If you have good self-management, you also have less stress! The better you organize yourself and the more precisely you plan in advance, the more relaxed you get through the day. In order to improve your self-management, there are a few points that you need to consider. Exactly these I want to bring you closer in this article.
Set yourself limits
Do you have time budgets? Do you know how much time you spend daily/weekly?
- Work want?
- with your Family you want to spend?
- with Friends you want to spend?
- for yourself you want to use?
- for Further education and training ...you're going to raise?
Do you know these numbers? If not, then you should think about it very quickly.
"Work expands to the extent that time is available to get it done!"
says Parkinson's Law. And that is exactly how it is. If you don't determine in advance how much time you actually want to work, then it will be very difficult to find time for yourself or for other things that are important to you in life. And that is exactly what causes a lot of stress.
So in the first step you have to be very clear about how much of your time you want to put into which things.
Learn to say no
Once you have set your time budgets, comes the second important step, the "Learn to say no". If you always say YES to everything, then in the end you yourself will fall by the wayside. People who say YES to everything have a tremendous amount of stress because they don't have time at the end of the day for those things that are important to them.
Saying NO is not as hard as you think. All you need is the right strategy and the right Mindset. What helps you in any case again very much are your time budgets and the simple question: "What do you want to do?If I say yes now, can I do it within my time budget?"If the answer is YES, you can accept, but if the answer is NO, then you should definitely cancel.
Limit open ends
Another factor that causes an enormous amount of stress are open ends, that is, everything that is not yet finished. These can be open projects, tasks and the like. If you open too many construction sites, you will only get jump back and forth between these projectsbut in the end do not bring anything forward. Of course, this is actively perceived and the next stress is added. A vicious circle!
Therefore, you should definitely pay attention to it, not too many projects in parallel open. Finish one project before you start another. This will reduce stress and give your productivity a massive boost.
The following can also be helpful Time management methods be:
Increase focus and concentration
Now you know your time budgets, you protect those time budgets by being able to say NO and you have limited the open projects. However, one last ingredient is missing to reduce stress and massively increase your output. This last ingredient is called focused working.
We live in a world full of distractions. Something on a technical device is constantly ringing, vibrating or lighting up. No matter whether it's your Smartphoneyour computer or your Apple Watch. And if there is no malfunction from a device, then a colleague, supervisor or customer may be standing in your office. Office and wants something from you.
As you can imagine, these are not optimal conditions to be able to work highly focused. Meanwhile, there are several studies that have taken on the topic of focus and concentration. All of them come to similar results. If you are working with high concentration and you are disturbed, no matter if it is by a technical device or a human being, it can take up to 20 minutes until you reach the same concentration level as before the disturbance.
If we put these 20 minutes in relation to 5 minutes, which is the time frame in which the average office worker is disturbed, you can imagine that you will never reach your full concentration level during the day. So what to do?
Focus times
The only thing that you can do Increase concentration is that you want Focus times take. These are times in which you completely isolate yourself from the outside world and thus from all disturbances. It doesn't have to be that long, one to two hours a day is a great thing. If you take care of the really important tasks during this time, you will see your productivity explode and your stress decrease hand in hand with it.
I can only urge you to take such focus times.
Conclusion
If you manage to integrate these things step by step into your everyday life, you will notice very quickly how Your stress decreases and your productivity increases. All you need is the courage to put it into practice, and the rest will take care of itself. And that's exactly where I wish you much success.
This article is a guest contribution from Thomas Mangold
I am a keynote speaker and author of several books for more effective time and self-management. I support you in having more time for yourself and for the really important things in your life. I also support entrepreneurs in increasing the effectiveness of their employees.
You can find further information on self-management.biz and self-management.rocks.
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