Given the crazy, hectic lives most of us now lead, we all need some strategies to make life more enjoyable and less stressful.
Here’s some ideas to keep you on track:
1. Write a to list and prioritise
With so many tasks to do in our everyday lives, it’s easy to become overwhelmed.
A great way to manage this ever expanding list is to write it down and prioritise from 1 to 4 – where one is very urgent and very important and 4 is non-urgent and not important.
If you’re having difficulty trying to pigeonhole a particular task or everything seems very important and very urgent, then ask yourself, ” If I only had one day to achieve everything, what would really need to be done first?” Then put those top priorities on your level 1 list.
2.Identify the noise
Quite often we get easily distracted by things that seem important in our lives but can easily be downgraded to remove stress and anxiety.
This includes constantly checking e-mails, updating our social media status or other trivial tasks that consume a lot of our time but make little difference to our quality of life.
Try turning off the computer, phone or iPad for a while. Use your extra time to relax by reading a book or listening to music.
Alternatively, if you’re at work, try to resist the temptation to hit the send and receive button on your e-mails. Multitasking has been scientifically proven to be less productive so concentrate on the task at hand instead and extra minutes will magically appear in your day.
3.Use the 80/20 rule
The universal concept that 80% of what you achieve comes from only 20% of what you are doing seems to hold well for both work and personal tasks.
Basically that means most of us spend 80% of our time on stuff that really doesn’t matter.
Relating it back to our 1 – 4 task list, we spend most of our time on tasks we think are of low importance but urgent.
4. Take time out
We’ve become working machines.
We rarely down tools during the day, work through our lunch break or, even worse, eat our lunch in front of our computers.
It appears as if we’re being more productive, but we’re not. Taking a break every hour – whether it’s getting up to grab a glass of water from the kitchen or going for a lunchtime walk – gives our brains an opportunity to relax and recharge.
In the long-term, high-volume working is far less productive. We become mentally fatigued, lose concentration and become more easily distracted. There’s even even a growing body of evidence that suggests that working in excess of 8 to 10 hours per day causes our level of coherence, concentration and focus to deteriorate proportionately for each additional hour we spend at work. Overwork impairs our behaviour. The resulting mental fatigue can be likened to the effects of alcohol consumption.
5. Work to live not live to work
No matter how fantastic your job may be, never forget it only represents one part of your life.
Humans are social beings. We need to regularly interact in a social environment and develop nurturing relationships with our friends and family.
Set aside time to catch up with friends and family every week. You rarely hear of people on their deathbed expressing regret at not having spent more time at work.
On the contrary, when we reflect on our quality of life we reflect on our relationships and how they enrich us. We spend less time reflecting on how great we feel about a hard-earned promotion for extra income or a new job title.
Written by Andrew Talati
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