How to Handle Writing Assignments at Work :)

Depending on your position and the type of work you do, you may have to do a writing assignment at work. This could be anything from a memo announcing a meeting to a job related article for a publication. There are even routine writing assignments, such as a monthly report that you may have to handle as part of your job and getting all the pertinent information about the assignments ensures you complete it in a timely manner.

Instructions

• Talk to your boss or the person who assigned you the writing task to handle to ensure you know exactly what's expected of you. If you received the instructions for the assignment in writing, read through them and be sure you understand them completely and then talk to your boss if you need to. If you receive the assignment verbally take copious notes and ask any questions they don't answer before starting the task.

• Make notes on how you want to proceed with the writing assignment. Before you handle the job, you should formulate a game plan. This might not be necessary, if it's a simple memo to compose, but if the task is larger, such as a report or article for the newspaper, then it's best to jot down your ideas before actually starting the writing assignment. Include things like the intended audience, the information you should convey, any resources that should be included and other pertinent details.

• Put together a memo. It's usually sufficient to write your memo in an email. You need to add the parties that you need to address and put in all the important information. This can be a note to your staff that you or your boss will be out of the office, a meeting that people have to attend or an announcement for an upcoming employee.

• Do a monthly report. Many offices ask you to submit a monthly report to your supervisor about all the activities you and your staff did for the month. If you don't have a staff, you still may have to do a monthly report for your supervisor advising him of your activities for the month. You'll need to handle these types of writing assignments on a regular basis and will most likely set up a routine that works best for you.

• Finalize a particular project you're working on and submit the information in writing to your supervisor. After completing projects, you may need to put together a summary for your supervisor. This can include an outline of what you did, the people who worked on the project with you and the results of the project. This is another writing assignment you might have to handle on a regular basis and you should work up an outline before you begin.

• Write an article for a publication that your work publishes. This is more in depth and needs to have resources and sources. It can be anything from an assignment that you handled to work that you do on a regular basis. You should handle these writing assignments as professionally as possible and might even consider having someone else proofread the final draft for you.

• Complete the final draft of the writing assignment, do a spell check and proofread it. Present it to your boss for his approval--he may want to make some changes or he may want to add something at the last minute. Once approved, deliver the document to the appropriate place to finish handling the assignment.

Tips & Warnings

• Always know exactly when the writing assignment is due. You can't handle the assignment effectively, if you're unsure how long you have to complete the task and if you're late, then you could jeopardize your job.

stress~

Some stress is good

The research shows that some stress is good. Stress ‘revs up’ the body thanks to naturally-occurring performance enhancing chemicals like adrenalin and cortisol. This heightens ability in the short term.


But there is a limit

If severe stress is allowed to go unchecked in the longer term, performance will ultimately decline. Not only that, theconstant bombardment by stress related chemicals and stimulation will weaken a person's body. And ultimately that leads to degenerating health.In extreme cases, it can cause psychological problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Cumulative Stress Disorder. Remember it is physically impossible to be anxious and relaxed at the same time.

how stress affects us..

Study after study shows that prolongedsevere stress has a negative impact on health. It it implicated in everything from highblood pressure to infertility. Links between stress and poor health include:

Allergies
Asthma
Colitis
Constipation
Depression
Diabetes mellitus
Hay fever
Heart attack
High blood pressure
Indigestion
Menstrual difficulties
Migraine
Overactive thyroid gland
Peptic ulcers
Rheumatoid arthritis
Skin Disorders
Tuberculosis

Every human is programmed to recognise stress, and respond with‘fight or flight’. But does that really do us any harm? Is it really worthworrying about?

what is stress?

Stress is caused by two things. Primarily it is down to whether you think situations around you are worthy of anxiety. And then it's down to how your body reacts to your thought processes. This instinctive stress response to unexpected events is known as 'fight or flight'.

The fight or flight response was first noted by one of the early pioneers in stress research, Walter Cannon. In 1932 he established that when an organism experiences a shock or perceives a threat, it quickly releases hormones that help it to survive. In humans, as in other animals, these hormones help us to run faster and fight harder. They increase heart rate andblood pressure, delivering more oxygen and blood sugar to power important muscles. They increase sweating in aneffort to cool these muscles, and help them stay efficient. They divert blood away from the skin to the core of our bodies,reducing blood loss if we are damaged. As well as this, these hormones focus our attention on the threat, to the exclusionof everything else. All of this significantly improves our ability to survive life-threatening events.

Life-threatening events are not the only ones to trigger this reaction. We experience it almost any time we come across something unexpected or something that frustrates our goals. When the threat is small, our response is small and we often do not notice it among the many other distractions of a stressful situation.

Unfortunately, mobilising the body for survival has negative consequences too. We are excitable, anxious, jumpy and irritable. This reduces our ability to work effectively. With trembling and a pounding heart, we can find it difficult to execute precise, controlled skills. Focusing on survival means we make decisions based on the good of ourselves rather than the good of the group. We shut out information from other sources and cannot make balanced decisions.