Many people think of time management as micro-managing your day by filling up every minute with a tedious list of A-B-C prioritized tasks. Actually, time management is self discipline. It’s the discipline to say no to distractions and interruptions, and stay focused on the task at hand. Stress management is more than just meditating and exercising. It is eliminating the stressors in your life. Stress and time management are actually methods for liberating your life, not restricting it.
Here are 7 tips for using stress and time management to free yourself:
1. In a stressful situation, distinguish between items that need to be done immediately and items that may not be needed to be done at all. By dividing your tasks in this way, you save time by not wasting it, and you save stress by rejecting the tasks that would put you in time pressure.
2. Focus on assisting where you are needed most. Too often, people try to help out where there is a need, as opposed to where there is a need for your skill set. By helping out where you are needed most, you can use your strengths to their best advantage, which reduces your stress. You also can contribute immediately, which is top-notch time management.
3. Learn to delegate. Many people have reservations about delegating tasks because they think it makes them look like they think they are superior to the person to whom they delegate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Proper delegation is assigning tasks to either someone who has better strengths than you or who has more time to accomplish the task.
4. Review how you spent your time and how you handled stressful situations. By taking some time each day or each week to review these two important areas, you prepare yourself to be better for the next occurrence. Football teams watch films of games to find areas to improve. You can playback the movie of each day to find areas to improve.
5. Ask your management for help. Wherever you are on the organizational chart, someone above you is responsible for strategic planning. You can reduce stress by making sure your planning is in line with the goals of the organization. And you can save time by not wasting it deviating to unauthorized tasks.
6. Schedule time that is unscheduled. Too many time management programs ask that you fill up the entire day. By scheduling unfilled time throughout the day, you have time to reflect, to plan, and to unwind. You have time to alleviate the pressure of the stress on you during the day, to be better able to fight the stress that is still to come.
7. Develop a quick assessment system for interruptions. This includes mail, email, and telephone calls. A simple assessment system is to decide if the interruption can be dealt with in less than X minutes – do it now. If it takes longer, schedule a specific time for it or delegate it and review the progress at that time. Or, if it is a worthless interruption, discard it.
Stress and time management can be used together to liberate your life. When you are not constantly under stress, you can spend time planning your life. And when you have time that is not committed to someone else, you can spend that time stress-free. There are many components to a comprehensive stress management system, but addressing stress and managing time are 2 of the moist important.
Rick Carter created STRESS JUDO COACHING, aggressive stress management coaching for maximum personal effectiveness, based on his 17+ years of experienced in the courtroom and 25+ years of experience in the dojo (martial arts school). Rick is a certified coach and attorney licensed in 3 states. If you want to develop the mindset of a black belt martial artist toward stressful situations, go to STRESS JUDO COACHING.