Stress and Time Management

Time Management and Stress

Stress that is related to work are often brought about by lack of proper time management skills. With too much activity, one never have enough time to attend to work responsibilities within the alloted time, thus resulting to a stressful working environment. This applies on either small or complex projects, therefore careful planning of your schedule is crucial. 

Therefore, for individuals who had to constantly hold projects and manage their schedules are ones often subjected to a lot of stress. Plus, there are several factors involved in the planning method that are uncontrolled or cannot be prevented. All these add up to the level of stress that one had to go through. Therefore, stress management and time management are typically addressed side by side one another due to their interrelation with one another. 

Avoiding Time Wasters

When you talk about stress concerning proper time management of your activities, it is usually about your aim to increase productivity, whether at the office or school. Although stress is often a good stimulus to have in order to drive you towards achieving more, you need to also look at managing your time properly for higher productivity.

Below are some factors you need to avoid if you want to make the most out of your time and reduce stress at the same time:

• As with anything, there will always be a source of interruption. Learn how to deal with those interruptions effectively to save you time and you can get back to doing what you had to.

• Make sure to carefully plan out what you need to do and how you do it. This will make it more convenient for you later on when you have to execute your plans.

• If you are working with other people on a project, having proper delegation skills is crucial. This involves your ability to share the workload to people. But more than just sharing workload, it also involves your ability to determine which people are best suited to perform specific tasks for higher efficiency.

Symptoms of Poor Time Management and Stressful Life 

Effective time management can definitely do so much to change a stressful life and also boost your level of productivity. To get started on an efficient time management technique, one must find a strategy that he or she can use then adapt for a few days until he or she has become accustomed to it. Eventually, you will find it second nature once you got used to your new schedule. 

But the more important step towards making that change is recognizing whether you have poor time management skills that can lead to a stressful life. Here are tell-tale signs that you need to revise your time management methods:

• When you easily become irritable in the middle of doing your task.

• When you constantly end up feeling over-fatigued.

• When you have trouble concentrating on what you need to do. 

• Inability to track your activities and keep in tab.

• Inability to sleep well at night due to anxiety or unexplained worries.

Improving Time Management and Productivity

Proper management of your time often directly translates to increased productivity. Therefore, this should be one of your priorities if you want to reduce the level of stress you have to deal with on an everyday basis. Try out the strategies below and see if it fits you.

• Plan your daily activities. When you list down the set of activities you had to do for a given day, rank them according to the most important ones to avoid rushing your work.

• Never agree to doing other works when you have already scheduled other important activities prior to that.

• Practice the ability to delegate tasks properly so you would not have to do the major chunk of work.

• In between your tasks, take time to evaluate whether you are spending your time efficiently. If not, then switch to another more effective plan...and quickly!

• If possible, avoid any form of distraction.

• Give yourself a break. This will reduce stress and increase your productivity.