But that's okay, because I wanted to express extreme skepticism about the main assertion in the article (linked by Drudge): Having a potted plant on your desk reduces stress. That's some low-grade stress if a potted plant is helping. Also, how stressed are you if you've got room on your desk for a plant (or if you have just enough room but will experience the new form of stress that is worrying about knocking the thing off the desk)?
[R]esearchers wanted to determine just how much relief workers felt after intentionally looking at an indoor plant whenever they started to feel tired on the job....You have to intentionally look at it. One more task to complete.
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Third choice: It could also mean all employees in the "Modern era" versus all before it.
I despise potted plants. They are bred from birth to be as unproductive as possible. They just sit there mocking us:
Hey they bred me on a farm to do nothing but photosynthesize and require your attention. If you don't guve it to me I'll make myself ugly and die to spite you. I don't even produce food and my scent can be artificially replicated and be 10x better. Looks? Buy a painting.
When I was a child I tortured this potted shrub in school by snipping branches off it with a scissors and tearing it's leaves. I felt it deserved torture. It turned into bonsai tree just to spite me.
Vile creatures.
I don’t have room on my desk for a potted plant, but what I’ve seen is that my colleague inevitably let them die anyway—you can’t be sure the stupid thing gets watered when you’re away on vacation, after all.
"Studyfinds" is pretty bad; almost all their links are to themselves and not to the "studies" they misreport. But here's one:
"The objective of this study was to verify the stress reduction effects of the presence of small indoor plants on employees in a real office setting."
So the plants are on the employees, not the employees' desks.
i assume it's a typo
They mean you'll have "less stress", if you keep POT PLANTS on your desk
Soma should work well too
Make stuff up by Thursday, 500 words
Judging by my company, that is currently very worried about employee stress. I think the fact is it is more documented. That is, employees are polled about stress and asked about it. On top of this, we get routine training on active shooter response, which always seems odd. We have been queried if a puppy or kitty center in our office building would help. They improved our coffee bar, although I guess no one has connected stress with excess caffeine consumption. In short, when you set off to observe something more, you tend to see it more, particularly when you broaden the definition of stress and include factors like problems at home.
Flirting With Co-Workers Can Help Reduce Stress, Study Finds
Open Office Seating Linked To Lower Stress, Greater Activity Levels Among Workers
Want To Lower Stress At The Office? Try Biking To Work, Study Finds
Study: Standing Or Walking At Desk While Working Cuts Stress, Boosts Productivity
Reflections Of Ourselves: Dogs Mirror Their Owner’s Stress, Study Finds
Just look at pictures of cute animals.
The media is constantly blasting the end of the world from climate change, or from Trump. Everyone keeps telling them that they are stressed, so what did you expect?
We are doomed!!!! Just wait until Trump wins 4 more years!!!
"Just look at pictures of cute animals."
Yes, I thought of that too. It's the pausing and experiencing something pleasant that might work to ease minor stress. Closing your eyes and looking at the nothing probably works just as well. Look out the window. Look at a photo of your child.
Can these people who are continually anxious about Trump just stare at a plant to ease their pain?
Most cubicle farms don't have enough natural sunlight to support a typical houseplant. Do artificial plants have the same effect?
‘relief workers felt’. I reckon craft projects reduce stress...
Potted plants helped Harvey Weinstein reduce stress...until they didn’t.
Just look at pictures of cute animals.
A wall poster of a cute kitten holding a bar captioned "Hang in there", seemed sufficient in the 1980's to combat stress at work. It might have even worked for Epstein, but I doubt he did it all on his own.
I'll have to check the company Human Capital Management employees website to see if having plants in the office is allowed. I don't think there are any in the building in which my office is located (company owned).
When i need a break from the stress of my job I take a walk around the office floor or just stand up and look vaguely out the window for awhile. There are no personal items on display in my company supplied office, thats the feng shui I'M going for.
Bubbles. Cheap, mobile and don't have to be kept alive.
Sometimes clients bring in small children who are entertained by the blowing of bubbles. Happy children are less stressful for all the staff. On the rare occasion that I have been questioned, I have said "substitute for smoking" and the issue is dropped. I have never smoked nor had an interest in doing so but it could work as a substitute so I am not lying.
Of course less micromanagement by supervisors would also lead to less stress, but that situation is not likely to change.
I doubt if this is the most stressful time ever. I do not doubt that this is a time where bitching about every-damn-thing is the norm.
I do think we are more stressed than ever, but not because our lives are tougher than ever. They are, in fact, easier than at anytime i n human history. But...the internet, with it's non-stop abuse of our minds, coupled with 24 hour TV, endless news and trivial things to fill the gaps, have left people with the inability to know what to do with a few minutes of peace. Many (most?) people these days cannot stand to just be alone with their own thoughts. Or read a book in a quiet place.
If they're reading a book, they need to document it on Instagram. And the meadow they're sitting in.
Got to remember to water the damn plant and not over water it...STRESS!
In the 80s every decorator had a Ficus Tree in the corner of the room. But that was pre digital everything days. Heck, we never saw a fax machine then, but today they are obsolete relics.
""Modern employees are feeling more stressed than ever." Well, first of all, I don't believe that."
Gotta control for gender. Miners, steel workers, you name it, experienced pain but not stress; nice women in offices who don't want to be there feel stressed.
More stressed than when there was a 50+% mortality rate for children, and the likelihood of someone dying in childbirth at some point in their life approached 10%, and etc etc
Irreconcilable quasi-secular mandates and semantic games are first-order stressors. Also, I'd rather be on a beach or flying with Puff the hallucinatory dragon. Otherwise, no.
In the modern open-office plan you can look at your neighbor's potted plant instead. That way you get the stress relief, but he has the problem of keeping it watered.
I used to have a guy in the neighboring cube who would bring a piece of soft fruit (e.g. banana) to work on Monday and leave it there all week. By Friday it has lost most of its resale value and the following week it was becoming difficult to identify what it once was.
Stress relief? Performance art? Who knows. Everybody has to find a strategy that works for them.
Unemployment is the answer to stress. Remember the liberating effects of Obamacare?
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that Obamacare facilitates the type of “liberation” that the “Founders had in mind” because it allows you to quit your job and become a “photographer,” a “writer,” a “musician”--or “whatever.”
“As you hear from these stories, this is a liberation,” Pelosi said at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday.
“This is what our founders had in mind--ever expanding opportunity for people.
“You want to be a photographer or a writer or a musician, whatever -- an artist, you want to be self-employed, if you want to start a business, you want to change jobs, you no longer are prohibited from doing that because you can’t have access to health care, especially because you do not want to put your family at risk,” she said.
Yeah she also said all these jobs would happen once people were free from the Golden insurance handcuffs.
So where did the money go for all these failed exchanges?
How much?
I agree with Temujin that the internet plays a role in the stress. But I think it goes beyond social media. I notice my stress level goes up the more things I have to do on the internet. The amount of things I am expected to do on the internet increases every year, to do my job. It sounds like that should be a stress/work reducer, but it takes more time to do most of these things on the internet because most websites do not have the ease of use that Amazon does.
"That's some low-grade stress if a potted plant is helping."
1st world problems. Oh bother.
But it could be a religious experience:
"Devotees pray to Tulsi and circumbulate it,chanting mantras. The Tulsi plant is often worshipped twice in a day: in the morning and in the evening, when a lamp or candle is lit near the plant. In the 19th century, some families in Bengal regarded the plant as their guardian or family deity."
The circumbulating might be difficult in cubicle.
If one works at a very PC place (teacher, NGO etc), Earth credits could be garnered according to C02 gobbling plant size. The annual winner gets a tiny footprint coal. pendant.
Especially difficult since "circumbulate" isn't a word.
It should be circumambulate.
Wikipedia misled me.
Now I'm stressed.
Poison ivy looks nice.
Proof that Tulsi IS a plant..
Tulsi attracts a bevy of would-be circumambulators when she goes surfing.
That may be evidence that she is not entirely plant-like, despite her penchant for green wetsuits.
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