A      Take some time to observe how busy is too busy. Some may consider it akin to missing one's long lunch; others may compare it with missing one's lunch altogether. For some, not being able to take a ‘sickie’ once a month is being too busy. However, there is another bunch of people for whom staying up on their toes, day and night, even on the weekends, is a norm. Notably, in the case of most senior executives, the pace of work can be awfully busy or even frantic. Neil Plumridge, the vice-president of AT Kearney (a management consultancy) and also its Asia-Pacific telecommunications head, states that his work time fluctuates between 45 hours to 80 hours every week.

B      Plumridge makes use of three scales to gauge his workload; they are scheduling, sleep, and family. He knows that he has a lot on his plate when he has to reschedule his appointments continually and when he can manage less than six hours of sleep for three nights, back-to-back. He is unable to spend time with his family, considering that he has a daughter of three and another one is on the way, hopefully in October. Whenever Plumridge misses an anniversary, it is a tip-off that things are out of order.

C      However subjective being too busy might be, any person can understand that being too engrossed in work can ultimately take a toll on one's health and it is the main reason behind their health problems. Visible symptoms include disrupted sleep, and a slump in physical and mental well-being. In fact, the maximum time lost in workplaces is attributed to stress rather than any other workplace injury, as per National Workers' Compensation figures. The effects are quite expensive, with workers taking off due to stress for an average of 16.6 weeks. Another 2003-2004 report by the federal government insurer Comcare asserts that claims for psychological injury accounted for 7% of all claims but their costs took up approximately 27%, which was above the average.

D      According to experts, getting a break, be it through a game of golf, a massage therapy or a swimming session, is not adequate for dealing with stress; instead, there is a need to reassess one's workload. For instance, to deal with stress, Neil Plumridge identifies what needs to be changed and does something, like earmarking additional resources to a task or project，or extending the time limit or merely readjusting the final expectations, which may take him many days. His colleagues are of great help, as they coach each other with business dilemmas. A fresh pair of eyes over a subject is invariably beneficial.

E      But the issue of stress is not confined to large corporations. Vanessa Stoykov, who runs her own advertising and public relations venture and holds expertise in serving financial and professional firms, is also a victim of stress. Her brand, Evolution media, registered such a quick growth that it debuted on the BRW Fast 100 list for the fastest growing businesses last year, which was immediately after she delivered her first child. Running one's own business is, every now and then, replete with moments when one feels like the head will blow up in pieces juggling various activities. To unwind and unclutter her mind, she makes regular trips to the mountains whenever possible. These short doses of relief were helpful for her since her company was on a constant roll：hiring new workers, training them, guiding them about the work culture, clients, and a lot more.

F      Jan Elsner, a Melbourne-based psychologist that specialises in executive coaching, offers a reprieve from such stressful situations. She states that it is typical of senior executives and business people to flourish in demanding work engagements. She also suggests that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, as some may perform their best during the days of acute stress, while others may prefer a sustained pressure level for optimal performance. While a psychologist may consider hormonal standards to pass the verdict for a patient being stressed or not, it is hard to gauge if the same level of stress is having an equal (emotional or cognitive) impact on any two individuals, or their experiences.

G     Elsner's practice revolves around the school of thought called positive psychology, according to which, feeling positive, engaged, challenged or contributive towards a cause does not reduce one's stress but is effective in building one's resilience to deal with stress over time.  Therefore, the good stress which brings about the feeling to face it all with courage and willingness is as cumulative as bad stress. She also reveals that most of her corporate clients rely on yoga and meditation to keep a check on their bad stress. Elsner also points to a study which concluded that meditation has the power to modify the brain's biochemistry, rewiring the brain and the body to respond to stress distinctively. Both meditation and yoga can help you reconfigure your mind and body's reaction, and if people master it, they are in full control.

H      Coming back to Neil Plumridge, he affirms that our unrealistic goal setting precipitates stress. For instance, when someone promises a client that he will deliver task A tomorrow, then promises another client that he will deliver task B tomorrow, at a time when he is aware that he can deliver only one task in a day, he puts himself under extreme pressure to stay true to his words. The fact is that he could have easily told one of the clients to give him additional time. Over-commitments like these are stress incubators. He further explains it with reference to procrastination-that work expands to fill the available time. And some researches signify that many humans may be hard-wired to do this.

I       Another study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology's February edition, finds that most of us tend to believe that we will be less busy in the future than we are now. This is, though, a fallacy, according to Professor Gal Zauberman from the University of North Carolina and Professor John Lynch of Duke University, Who are authors of the report.  They make it clear that, on average, a person will be simply as busy as he or she is right now in a couple of weeks or a month in the future. But in routine life, things are a tad different. Many people make commitments to tasks long in advance, which they will otherwise avoid or deny if they have to work on them immediately. In other words, it means that people view future time investments with relative clumsiness. It is fascinating that we generally perceive that there will be more ‘surplus’ time in the future than in the present.  While it is a question to ponder over, researchers suggest that one major cause of stress is that we underestimate the time required to complete a prospective task, and fail to gauge competition of our own time in the future effectively.