Managing stress... and sucking at it!
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
- Matthew 6:34
I am not a religious person. In fact I've been jokingly telling my friends that if I had a religion it would have to be Dudeism, and even that only so I would be able to marry couples. I think that would be cool.
Luckily you don't have to be religious to find wisdom in religious texts, and I think the quote above is a very important one to keep in mind. I am a worrier by nature. If I have many things that need to be done, they start to accumulate in my head and I find it more and more difficult to focus on actually doing them. I become stressful and I feel like I'm not getting anything done, even though in reality I am probably working harder than ever to meet my obligations.
I am good at dealing with stress. Or so it used to say in my CV. I actually thought it was true, but my current situation of working most of the week, dealing with university courses, and trying to keep my other commitments such as writing this blog have proved otherwise. I suck at dealing with stress. Having one or two big things to do is perfectly fine, but when the small ones start to accumulate on top of those, I am in trouble. I find it genuinely difficult to put them in order and deal with them without letting them gain power over me.
The problem is not so much that I wouldn't be able to deliver what I've committed to, but the process of doing it drains all the juice out of me and I end up feeling miserable until most of the things are out of the way.
People who know me tend to see me as someone who is very focused and constantly getting a lot of things done, but that's not the way I see myself. My attention is not on what I did, but what is still left to be done and that is a problem. Instead of stopping to celebrate the things I've accomplished I'm already striving towards the next thing on my list.
I could use some help here, and that's the main reason I'm writing this. I'm not a big fan of productivity systems that are complex and difficult to maintain, but I think I could use something to organize my thoughts and help me visually arrange the things I need to do. I have a tendency of committing myself into doing things even though I know I'm already busy with other stuff, so something that would help me see my current commitments and evaluate how much time it takes to do them would be perfect. If you have any ideas on this, I'd love hear them!
Now, I don't want this post to be all about bitching and whining, so here are couple things I've actually found very useful to make an active and busy life a lot more tolerable:
1. Write stuff down, even the small tasks.
If you try to keep everything in your head, these things will be popping up into your thoughts constantly to remind you that they need your attention. This will destroy focus, increase stress, and is just plain annoying.
2. Have an off-day once a week.
Doing this has worked great for me! Even with many things going on, forcing yourself to have one day a week when being productive and getting things done is banned from your vocabulary is a great stress relief. It might take a while to learn to do it as you need to consciously refuse to let your work and other commitments get inside your head. In long-term, though, this is very useful as it ensures that you have more focus and energy for the other six days.
3. Take care of eating, sleeping, and exercise.
Stress releases cortisol, which is a hormone that acts like insulin; driving glucose from blood into your cells to be used for energy or stored as fat. This is all fine and a natural survival mechanism as long as the cause of stress is short, but if you are experiencing chronic long-term stress you're in trouble. Sleep is important for stress release, and proper diet and exercise will improve your insulin sensitivity. These factors help you to maintain blood sugars at an optimum level, which brings numerous health benefits both physically and mentally.
I pretty much despise companies that track working hours of their employees and pay salary according to them. Counting time instead of actual results is a ghost of the industrial era and mass production. If the role of the employee is even a little more than that of an organic robot, time starts to lose its meaning.
If you're feeling stressed, low on energy, and lack focus, it might easily take 2-3 times longer to do a task than if you were super focused and completely immersed in it. Letting yourself take a day off and taking care of your health will help you reach that level of focus for the rest of the week. Even though you lose the hours of the off-day, you will end up getting more done in all the other days. And you are likely to feel better too.
On another note, I wrote an article for Lateral Action - one of my favorite blogs - about using your naturally occurring bodily rhythms to boost focus, energy levels, and consequently productivity. If the topic is of any interest to you, it's definitely worth checking out!