Introduction
The modern business styles of many companies have made life more stressful and harder to live in spite of the fact that the money obtained from an average job is many times higher than what was available a few years before. This is more pronounced in the service industry where the pressure to conform to standards is very important and can often zap the initiative of people who find it difficult to cope with the pressures and demands put forward by the industry.

Analysis
Although the effects of stress are well known, a proper definition of stress is elusive, because stress is an emotional or psychological symptom of a situation that is threatening to an individual. Hence, the symptoms of stress will not be common across all people and the response to stress also will not be the same in all situations. Stress can best be described as the body's natural reaction to a situation, which the subconscious finds threatening or dangerous. The immediate response to the threat is to run away from the danger and this natural reaction of the body causes the release of hormones that pushes the individual to an excited state. The release of the hormones is the reason for sweating and increased heart beat. Stress can cause short term as well as long term physical effects. The short-term effects may be symptoms like profuse sweating, cold feet and hands, stammering, irritability etc. The long-term effects may be lack of sleep, indigestion, ulcers, heart related problems etc. [Varhol, 2000]

There are many reasons that can cause stress in the work environment. Scientists have for long, differentiated between what they call as good stress and bad stress. Good stress happens when people enjoy their heavy workloads even when they have to sacrifice many finer things in life. There are numerous examples of workaholics who can spend endless hours in their office without any signs of fatigue. However when these same people are entrusted with a job that they do not enjoy, we can see that they immediately feel stressed and begin to show work related stress disorders. It therefore follows that more than physical fatigue, it is the mental state of the employee that causes stress in him or her. When stress shows on people as irritation, fatigue and a lack of enthusiasm, it is bad stress. However, medical practitioners believe that there is no good stress of bad stress and lack of rest, however enjoyable it might be to different people, can cause many problems in them.[Mcmahon, 1998]

There are many reasons in the work place that can cause stress. Some of the common reasons that are attributed to stress in the work place are lack of employees, tight deadlines, work pressure, more complexity in the work related problems due to technological advances etc. These are more pronounced in the eservice industries like hotels. Some of these factors supplement the basic problem of having to work in an environment that is not interesting for the employee. For example, a badly designed job role combined with an unsympathetic boss can be severely stressful for the employee. Similarly, an environment that is not in accordance to one's mental makeup can also create a lot of stress for the employee. Trade unions, bullying in the office, sexual harassment, racial discrimination etc, are all capable of aggravating a bad situation and making it worse so that the employee has no other option than to leave the firm. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's survey indicated that an average of one million workers are absent on any given day largely due to stress disorders. The American Academy of Family Physicians in 1979 found out job stress to be the greatest cause of poor health habits [American Academy of Family Physicians (1979), Donatelle, R. J. & Hawkins, M. J. (1989)].

Stress and career management

The tradeoff between a lucrative career and work pressure is very significant. Today salary has increased to unprecedented levels but health bills and psychological problems have increased at the work place. The tension of going to work is so intense that psychologists have coined the term 'Monday blues' for those who find it very difficult to go to their office after a weekend. Similarly brownouts (a condition that is caused due to lack of sleep for consecutive days) are very common in the hotel industry where people are exploited to the maximum to benefit the employer. It is in this context that the importance of leisure as a means to enhance and rejuvenate a person's intellectual and physical capacities is acknowledged by psychologists worldwide. Already holiday packages are part of the pay benefits that employees receive and most of the employees, particularly in countries like the USA are very much particular about having holiday options as part of their pay package. The old concepts of working, which encouraged people to work to their fullest potential without rest does not hold true in the capitalistic world. Here employees and employers treat the job as an investment of time and money, which should return the maximum possible profits in the shortest time. The importance that the industry attaches to work experience is exploited to the full by employees to bargain for facilities which has a fair amount of leisure as part of the package

Time and career management

It therefore follows that stress and time management often go hand in hand as a technique to enhance one's productivity. Proper time management is necessary to reduce stress in life since managing time helps one to reduce the anxiety of slipping deadlines and lost opportunities. Often scientists working on time management believe that prioritizing one’s work is very important to meet time management initiatives and achieve one's goals. Similarly, it is better to work and finish high priority jobs first and then turn one's attention to low priority tasks. This particularly important in the service industries like hotels where the need of the clients have to be prioritized. Often the interests of clients may come into conflict and only one’s personal tact and diplomacy will enable to retrieve oneself from a difficult situation.

The importance of leisure in career and stress management
Leisure is the voluntary engagement of a person in activities that are not part of one's work, is enjoyable to the person engaged in it and is highly discretionary. Leisure is chosen according to one's wishes. Sometimes a busy executive working for months on a project may return home and spend his time in carpentry, which is very relaxing for him. He would find more happiness in working with his tools because he is entirely in control of the activities that he does in his leisure and there is no authority that commands him to a deadline or to a quality requirement. Psychologically speaking the lack of pressure and monotony in anything is leisure. This is the concept, which is echoed when management experts ask executives to enjoy themselves while working. Sleeping cannot be considered as leisure. It can be best considered as a higher manifestation of rest. Leisure involves some activity however small that might be. Having a lot of leisure time does not mean that the activities that we do in that time may be considered as leisure activities [Carson, 2002]. Vocational psychology strongly believes that unsatisfied needs at the work place are compensated by leisure activities. In such case, the individual selects the leisure activity and he feels that the particular activity would help his to cover his needs, which is not available from the work place. Time is leisure only when placed in the hands of the right person who is ready for it. A person who cannot unwind himself cannot enjoy leisure. To be leisurely a man must learn to turn away the affairs of his mundane existence from his mind.