve had to deal with it (generally with a crowd of people surrounding my desk).

Over the years I’ve become pretty good at dealing with situations like that. I’ve learnt to focus on the issue at hand, tuning out all the noise to allow me to isolate, identify, and (eventually) rectify the issue.

However over the last couple of months I’ve had a couple of things to deal with, that I have to admit, stressed me out no end.

Firstly I started a new job, always somewhat stressful but added to that was the fact that I was evicted from my flat in Dublin.

(I should say that my landlord ended my tenancy as it was up for review before a new rent cycle started, I didn’t do anything to get evicted)

Now, this was a bigger problem that it normally would have been as my new job was my first remote working position.

So, yeah, I was pretty stressed.

The way I dealt with it was to take the same approach I do when dealing with issues at work. Focus on the tasks at hand and shut out all the other noise.

So each day, I had a list of things I needed to achieve. Search and book viewings for flats, email Estate Agents to register an interest in renting the property, provide the requested documents, and so forth.

By doing this, I managed to keep my levels of stress down as it felt I was working towards achieving my goal. Every task completed brought me onto the next allowing me to keep my focus.

And now, I’m writing this in my new flat looking forward to SQLBits later this week.

I’m not saying that this approach would work for anyone else but I thought I’d share what works for me.

Have a good week!