How you handle your tinnitus at work can make you an invaluable employee. Unfortunately, average employees (those without tinnitus) spend a lot of time seeking distractions from their jobs. On the other hand, you can use your tinnitus to increase your work productivity and turn yourself into an irreplaceable asset. 

How to handle tinnitus at work.

The trick to handling your tinnitus at work is to:

1. Get a good night’s sleep.
2. Set challenging work-related daily goals.
3. Use your tinnitus as a competitive edge at work.

Tinnitus makes you more valuable as an employee.

Far too many employees seek distractions from their work. The average employee wastes almost three hours per day.

Many of them do things that make your tinnitus rage, like checking social media or mindlessly surfing the internet.

As an employee with tinnitus, you have to dive into your work. A job for a tinnitus sufferer is an eight-hour distraction with benefits. Oh, it can be a cruel taskmaster, but only when you get a little lazy. Like an invisible boss looking over your shoulder all day, tinnitus lets you know the instant you are not being productive.

This need to work, not only to secure an income but to escape the sound of your tinnitus, makes you an invaluable employee. 

If you haven’t quite figured out how to handle your tinnitus at work, then read on.

Related:https://lifewithtinnitus.com/how-to-measure-tinnitus-noise/

Use your job to lower your perception of tinnitus.

It is 100% natural to worry that your tinnitus could affect your job. The noise in your ears is irritating. Your sleep has suffered, and you are tired during the day. Potential adverse outcomes flood you with fear and stress. You worry you may not be able to work at all.

But think about when your tinnitus bothers you the most. What do all those moments have in common? If you are like most tinnitus sufferers, they are moments of idleness. Tinnitus thrives in thoughtless inactivity. But even in the middle of a severe tinnitus spike, the sound disappears when you are too busy to pay attention to its wail.

And you can quickly learn how to use your job to silence your tinnitus for most, if not the entire day.

Let’s break down the three steps to learning how to handle your tinnitus at work.

Related: https://lifewithtinnitus.com/will-my-tinnitus-get-worse-with-time/

Step One: Get a good night’s sleep.

Just one night of good sleep can all but eliminate your emotional reaction to tinnitus. Good sleep is liberating. It charges up your willpower and proves to you tinnitus isn’t the bogeyman you thought.

With your batteries fully charged, you are ready to handle the ringing in your ears without overreacting to it. If you have planned your morning power hour correctly, you’ll hardly notice your tinnitus until you start your morning commute. Once at work, however, it’s time to quieten it down again, for another eight hours.

So, how do you get a good night’s sleep? Well, more importantly, how do you silence the ringing in your ears long enough to get to sleep? Simple, by spending 15 minutes concentrating on it. The method is almost too easy, but it works and requires no special equipment.

Are you interested in learning how to do it? Then read my article, How to quickly get to sleep with tinnitus.

Step Two: Set challenging work related daily goals.

This step turns you from a typical employee into a super productive, highly profitable asset.

I’ll be honest here, and some careers are nearly immune to the effects of tinnitus. For example, if your job combines physical activity with mental concentration (think carpenter, auto mechanic, etc.), you probably won’t be bothered by tinnitus at work.

What? You don’t believe me that concentration can reduce your tinnitus volume? Then try this little game.

The same is true for those who work at places with louder background sounds. Factories and shops often produce a level of sound above that of your tinnitus. With your tinnitus effectively drowned out, you should have almost no perception of it during the day.

If you work in an office setting, the quieter environment and lack of physical activity mean you’ll have to work harder to reduce your perception level. Masking may be a temporary fix, but I think it’s a needless crutch. Instead, distract yourself by increasing your workload.

Making your job more challenging will help you handle your tinnitus at work.

The truth is, the busier you are, the less you will perceive your tinnitus. At work, the more you commit to getting it done each day, the harder you will have to work to achieve it. The tremendous concentration and the difficulties involved will completely distract you from your tinnitus.

What? You don’t believe concentration can distract you from something as huge as your tinnitus? Well, try this little experiment.

Trust me; you have to set a specific goal for yourself. For now, we will use 10% more work per day as your goal. Feel free to adjust it up or down, as needed.

However, before you set these new work goals, you’ll need to spend a little time measuring your usual output. Once you know what you normally get done in an average workday, you must determine which parts of your job can be increased.

For example, an insurance salesperson could commit to making 10% more cold calls every day. A lawyer, however, shouldn’t try to review 10% more contracts. Likewise, a real estate agent could schedule 10% more open houses but probably not sell 10% more homes.

Once you have identified what you will do more of, make a plan to accomplish it. I recommend the SMART method of goal setting. Make your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and fixed to a Time frame.

Use your tinnitus as a competitive edge at work.

Yes, properly used tinnitus is a competitive advantage for you at work. You are a distraction-free, goal-oriented, and highly motivated employee. Even without setting up additional work goals, you’ll put 10-15 more hours of effort into your work each week than your coworkers.

Can’t find places to improve your productivity? Well, don’t be afraid to look around your workplace and find some other extra work for yourself. Can you find ways to improve quality, shorten production time, and increase profit?

Can you see now how your tinnitus makes you impossible to replace at work?

Related: https://lifewithtinnitus.com/tinnitus-habituation-how-to-cope-with-ringing-in-your-ears/

The truth is you don’t have to handle your tinnitus at work.

Your tinnitus, correctly applied, is a career benefit. So start using it to generate more profit for your employer. Eventually, your job security and salary will prove that tinnitus is a blessing.

After all, where else can you make a profit while you comfortably habituate?

Full disclosure: The vast majority of people habituate to tinnitus within 6-18 months. After that, tinnitus has lost its edge and become as noticeable as the socks on your feet.

So, there’s a countdown clock over your head. I suggest you make use of your tinnitus gift before it runs out.