Any number of books and magazine articles have been devoted to techniques for stress reduction. I'm creating my own list of tips and strategies that I like here and publishing them on the off chance that someone else might also benefit from them.

Please feel free to post feedback and suggestions at the bottom of the page. I intend to update this page and add more tips as I learn them.

• The NY Times ran an interesting article that suggests a way to recharge a fatigued brain. Here is an excerpt:

  The reason may be that the brain uses two forms of attention. "Directed" attention allows us to concentrate on work, reading and tests, while "involuntary" attention takes over when we’re distracted by things like running water, crying babies, a beautiful view or a pet that crawls onto our lap.
  
  Directed attention is a limited resource. Long hours in front of a computer or studying for a test can leave us feeling fatigued. But spending time in natural settings appears to activate involuntary attention, giving the brain’s directed attention time to rest.

• The fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and index finger is a good point to rub for stress relief

• Work in a chair all day? Spending time on your feet will help you fall to sleep in the evening.

• Meditation daily - This is a reminder to myself more than anything. I'm trying to take an unmeasured, but roughly five minute, stretch of time after dinner every night.

• I'm a big fan of GTD. If you haven't read the book, I heartily recommend it. I was, and still am, skeptical of self help books, but this one is really quite good.
  
  And here are some GTD-related links:
  Comparison of GTD software
  Remember the milk - highly rated GTD software
  Life hack - a great resource for GTD enthusiats.
  How to GTD-ize your gmail
  Goal enforcer
  Out of place Next Actions - GTD advice.
  Mini review - GTD advice.
  

• Here is another Times article. The take-away is, again, meditate! but I also found this bit interesting:

  "People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money," she said. "Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said."
  
  During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said, she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind James's mantra as well as a line from Milton: "The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n."

• Another Times article this one about creativity in the absurd.

  To be sure, there’s no small amount of goofiness in Johnson’s creations, but deeper exploration into his decades of inventions show not only a complex and intuitive mind but real visionary tendencies. His mental process? It's one he describes as "Mix-'N-Match, outrageous extrapolation, speeded-up thinking, random/lateral thinking (which comes close to the hypnologic state between waking and sleep where some claim inspired inventions and scientific inventions come through), and so forth."
  
  He writes of avoiding his desk when inventing, avoiding the connotations of serious endeavor, of earning a living. "I wish instead," he writes, "to be irresponsible, rash, associative, dreamy, impish, brainy, intuitive, and stupid." Which seems, to me, about the right strategy for our times.

• Developing genius.

  Then she would practice writing. Her practice would be slow, painstaking and error-focused. According to Colvin, Ben Franklin would take essays from The Spectator magazine and translate them into verse. Then he'd translate his verse back into prose and examine, sentence by sentence, where his essay was inferior to The Spectator's original.
  
  Coyle describes a tennis academy in Russia where they enact rallies without a ball. The aim is to focus meticulously on technique. (Try to slow down your golf swing so it takes 90 seconds to finish. See how many errors you detect.)
  
  By practicing in this way, performers delay the automatizing process. The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance.
  
  Then our young writer would find a mentor who would provide a constant stream of feedback, viewing her performance from the outside, correcting the smallest errors, pushing her to take on tougher challenges. By now she is redoing problems — how do I get characters into a room — dozens and dozens of times. She is ingraining habits of thought she can call upon in order to understand or solve future problems.

• What Makes Us Happy? - The article doesn't really answer the title question, but it is a fascinating read nonetheless.

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