Stress & Time Management

"You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it." - Charles Buxton

At Wisconsin Athletic Club we have a continuing education program called WAC University that offers employees a wide range of courses from "Language for Leaders" to "Pool Maintenance 101" to "Posture Analysis". At the North Shore club we rolled out our own club specific Personal Development WAC-U courses for 2012. This year we'll be conducting 10 courses spread out over 9 months. Part of my role as Service Director is to work with our Training & Development Coordinator on these courses. Yesterday was our first course of the year, "Finding Balance: Stress & Time Management".

Here are some great ideas that were shared by our T&D Coordinator as well as the attendees:

Stress Management 

• It is the do-more-better-faster approach to living that leads to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual imbalance.
• Write down some physical (ie get warm or sweat?), mental (ie get "scatter brained" or draw a blank?), and behavioral symptoms (ie get cranky or hurried?) you feel when stressed? Now, recognize when these occur and take necessary steps to decrease stress.
• Write down activities that help you to renew and decrease stress. Having trouble finding time to do these things? Schedule them in as can't miss appointments in your daily/weekly schedule. 
• The Four Dimensions of Renewal (from "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey): 
• Physical - exercising regularly, proper amount of sleep, eating the right foods
• Mental - learning new things, reading, keeping a journal, puzzles, hobbies, uplifting music
• Spiritual - observe nature, practice religious worship, create a personal mission statement, find things that uplift and inspire
• Social/Emotional - cultivate relationships with family and friends, build new friendships, listen to others, engage in creative work
• The top tool we have to combat stress - BREATHING. Practice "belly breathing". Your stomach should inflate as you inhale through your nose for 3-4 seconds and then deflate as you exhale through your mouth for 3-4 seconds. 
• Other ways to decrease stress: smiles & laugh, remember it's OK to make mistakes, don't say "yes" to everything...remember, when you say "yes" to something you say "no" to another thing, learn great time management skills

                            "It's not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it." - Hans Seyle 

Time Management 

• Prioritize. List out your activities. The top 20% of those activities will give you 80% of your results. 
• Avoid procrastination & distractions. 
• Break big projects into smaller, manageable chunks. 
• Eat the frog first - do the biggest, nastiest thing first...the rest will seem easy
• Write things down - don't carry it in your head
• Use "waiting time" efficiently. Those small chunks of time (10-30 minutes) when you are in between meetings or appointments can add up to big productivity. 
• Identify your peak hours and reserve those for the most challenging tasks.
• Only handle each email or piece of paper once. Take care of it, file it, or throw it away. 
• Schedule appointments with yourself to organize and relax.
• Use a daily calendar to organize your time - my personal favorite is Google calendar because I can sync my computer calendar with my phone calendar
• Plan ahead. Plan your next day the night before, your next week the weekend before, your next month the last few days of the current month. 

Don't try and use all of these tips; you'll get overwhelmed and give up on it altogether. Take a couple tips and start doing them immediately. Then, after you've established those into your everyday life, take a couple more and implement them immediately. Over time, you'll grow to be much better at managing your time and your stress.