Dealing With Stress: The Stop, Look and Listen Method

Call up of your concluding hell chore calendar week. What exactly constitutes a "HTW"? Call up of those weeks when you have to deliver that huge, vital projection. You know, while too dealing with a computer crash, 40 urgent emails per 24-hour interval and your boss giving you a ton of 'I want this by tomorrow' tasks. That's "HTW".

You probably fear these weeks, and barely think how you lot dealt with them after they are over. I want to share with you my method to dealing with them systematically.

To deal with "HTW" I utilize a method I call Stop, wait & listen. It is very elementary, and y'all can apply information technology to every stressful situation.

Stop

Shut your door, and put up a huge paper sign with "Exercise not disturb" on it. You can add the drawing of a skull, or the international signs for danger or death. Be creative, simply brand sure no 1 volition open your door until yous remove the sign unless the building is on fire or Godzilla is destroying the city.

If y'all accept office mates, make clear to them you lot will be unavailable for a while. You can put your earphones in, (I personally love headphones that cancel ambient noise. For example, I apply a pair of in-ear Sennheiser). Go on a baseball game bat or some other menacing piece of function supplies just in case someone wants to ask yous something. If you work in an open office, attempt wearing something that indicates 'don't disturb'. My girlfriend, for example, wears a hat when she tin't be interrupted, equally a cue to her office mates.

Disconnect your office phone and your jail cell phone. Don't worry, this volition only accept half an hour or then, the likelihood of something really disquisitional happening are much like 0. Of course, Murphy's law can make up one's mind to trick you and yous lose an important call. Don't worry, they'll phone call once more. Close your email, Twitter, chat and whatever things connect y'all to the outside world.

Give your mind at least 5 minutes of relaxation. No stressful calls, no deliveries, nada. Just relax for a while and retrieve virtually nothing. Y'all need it. You know you demand it, too. Merely practice it, now is the moment. Remember almost your favourite relaxing place, remember of yous as a stone: unmovable past external forces.

Look

Write downward all your outstanding tasks. All that stuff that y'all demand to get done this week, no thing who you have to kidnap or how many nights without sleeping you demand to endure. Write downward your appointments (dinner with X, kids game, vet visit) and usual time consuming commitments (prepare company newsletter, have the canis familiaris out).

Take a await at this list, and and so remove at least xx% of the tasks. Either delegate them, postpone them, or just remove them.

At present, see if you tin get rid of another twenty% of that same list.

Delegate as many every bit you can, fifty-fifty if yous need to enquire for some favour from your coworkers (please detect me the numbers for this report and side by side Monday I'll accept intendance of the server bug) or your family (This week I tin't accept the canis familiaris out, but I'll compensate next week past too preparing dinner).

Listen

Now, although it sounds a little new-age, listen to your heart and add tasks you lot demand to do. Add the stuff y'all pospone in your life for the sake of your work.

The commencement few times you follow this procedure, in the "Look" step you are likely to remove all life stuff just to go out work stuff. You retrieve almost your large project and put it confronting watching the soccer lucifer with your father, and put off calling your dad until next week.

Work and life should be balanced. You need to avoid reaching the point that your work starts to eat into your personal time, and vice versa. If your boss is overworking you, talk to him. If the large project is alien with the tasks he asks you to go done from i day to the other, enquire him to help yous prioritize.

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With this sense of control most of your stress will merely fade away, because the oppressing feeling of tasks hanging over our heads without control is why we get overwhelmed. This method gives you control, and with control comes a sense of at-home and diminished stress.

You can arrive control by starting to manage your tasks instead of your time. When you are overwhelmed fourth dimension direction is usually pointless: there is a sure number of tasks that need to be done before long, and the only think you demand is a piece of paper to take all them written down, but you won't need whatsoever fancy timeboxing or split time strategy.

Pretend you lot are a post function worker. Every bit tasks are assigned to you, render them to the sender, consul to the appropriate person (or bribe/ask for a favour/task exchange) or in extreme cases, put in your list of do it.

This week, try to proceeds some control over your stress. By next week, I'm certain things volition be unlike…in a proficient style.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/dealing-with-stress-the-stop-look-and-listen-method.html

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