stress, time management and the recession

8/14/2019 Stress, Time Management and the Recession

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stress-time-management-and-the-recession 1/6

11 | P a g e 1

[August 2009]

It’s Not What We Think It Is | Francis Wade | 2time-sys.com

2TIME-

SYS.COM STRESS, TIME MANAGEMENT AND THE RECESSION

http://2time-sys.com/






2 | P a g e

Now, with the full-blown onset of the global recession, housing crisis, and rising

unemployment, professionals are stressed by an ever-present feeling of overwhelm.

What happened? Is it the changing economy that’ s made us feel as if we have more

things to do than ever before? Have our lives changed that much in the past few

months?

Apparently so, because the latest research shows that stressful feelings are on the

rise—due, in part, to a lack of time to do all the things that need to be done.

According to one study, a third of all Americans wish they had more time.

But what, exactly, has really changed?

There’ s been no reduction in the number of hours in the day. In other words, it

can’t be an issue of time, which is the solution that many think of first. Also,

people have neither doubled their workloads nor increased their number of children,

hobbies, or pastimes.

Here’s one thing that IS different: a couple of seemingly innocuous habits that

people used to use to manage their day-to-day affairs are no longer working for us

when they are used together.

Habit #1: ―Deciding What’ s Important‖ – When something new to do that’ s

new enters our awareness, we briefly consider whether or not it ’ s important

enough to act on. The stimulus might be a phone call, something we read in

a book, or a solution to a problem that we’ ve been mulling over. For

example, based on the amount of milk we have in the refrigerator, we may

decide to remedy the situation.

Habit #2: ―Making Ourselves a Mental Promise‖ – Once we have thought

over the decision, and decided that the item is important, we make a



3 | P a g e

promise to remember to take action. For example, we might tell ourselves,

―Remember to pick up the milk on the way home from work.‖

These habits, which almost everyone uses, work well under normal conditions, and

they’re part and parcel of the process of managing the ―time demands‖ in our lives.

However, the recession has put many of us in a position where we are creating

problems for ourselves by over-using Habit #2 habits above.

When our concerns multiply, we find ourselves having to use Habit #1 more and

more frequently. By doing so, we lead ourselves to add to the number of items

that we are concerned about—such as the state of the economy, the safety of our jobs, and the stability of our financial institutions. There’ s a new urgency in the air

that’ s undeniable, and all of a sudden, items that we ignored on the news catch our

attention and prey on our minds. We have learned to worry about things like sub-

prime mortgages, jobless recoveries and bank bail-outs that simply didn’ t exist until

about a year ago.

Our list of ―important stuff to think about‖ has simply exploded, a sign that Habit

#1 has multiplied.

Most of us don’ t stop there – we are also making more and more mental promises

to ourselves to do stuff later, and this over-use of Habit #2 only increases the

sense of being burdened.

We are trying to remember more and more stuff, and increasingly feelingly

burdened by the volume of items our minds are trying to manage. However, as we

try to remember more, it also follows that the number of items that we forget will

also increase proportionately.

We try harder to compensate for our tendency to forget so many items by blaming

ourselves, the kids, our jobs, the economy—anything that comes to mind. This



4 | P a g e

inner turmoil only adds to the stress we experience, and adds to a feeling of being

overwhelmed by how much we think we have to do, and how many things we fail to

do.

We tell ourselves that we need to get more time. Others say that we need to

manage our time better.

What’ s unusual about these two statements is that they are provably false. There’ s

no way to increase the amount of time allotted to each person each day, and

there’ s no way to manage time—not in the way that you can manage your weight,

diet, or money.

The fact is that these aren’ t real solutions, but we repeat them over and over. It

doesn’ t mean that we insane, but it does show us that we make things worse for

ourselves by the way we respond to what our mind is doing in Habit#1.

We’ d do better if we focused our efforts on what we can control or manage—our

daily habits that end up having an impact on how we use our time. In this way,

Habit #2 can be transformed into something useful by making a simple change.

Instead of making mental promises to ourselves, we can adopt new practices that

give us a boost in peace of mind, which is a must in these recessionary times.

Now, more than ever, we ALL need time management systems that cover the

habits that are fundamental. (Luckily for our recession-challenged pockets, buying

a US$500 PDA is not one of the fundamentals.)

Recent research has shown that complete, but basic, time management systems

must cover the following 7 essential skills as they apply to ―time demands‖ : the

stuff we do every day.

The 7 Essential Skills



5 | P a g e

1. Capturing – When we decide we need to do something, we create ―time

demands‖ which we often store temporarily in locations such as email

inboxes and Post-it notes. This allows us to retrieve them later. Some

methods of Capturing are better than others. For example, using memory (as

in Habit #2) is a poor choice. A steno pad is a better choice.

2. Emptying – At a convenient later time, we remove time demands from the

places of capture and, at the same time, decide about the next step for each

item. For example, we process the Post-it notes sticking to our computer

screens by acting on them and throwing them away. When we ―Empty,‖ we

make a decision to engage one of the 5 remaining skills.

3. Tossing – We entirely discard some items, taking no action whatsoever.

4. Acting Now – We immediately act on some items.

5. Storing – We permanently store items with critical information—such as a

new phone number or password—in a safe place.

6. Scheduling – We enter items into a calendar that require time in the future

to execute.

7. Listing – We collect items on a list that that are similar, so we can use them

at a later time.

These fundamental habits can be used during a recession to reduce the stress that

we are feeling as they don’ t use valuable brain space at all – in fact, they are easy

to do once they are mastered.

The problem that we have is that we aren’ t taught the seven fundamental skills in

this important area. During this recession, we find ourselves deciding to do more



6 | P a g e

and more (a la Habit #1,) but we suffer when we try to make and remember more

and more mental promises (a la Habit #2.)

The recession wreaks havoc on our peace of mind, but the way out is not to take a

class in remembering more stuff.

Instead, we should take it as a sign that our personal habits need to be re-tweaked,

and that the seven fundamentals need to be practiced.

The stress that we’ re feeling might be disconcerting, but it’ s showing us where we

need to be stronger by dropping habits that aren’ t suitable for recessionary times.

Francis Wade is the author of the2Time blog, which is focused on

helping its readers develop effectivetime management systems of their

own.

http://2time-sys.com





stress, time management and the recession

Documents