Stress Management

Stress management is one of the largest factors to good health and happy living. And one way to reduce stress is to manage your time effectively.

There are a finite number of hours in each day. Each task in your day takes away from these hours. And when the time needed to accomplish your tasks exceed the number of hours available the result is stress.

Work, meetings, deadlines, appointments, telephone calls, shopping, taking the dog out, etc. - these are all things most people have to deal with every day. Most of the time there are things on the waiting list like family, friends and even ourselves. Trying to fulfill all our obligations each day to work, family, friends and ourselves increases the stress in our lives and effects our health and attitude.

There are plenty of books and seminars that help us find the best options for managing our time and reducing stress. All these resources intend to offer the best solutions to reduce the stress of juggling busy lives.

All these people know that time is more important than money. Not having sufficient time in our lives for the things that are necessary and important to us increases stress and effects the quality of our lives and our happiness. And mismanaging the time we have can lead to serious health problems, both physically and mentally.

One method of stress relief is time management. The first step in learning to manage your time is to identify the things that rob you of time. Basically, they are divided into two groups:

• The external factors (unexpected phone calls, unplanned visits, insufficiently trained personnel, unscheduled meetings, family emergencies, etc.)
• The internal factors - related strictly to ourselves (unclear priorities and objectives, lack of a daily working plan, disorder, unorganized work or living space, inability to say no, inability to make a decision, etc.)

Maybe reading the above examples made you think of similar situations in your life.

Now, all you have to do is find a way to defeat and eliminate them so that you can be the master of your own time again. Here are three ideas to get you started:

• Write everything down. This is useful especially if you have a bad memory. Otherwise, you might forget that important meeting, to make an important phone call, to answer messages you promised you would answer. Remember to write down those great ideas and inspirations that occur to you in the most unexpected moments.
• Make a list of priorities. It takes very little time and you can even do it while you're having your morning coffee. Write down the things you want to do that day in their order of importance and urgency.
• Learn to say "No". One big mistake many of us make is that we put other people's problems ahead of ours. Often, by helping them, we put ourselves in a situation that gives rise to frustration and stress. We find ourselves unable to respect previous engagements.