Sound familiar? You could probably write a long list of personal and professional stressful situations other than client projects. Fortunately, all the techniques here apply equally well to stress on the job and at home. The first thing to accept: Stress is normal. Distress—such as family illness or natural disasters—isn’t, and can’t be managed like stress can. If you have determined that you are dealing with stress and not distress, keep these points in mind.

1. You’ll never be caught up. Stop trying. There will always be a never ending succession of business and marketing tasks in addition to your projects. Stop waiting to find the bottom of your in-basket or the top of your desk. Stop dreaming about feeling caught up. Design projects are like the ongoing rush and flow of a river, not a calm, still body of water. Besides, if you ever do get caught up, you’ll have no work—and that’s bad. To deal with this stress, have a good time management system in place. Rid your life of the stress of playing catch-up.

2. You’ll never make everyone happy. You can only do your best to please your clients and run a profitable business. There will always be clients that want you to behave differently (especially with approvals, changes, and pricing) so they can be happy. In this stressful situation, stop and differentiate between subjective and objective happiness. “Subjective” implies someone’s opinion is involved; “objective” is based on accountable and measurable design goals. You must make clients happy on an objective level … but it’s unrealistic to always expect them to be happy on a subjective level. They will have opinions you don’t like. Stop and ask yourself if you need to do anything other than register and acknowledge those opinions. Recognizing someone’s opinion without needing to agree with it will go far toward smoothing over a stressful situation. If you have met all the measurable design objectives, maybe you should not be asking “How high?” if no one has asked you to jump.

3. Get it off your chest. Worry is a great producer of stress. The best technique is to let it out. Have pen and paper handy so you can write down any particular concern. Put your writing aside to be considered later (i.e., sleep on it). By the time you return to your list, chances are at least some of your worries will have resolved themselves or are no longer overwhelming. You’ll wonder what you were so worried about! Motivational seminar leader and one of the authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Mark Victor Hansen, calls this type of stress “stewing without doing.” You can waste a lot of time worrying.

4. Practice the art of saying no. Stress is often created in a situation where you say yes when your mind, body, and soul are telling you to say no. Say a client wants to make a change to a deadline or pricing request, and you know that an unqualified “Yes, fine, no problem” will cause stress and reduce your profit. Instead of caving, try one of these approaches:

“No, but here’s what we can do ...” (Name some other option.)

“Yes, and that’ll cost ...” (Name a specific cost.)

Simply say, “Let me get back to you.”

In each case, you have presented considerations that will reduce the stress of saying yes when you mean no. This is a valuable technique to learn because it shares with the client the stress and the cost of changes she wants to make.

5. Explore the concept of hidden costs. When managing project stress, it’s important to understand that costs are not just about money. The hidden costs of managing and completing a project can be time, energy, attention, prestige, and self-esteem. When you talk with a client about stressful project changes, try this: “Yes, we can do that, and this is what it will take.” Name specifics the client will need to do involving his own time or attention. Identifying the hidden costs of making changes will go a long way in helping you manage stress, clients, and projects.