Much has been written about time management—thousands of articles and blog posts, in fact, and at least hundreds (if not thousands) of books. The same can be said about stress—causes of stress, symptoms of stress, and stress management techniques.
But it’s much more rare to find information about the overlap and interaction between the two.
Sure, time management techniques help you to get more done, but the question is, “Can time management techniques also help you reduce stress?” My answer would be an unqualified “Yes!” In fact, I have little doubt that the consistent and correct application of time management strategies can be one of the most effective tools in your stress management toolkit.
One writer who has written about the impact of poor time management on increased stress levels lists the following symptoms that often result:
- Irritability and mood swings
- Tiredness and fatigue
- Inability to focus or concentrate
- Mental block, memory lapses, and forgetfulness
- Lack of, or loss of, sleep
- At worst, withdrawal and depression
That’s a big-time list of negative results that come from poor time management, and certainly everything on that list is also the result of stress. So, how do you go about getting more done while simultaneously living a lower-stress life? I’m going to tackle that topic today, and in fact, I’m going to give you 23 stress management strategies that can help you achieve that win-win, lower-stress, higher-productivity lifestyle. Many of these stress management strategies are also time management strategies.
OK, let’s get started.
A Values-Driven Time Management Process
The first step is to make sure that you have in place the three big components that are prerequisites for living a productive, lower-stress life.
Here they are:
- Write out, in descriptive language, your core values. I’m not talking about just your business here. I’m talking about the values you cherish as a person. Stephen Covey talks about imagining your own funeral and standing in the back of the funeral parlor, listening to your friends and loved ones talk about you and the impact you had on their lives.
What values do you want to manifest now, in both your business and personal lives, that will result in those people saying the kinds of things about you at your funeral that you would be proud of? It’s a humbling exercise, but if you haven’t done it before, do it now. And then use this exercise in imagination to come up with a list of core values that you want to demonstrate in your life from here on out.
Those values are your starting point.
2. Next, keeping those values in mind, create two sets of goals (I recommend starting with 5-year goals)—one for your business and one for your personal life. What do you want to achieve in your business and your personal life over the next five years that reflects the values you listed in step one?
3. Finally, looking at your goals, work backward from that point five years from now. Ask yourself, “What steps, in what order, will I need to take to get from where I am now to the point where I’ve achieved my goals five years from now?” This is your plan. Again, do this for both your business life and your personal life.
Values, goals, and a plan. That’s the magic formula for putting your entire life on a values-driven footing. And it’s the first step in achieving a lower-stress, higher-productivity life.
Why? Because if you use your values-based goals to direct your life and follow a step-by-step plan to get there, you’ll eliminate a lot of activity that falls outside of that plan. It focuses you, all the time, on getting from point A (where you are now) to point B (achievement of your goals). Anything that doesn’t fit with your values and falls outside of your plan should be cut from your life. This alone will reduce your stress levels greatly.
That’s step number one, and it’s the biggest one. But, as they say, “The Devil is in the details.” And those details—the specific steps and strategies you use while you work toward your goals—is what we’ll cover in the rest of this post.
I’m going to cover this material in three categories:
- “Big picture” approaches for your life outside of work,
- “Big picture” approaches to apply in your work, and
- More specific time management strategies for your work life.
Plus, I’ll throw in the magic 23rd strategy that ties it all together. So, with no further ado, let’s get to the list.
Big Picture: Life Outside of Work
Following are 11 steps you can take that have been proven to reduce stress levels and lead to a more satisfying lifestyle. You don’t have to incorporate all 11 into your life, but the more of these you can achieve, the bigger the effect:
1. Don’t schedule multiple stressful situations at the same time. Sometimes you don’t have a choice in this regard. Sometimes you land two big clients who need you to do some work for them and their timetables overlap. This means you’re likely to be putting in some long days and maybe even pulling an all-nighter here or there. Obviously, that’s not good for your stress levels. So, as much as possible, spread out bigger stressors so you’re only dealing with one at a time.
By the way, these stressors can be bad stress (distress) or good stress (eustress), or a combination of the two. In other words, you may have a major work project on one hand, and you’re involved in the planning for your son or daughter’s wedding at the same time. Even though the event of the wedding is a good thing, it’s still stressful, so it still counts.
2. Practice gratitude/mindfulness. Taking some time every day to offer up gratitude for all the good things in your life has been proven to reduce stress, as has simply sitting quietly, remaining in the present, and focusing on one’s breathing.
Gratitude keeps you from focusing on the negatives in your life (or at least balances the scales), while mindfulness gives you practice at bringing your mind into the present, keeping it from focusing on negative past events (regrets) or possible negative future events (future anxiety), both of which are stress-inducing.
As I say, you want to make one or both of these approaches a daily habit, but you can also employ them strategically at any time when you notice yourself slipping into a stressful negative pattern of thinking.
3. Reach out to loved ones and friends. Sometimes it’s easy to get sucked into locking yourself away in your office and plugging along for hours at an end. This can obviously be stress-inducing, and the solution is right there in your pocket or purse—your phone. Take a break and call or at least text a loved one or friend and enjoy a short conversation. You’ll feel much better afterwards, and you’ll carry that feeling back into your work, which will make the work flow so much more easily.
One word or warning, though: I suggest that you not get sucked into a social media binge by going to Facebook or some other social media platform to get your “friends and family” fix. Sure, you can connect with loved ones through those platforms, but then you also see this person’s major life event, then you see that crazy video, then you follow the link in that ad…and soon you’ve lost an hour or two of your life in unproductive scrolling—which will cause you to start stressing all over again about the lost time.
4. Get into the habit of doing some yoga and/or traditional stretching daily. I’ve been an inconsistent stretcher in the past, but over the last year or so, I’ve made it a habit to do yoga or a session of more traditional stretching every morning before starting my work for the day. Stress makes you tight, and the tightness, being uncomfortable, leads to more stress—and often other problems like headaches. Start your day with some quiet stretching or yoga practice and you’ll go into your day looser and feeling like you can tackle anything that comes on.
5. Exercise regularly. I won’t say that you should work out every day, because there are so many different ways to “work out” that you can’t make such blanket statements. If your preferred method of exercise is walking, then that’s something you can and probably should do every day. If your go-to exercise approach is something more physically challenging—strength training, high-intensity interval training, cross fit training, hill sprints, etc.—you’re probably going to want to do those activities three times a week—four at the most. Your body needs to recover from such serious exertion before going again.
But no matter what type of exercise you choose to do, the key is to schedule it and be consistent with it. Many studies have shown the positive benefits of exercise, not only on strength, weight loss, endurance, and flexibility, but also on stress reduction.
6. Eat a healthy diet. Many people have fallen into a negative cycle with their diets that goes something like this: they feel stressed (because they’re not doing enough of the approaches I cover in this post) and then they crave carbs because of the stress. So they forget about making that healthy salad for dinner like they planned and instead order a large pizza. They wolf this down (along with a side of cheesy bread) and feel (temporarily) good. But then the guilt kicks in, and guilt is, in itself, stressful. Plus, they just added a couple of pounds that they couldn’t afford to add and they start stressing about that. Which leads to craving carbs again. It’s a tough cycle to get out of.
Obviously, there’s not room enough in this post to go into the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet of going vegetarian. The information is out there if you look for it. But in order to get your diet under control, you have to make a decision that you need to make a change in this area.
If you choose to go for improving in this area of your life, I applaud you. And one thing I know to be true: when you start eating healthier, you’ll start feeling better about yourself, and that, in itself, will help reduce your stress.
7. Get plenty of sleep. This is another no-brainer, but it has to be mentioned, anyway. Like the negative cycle some people fall into with their diet, people can also get into a negative cycle with their sleep. If you get extra stressed, you may have trouble falling asleep at night, which cuts down on your total sleep time. This, in turn, makes you tired and less productive. This may cause you to try to work harder, work longer hours, or stay up past your normal bedtime trying to “catch up”—which, again, cuts into your sleep time.
Getting good sleep is essential to feeling rested and less stressed. Different people need different amounts of sleep, but for most people, the optimal amount is between seven and nine hours a night.
8. Be efficient with your chore time. We all have to do chores—buy groceries, cook meals, clean the house, take care of the pets, etc. And when you’re stressed about not getting all your work done, you tend to begrudge the time you have to take to do these chores, which makes you stressed.
To combat this problem, give your chores some forethought and plan to be more efficient. For example, you can cook double meal portions and freeze half for another meal later; you can plan follow-up meals (like making a large batch of chili one night and adding some macaroni to the left-over chili for chili mac the next night); you can combine trips to different stores and knock them out at the same time; you can make a big list and buy your groceries for an entire week at once. The more efficient you can become with your chore time, the more time you free up for the things you tend to stress about, which means you’ll stress about them less.
9. Take vacation time (maxi- or mini-). Of course, sometimes the best thing you can do to relax and destress is to get completely away from the location and situation that’s getting you stressed. Time for some vay-cay!
Now, a good, long vacation to a tropical island or a “destination” city like London or Paris (or heck, even New York or San Francisco) can be amazing and let you re-set your “stress clock.” But if you can’t swing getting away for a “maxi” vacation like this, don’t discount the power of working in a “mini” vacation for a quick weekend or even a “stay-cation” where you don’t leave town, but you schedule a break from all work and replace that time with some fun, relaxing activities.
10. Laugh. A lot. One of the best stress-relievers is laughter. You don’t need a research study to tell you that laughter has the power to de-stress and relax you and just make you feel good all over (though those studies do exist, if you want to read them).
And this one is so easy to incorporate into your day that it doesn’t make sense not to do it. Some time back, I started the habit of watching a short comedy video at the end of my morning routine, right before I started in on my work tasks for the day. All you have to do is open YouTube, type in something like “Louis CK stand-up” (or whoever makes you laugh) and watch 10 minutes of a monologue or sketch. It’s a powerful way to put yourself into a great mood to start your morning.
11. Get a dog (or cat). Seriously. Well, of course, not if you’re allergic, but if you don’t have an allergy problem and you just don’t currently have a pet, this can be a powerful stress reliever.
Now, like several other items on this list, this may not be for everyone. Some people might say, “I think that I would be more stressed because now I have this other mouth to feed and take care of.” I can see that argument, but from my own experience, one of the best stress breaks I can take is to pause my work (I work from a home office) and take the dogs out for a quick romp around the yard.
And there’s really nothing more stress-reducing than spending time with an animal that gives you unconditional 100% love just for being you (don’t you wish more of the people in your life were like that?).
Big Picture: (Work)
OK, now that we’ve looked at 11 strategies for reducing stress in your non-work life, let’s tackle some big picture approaches to your work life that will also bring your cortisol levels down. Here’s my list of five steps you can take that will make your work time more enjoyable and more productive.
12. Know when to say, “No.” The consulting life is challenging when it comes to knowing how much work to take on. You may have a full plate of work already, but then another offer comes along. You’re not really sure how you’ll be able to take on this new gig and juggle everything, but you’re worried that, if you don’t take it, your other jobs will end and then you won’t have any paying work to do. That’s a legitimate concern. I’ve written many times about the “consulting roller coaster,” and I’ve lived it.
But here’s the thing. When you say, “Yes” to too many jobs, you’re setting yourself up for stress, in several ways. First of all, there’s the stress generated from all the schedule-juggling you’re going to have to do to make everything work. Then there’s the likelihood that the quality of your work on all of the jobs will suffer, as you’re not able to devote the time and attention to each that it deserves. And that’s stressful, too.
So sure, you have plenty of work, and you’re getting paid, but is that last extra “cherry” of a job that you added on top of the stack worth it? Probably not.
13. Say “yes” to the right things. I know that you may not often find yourself in the position of being choosy, but when you are, make sure that you say, “Yes” to the right things. And by the “right” things, I mean the jobs that you really enjoy. The ones that are in your “wheelhouse” as far as your knowledge and skillset.
Maybe another gig pays more or offers a longer timeframe to the job that allows you to lock in your schedule over a longer period of time. But if it’s not the kind of work that excites you, is the extra cash worth it? Only you can make that call, but there’s one thing I know: doing the work you love is a great way to keep your stress level low.
14. Spend some time daily on important tasks, not just urgent ones. Stephen Covey is famous for making this distinction in his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He points out that most people get sucked in to responding to urgent issues, which takes up all their time and keeps them from spending time on growing their skills over the long term.
You have to make time for family, friends, and long-term growth (Covey calls this “sharpening the saw”). You have to schedule this time in, because if you don’t, the urgent items on your “to-do” list will take over. Sure, you’ll get a lot of “stuff” done, but you’ll also eventually bump up against a ceiling above which you’ll never be able to rise because you haven’t built in the time to prioritize your own growth.
And there’s nothing more stress-inducing than suddenly coming to the realization that you’ve maxed out your potential. So, don’t let yourself fall into that trap. Schedule time every day (even if it’s just 30 minutes of professional development reading before you start your work day or right before you go to bed) to focus on the “important” instead of the simply urgent.
15. Organize your office space. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, if you could see my office right now, you’d take me to task for telling you to do something that I’m not doing myself. This is one I struggle with. I get things organized—briefly—but then, it seems I just turn around and all the books and file folders are in piles all over the place again.
But I will also say that, for those (too infrequent) times when I’ve cleaned things up and organized everything, I feel much better, and I can feel myself exhale and relax a bit.
I once knew a consultant who believed in clearing everything off her desk at the end of each day—and she actually followed her own rule. There was never a day, in all the time I worked in the same office, where she walked out at the end of the day without an organized office. I always admired that, and I’m sure coming in each morning to a fresh, clean workspace helped to keep her stress level down.
16. Share the workload/outsource. This is a big one for solopreneur independent consultants. The fact is, you can’t do everything by yourself. There’s just too much to do in a business. Every minute you spend doing basic business tasks like filing, invoicing, and checking email is a minute not spent on the revenue-generating tasks of your business, whether that’s blogging, podcasting, presenting, or whatever else.
And every minute you spend trying to learn a new skill that lies outside of your expertise (learning graphic design “on the side” in order to make your business documents look better, for example) is a minute not spent on revenue-generating activities.
Nothing is really “on the side.” Everything you do in your business takes time. And when you know that every minute you spend on non-revenue-generating tasks is sapping profitability from your business, it’s stressful.
The best way to solve this problem (and ditch this source of stress) is to outsource as many non-revenue-generating activities as you can while hanging on to the core revenue-generating activities in your business that you do well.
Getting the Work Done Efficiently:
OK, we’ve covered a lot of “big picture” approaches to de-stressing your life and your business. The more of these 16 approaches that you make habits in your life, the less stressed you’ll be.
That being said, you can take your de-stress campaign to the next level by becoming a better time manager. To that end, here are six time management strategies that can fine-tune your work days so you get more done (which means you can exhale and relax sooner).
17. Get and use a calendar for larger events like meetings and deadlines. If you’ve been more of a “fly by the seat of your pants” kind of businessperson to this point, jotting upcoming events down randomly here or there and relying on memory for the rest, it’s time to stop. Trying to keep too much information in your mind is stressful in itself and takes up mental “bandwidth” you could be using for thinking about other things.
One of the simplest ways to start getting organized so you can get more done is to get a good calendar and get into the habit of scheduling much of your work in your calendar (and, by the way, I actually use two calendars—one paper and one electronic—because I can easily see the month ahead on my paper calendar without going through a bunch of clicks on my computer and because my electronic calendar gives me warnings of upcoming events if I happen to forget something).
Another very important habit to get into involving your calendar is to schedule some of the important tasks of your day in order to set aside time for them. I use basically a two-part system. I have my regular to-do list, but anything that I want to preserve time for—an hour for out-bound marketing work, for example—I go ahead and add into my calendar. That tells me that I must do that work at that time (just like a meeting) and that I need to do the rest of my to-do list work around that block of time.
When you create such a system using your calendar, it organizes and prioritizes your activities during the day and across the longer-term. And when you have your activities organized and prioritized, it reduces your stress.
18. Use a to-do list and prioritize the items on it. I already mentioned my to-do list, above, but I’ll say just a few more words about it here. I take a little time at the end of the day (5 p.m. for me) to make my to-do list for the next day. This does two things for me: (1) since I know what I got done today and what I didn’t get done, I can make tomorrow’s plan to pick up right where I left off, and (2) by doing this at the end of the day instead of doing it at the beginning of the day tomorrow, I don’t waste any of that precious early morning time (my best work time) making the schedule for the day.
The other aspect of a good to-do list is prioritizing your tasks. I set my most important big task up to be the task I start the day with (more on this in item #20, below). I plan to do everything possible to stick to that task until it’s done (see item #21, below). This way, when that big task is done, the rest of the day is all “downhill.” Talk about a stress reliever!
So, at the end of the day, make tomorrow’s to-do list. First look at your calendar to see the big chunks of time you have blocked off for meetings, calls, and non-negotiable tasks. Then schedule your to-do list around those, starting with you biggest remaining to-do item first.
19. Under-plan your days (by a little) so you feel you’ve accomplished everything—have an “overflow” task for the extra time that doesn’t get filled. This is more of a “feel good” de-stress technique than it is a time management strategy. Here’s how it works. When you make your to-do list for the next day, include the scheduled items from your calendar, then add in your other to-do items—but make your list a little shorter than you think you should be able to get done.
The reason is two-fold: (1) many people (I’m definitely guilty of this) think they can get more done in a day than they actually can. So, if you slightly under-plan your day, you’ll often end up “just right” at the end of the day. (2) And on the days when you do get everything on your list done, you feel amazing. “I got my whole list done!”
Now, here’s one more little trick: always have an aspirational “overflow” task on your list (maybe you separate it out from the rest of the list by a box or something) that you turn to when you’ve knocked out the rest of your list. Make this something work related (so you don’t feel like you’re “cheating” on your work day) but also a little fun or outside the box (like browsing competitor websites to see what they’re up to or reading a cool, new business book). You’ll feel great because you got your whole to-do list done—plus some extra fun stuff!
20. Eat that frog! This is a Brian Tracy time management technique that I’ve written about before. When I talked about starting your day with your biggest, most important task in item #18, above, that was “eat that frog.” Tracy talks about your biggest, hairiest challenge of the day as being a “frog.” This comes from an old saying that “if the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a live frog, everything else you do that day will be easy in comparison.” Yeah, I know. Gross.
Anyway, the idea is to get into the habit of tackling your biggest challenge each day right off the bat. Doing so makes you into someone who gets things done—and, by the way, it makes you feel amazing and de-stresses you.
21. Single handling balanced by the Pomodoro technique. I’m lumping together two of the best time management techniques in this one item. I’ve written about both the single handling strategy and the Pomodoro technique before, so you can check out those posts if you want to dig more deeply.
Basically, the single handling technique just means that, once you start on a task, if at all possible, finish it before you move on to the next task. Don’t flip-flop from task to task. The reason this is so important from a time-management viewpoint is that, every time we switch tasks (multi-task), we lose precious time and momentum. It’s much more productive to start something and keep at it till you’re done—then go on to the next task.
That being said, sometimes grinding away at the same task can get tedious (which is the main reason people are tempted to multi-task). So, it works well to pair the single handling technique with the Pomodoro technique, where you work in 25 minute stretches (pomodoros) with short breaks in between. The pomodoros break the single focus up just enough so you don’t get bored with the task, and the breaks are short, so you can get right back into the flow of the task without losing your train of thought. It’s a great balance. Plus, you get enough small breaks across your day that you never start getting all stressed out because you’ve been grinding away at the same task for hours straight.
22. On big projects, celebrate in stages. This one, like item #19, above, isn’t really a time management strategy, it’s more of a “feel good” emotional management technique. When you have a really big project, something that’s going to take a lot of work over days or even weeks, break the project down into pieces and schedule yourself a little celebration every time you knock out one of those pieces.
Sometimes projects are so big that you work on them and work on them and it feels like you’re never going to reach the end. When that happens, the stress can build up and really get to you. But if you break things up into stages and plan a little celebration (go out and buy one of those big cupcakes you crave, go see a movie, take a long nature hike, whatever) at the end of each stage, you not only don’t allow stress to build up, but you actually look forward to each of these mini-celebrations with excitement.
Organize Your Time and Balance Your Life with Routines:
OK, I’ve shared with you all kinds of ideas for de-stressing your life and work. We’ve looked at 11 big picture ways to reduce stress in your personal life. I added five more big picture strategies that apply to your work. And finally, I threw in six more strategies for managing your time and mood more effectively and efficiently during your work days.
That adds up to 22 amazing de-stress strategies you can start employing right away to improve your life.
But I saved one more for the end because this one ties everything else together:
23. Create routines and schedule for optimal work-life balance. Routines are magical. They take a set of steps and, with repetition, create a habit. And once you’ve turned a set of steps into a routine that has become a habit, you hardly have to think about it anymore. You just do it.
So here’s what you need to do: go through the 22 de-stress strategies above, choose which ones you’d like to make a part of your life, and then create routines to start locking them in as habits.
For example, let’s say that you want to start getting more (and more regular) sleep, you want to build in some mindfulness time into your schedule, and you want to start doing yoga. My suggestion would be to plan on getting up a half hour earlier than you’ve been used to. Subtract that half hour (or more, if you haven’t been getting eight solid hours of sleep per night) at night-time (meaning, go to bed earlier to make up for getting up earlier).
Now, use the new time you’ve carved out by going to bed earlier to do 15 minutes of mindfulness and 15 minutes of yoga (for starters) first thing in the morning. Do this every day for three or four weeks and you’ll form a new habit. Soon, if you were to have to skip any part of this routine for whatever reason, you would really miss it. That’s when you know the routine has become habitual.
You can do something along these lines with any set of the de-stress strategies found in this post. Combine them in ways that make sense for you and then repeat, repeat, repeat until they’ve become habits. Make sure that you examine both your personal life and your work life as you plan and create your rituals, and you will soon be living a less stressful, more productive life.
Which of these strategies do you plan to incorporate into your routines? Or are there other de-stress strategies you use that work really well for you? Leave me a comment below and let me know. I’d love to hear from you!
