Introduction

How much of your stress is due to time – or lack thereof? Here’s a brief exercise to try which can give you an idea of whether or not time management might be an issue for you. First, on a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle. On the left-hand side, list at least five things that are the most important to you. Start with the most important, and continue the list in order. List people, things, ideals, activities – whatever it is that is very important to you and to your personal happiness. For example, a list might look like this:

• Family
• Health
• Integrity
• Friends
• Work
• Church
• Pets
• Reading

Now on the right-hand side, list all the things that you spend your time on, starting with what you spend most of your time on and continuing on down to what you spend the least time on. This list might look like this:

• Work
• Family
• Sleeping
• Errands
• Housework
• Helping kids with homework
• Friends
• Church

You’ve probably figured out the point of the exercise by now. Most of us don’t have the luxury of spending the majority of our time on the things that are most important to us. For every item that we are not spending what we would consider to be enough time on, we will experience some form of stress over that fact. When things are very important to us and we are not able to dedicate any time to those things at all, that is very stressful as well.

However, successful time management will help you to become more effective in completing the tasks that you have to complete so that there is more time available for you to spend on the things that are important to you. This isn’t necessarily always an easy feat; in some cases, it would take significant changes for you to spend time on the things that are important to you.

Successful time management will help you to become more effective in completing the tasks that you have to complete so there is more time available for you to spend on the things that are important to you.

For example, if you currently don’t have children but want them very much, deciding to have a child is a significant, life-altering decision that demands that you restructure your time accordingly. But at the same time, many things that we want to do can be accommodated if we simply learn to use our time more wisely by applying some effective time management techniques. Doing so will make us happier and more balanced so that we are less susceptible to stressors and so that we have healthy means of dealing with stress at our disposal.

Time management also helps you have a greater sense of control over your life – both at work and at home. When you feel as if you are in control of your time, you feel empowered and confident. Then when something arises that you were not prepared for, you’re more likely to be able to deal with it productively rather than getting stopped by it.

Time management helps you have a greater sense of control over your life – both at work and at home.

Creating a Schedule

If you are someone who feels that schedules are restrictive, then you haven’t yet learned the power that they can provide. We live in a world where there is always something jockeying for our attention and our time. For you to be able to fit in the things that are important to you, a schedule is an important tool.

It allows you to block out segments of time and assign them to a specific activity. At work, a schedule offers additional benefits because it allows you to:

• Ensure you’ve allotted time for all of your necessary tasks and functions
• Cut off unproductive interruptions by referring to it
• Limit meetings to their scheduled time rather than letting them go on until people feel like leaving
• Demonstrate that your plate is full if the boss inquires whether you have time to take on additional work
• Allot time for yourself for breaks

If you are someone who feels that schedules are restrictive, then you haven’t yet learned the power they can provide

At home, a schedule can help you prevent any wasted time in exchange for making time for the things that you like to do. For example, how many times have you sat down in front of the television intending to just watch it while you folded laundry or ate dinner, only to find that you’re still sitting there several hours later? If you are intentional with your time scheduling, you can instead have a purpose for your time – a purpose that is important to you.

If you are intentional with your time scheduling, you can have a purpose for your time – a purpose that is important to you.

Look back at your list of things that are important to you. Let’s imagine you had on your list that it’s important to you to write a novel. Why not schedule writing time into your week? Instead of watching that television program you don’t really care about or reading that magazine that you just happen to have sitting around, you can schedule one hour or more that you are committing that you will dedicate to your novel writing.

Once you’ve scheduled in time for the things that are important to you, you need to treat those appointments with or for yourself as if they are just as important as your work meetings or doctor appointments. It can take practice to train yourself to do this – and perhaps to train your family or friends to accept this new habit. But when you are making time for what is important to you, you will be happier overall. You will then be a better spouse, parent, employee, and friend. And you will be better able to handle stressors when you are happier as well.

When you are making time for what is important to you, you will be happier overall. You will then be a better spouse, parent, employee and friend.

Managing Tasks at Work

Scheduling activities will also help you with your work, of course, particularly if there are certain items that you never seem to find the time to do or items that you seem to put off doing time and again. But there are other tools that you can use to help decrease your stress level at work while managing your time.

The Difference between Urgent and Important

We’ve all had it happen. We’re having a good day, getting our work done, when someone calls or rushes into the office in a hurry. They have a fire on their hands and they want your help in putting it out. You feel the need to drop what you’re doing and dedicate your time to helping them with the latest crisis. You have to be a team player, right? And if the person asking for help is your boss, do you really have a choice?

Well, remember, we defined stress as a factor of how we react to a situation rather than the situation itself. So how do you normally react to this scenario? What other possible responses could you have?

One solution is to determine the level of importance of the situation – not just the level of urgency. This idea can be explained by the chart in Figure 2. You’ll see that the chart is divided into four quadrants based on whether or not it is important and whether or not it is urgent.

Looking at the figure above, in which quadrant would we ideally spend the majority of our workdays?

In order to have the greatest job satisfaction and the least amount of stress, we would spend the majority of our time in Quadrant III. In this quadrant, we are not harried by urgent, pressing matters, but we are working on things that are important to the organization. We are able to make progress and move forward, feeling at the end of the day that we have accomplished a great deal.

That’s the ideal world. But where do we spend the most of our time in the real world? If you are constantly responding to the crises of others – even when they don’t actually have an impact on your own work or work product, then you are in Quadrant II. Everything feels urgent, but it’s not actually important. If you spend your day doing busy work, then you are focused in Quadrant IV, where things are not urgent and are not important. This can be a frustrating experience because you may not be able to feel as if you have contributed something of value at the end of the day. These could be distractions as well, such as talking to colleagues, surfing the internet, or other time wasters.

Quadrant I situations could provoke a high stress response because whatever is at stake is actually very important to our own job or work product and it happens to be urgent as well.

All of us are going to spend time in Quadrant I eventually. These are the situations that could provoke a high stress response because whatever is at stake is actually very important to our own job or work product, and it happens to be urgent as well. What you want to learn to do is to distinguish these true emergency situations from situations that seem urgent but just aren’t that important. Before you drop everything next time, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this truly important or just urgent to the person requesting my help?
• What will the consequences be if I don’t handle this immediately?
• Do I actually have important and urgent things that should be done instead?
• Is there someone else that can handle this situation?

If you determine that the request for your action is actually not both urgent and important, then chances are there is someone better suited to handle the request. If you are receiving the request from your supervisor, you can ask her what she would rather that you focus on – the item that is both urgent and important, or the item that she has brought to you. Reminding her that you have other important work to do and that it will have to wait if you respond to her urgent request, it might have her reassign the request – or it might not. But at least you know that you are applying your efforts to exactly the activity that she wants you to handle at that time, reducing the need for you to feel stressed out about your work load.

Reminding a supervisor that you have other important work to do – even if it’s not urgent – might have her reassign the assignment to someone else.

Prioritize Tasks

When you have a number of tasks that need to be completed, one way of categorizing them is to determine whether they are urgent or important or both. Another way is to prioritize the tasks you need to get done based on what you believe to be the most important first and then work your way down to the least important. Of course, sometimes there are other factors to consider. For example, you might need to evaluate:

• Budget issues – if you don’t have the needed funds it may be a moot point
• Time it will take to complete it
• Availability of others who need to have input
• Availability of other resources (information, personnel, equipment, etc.) you need to get the job done

If you have a task that you consider to be unpleasant, it is often easier to get that task out of the way first.

Otherwise you can spend a great deal of time procrastinating and not getting any work done. Instead, get these tasks done early in the day so you can put them behind you and get on with the next tasks.

Once you have determined the priority of each item, complete the highest priority items first. If you find that you cannot finish everything on your task list, carry the items over to the next day’s list, evaluating the entire new list as a whole before determining what to do next. The oldest task on your list isn’t necessarily going to be a priority – but it might become one as time goes on and a deadline draws near.

You can also use prioritizing when you are faced with a complex project that seems overwhelming. You can break a large project into small steps so that you understand what needs to be done first, what might be dependent on another task, and which steps you can afford to put off in favor of higher priority items.

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Many of us are guilty of trying to do everything on our own. It may be because we feel that it would be faster just to do it ourselves than to try to explain how to do it to someone else. Or maybe we are concerned that no one else will do as good a job as we would. However, none of us has endless time and endless energy. Trying to control everything on our own is a sure way to increase our own stress level.

If we can delegate tasks to other people, why not do it?

There are a number of benefits to you, to the person that you delegate your tasks to, and to the organization as a whole when you learn how to properly delegate. The benefits for you include:

• Reduced stress
• Additional time to dedicate to tasks that you truly need to work on yourself
• Practicing the skill of effective delegation

Benefits for the other person include:

• The opportunity to learn something new
• The chance to feel useful and part of the team
• The chance to show you what they can do and earn accolades for that achievement

And finally, benefits for the organization include:

• Having more than one person who knows how to perform the given task
• Adding a new perspective to a situation
• Having employees that are less stressed due to sharing their work duties