Among the top reasons why people are chronically stressed is having too little time for everything that needs to be done in a day. In a previous blog post, we touched upon the reality of the overworked adult in America.

Overwork is often the result of poor time management because let’s face it: things can get out of hand very quickly if you don’t know how you’re actually spending your time.

Our newest blog series will cover the best practices in time management so you can start maximizing all available hours in your working day. What are the best ways to manage your time?

1. Discover Where Your Time Goes – The first step in effective time management is knowing how you are actually spending your time every single day.

In order to accomplish this, you have to start recording your activities from the moment you wake up until bedtime. Do this for at least 2 weeks so you can see the average trend for different activities.

Sometimes, people become more efficient with how they use their time when they are logging their activities. You must not be too self-conscious during the observation period so you can get a realistic tally of how you are spending your time on a regular day.

In addition to recording your activities and the average amount of time spent for each activity, I want you to rate each activity from 1-4, with 1 being “waste of my time” and 5 being “excellent use of my time”. 2’s and 3’s are “a little time consuming” and “good use of my time”, respectively.

You will soon see a detailed picture of your actual use of time as you continue journaling and recording your daily activities. The information that you will get from this exercise will help guide future time management efforts.

2. Start Transforming Your Activities – Poor time management is often the result of having too many unnecessary activities throughout the day. Some of these activities, such as watching TV, may not exactly be completely harmful if you can learn how to control how much time you devote to them.

However, if you are constantly missing deadlines and you’re extremely stressed about not having sufficient time for all the things that you want to do, then there’s definitely something wrong with your selection of activities.

Transforming your daily activities is actually quite simple. First, you need to write down all the things that you need additional time for.

Don’t hold back when making this list – write down anything that comes to mind.

>>> My first list actually looked something like this:

– Rediscover spirituality

– Learn how to meditate

– Read more

– Spend more time getting out into nature

My list may look silly to some of you… 

but it is a genuine list that I made a few years ago when I was becoming severely burned out by my work. I was successful in turning things around by identifying the activities that consumed too much time in my day.

Eventually, I was able to make time for all of the things in my initial list – and even more!

I can confidently say that you can replicate my results by simply being mindful of all your activities and by asking yourself if you really need to spend time on the activity at all.

Common distractions can easily be removed from your list of routines if you choose to be more mindful of where your time is actually going.

Sure, you may be spending 8 to 10 hours per day in the office. However, if you’re barely coping with the workload, it’s possible that you’re not making wise use of your available time.

3. Change How You Do Things –

If your days are filled with activities that are essential to your work or family life but you’re still falling behind, you need to change how you do things.

Changing your approach to accomplishing your obligations and responsibilities can help you reduce the time needed to accomplish each task, which will effectively give you more time for additional activities or even leisure.

Here’s a good example – how many times do you check your email every day? I’ve met someone who admitted that he checks his email every hour.

Now assuming that it takes about 10 minutes to open your email and scroll through messages, that’s already 60 minutes gone in a day after the sixth visit to the inbox.

This trend can be remedied by limiting the checking of emails to once or twice a day. Urgent emails may be answered but on an average day, a person shouldn’t be preoccupied with checking his email.  (See the next part soon)

Getting organized for the first time can be an extremely exciting (or frustrating) time because you’re faced with a gargantuan pile of tasks but you also foresee a most tantalizing reward: to finally be able to live and work in a space with little or no clutter.

Today, I am going to share with you some organizational tips straight from the experts, so you can begin hammering away on your own clutter issues at home or at work.

The Golden Rules of Getting Organized

1. Create a Detailed Clutter Map – This might sound depressing to some of you, but it’s the most important part of your blueprint for conquering clutter and finally ending the chronic stress caused by disorganization.

You have to create a detailed Clutter Map of the spaces that you want to organize and clean up so you will not become overwhelmed with all the things that you have to do.

Often, people just give up because they view all the clutter as this monolithic and immovable mass (like a mountain!)

While it is true that physical clutter can reach epic proportions, the only way that you can practicably tackle it is by performing a series of clean ups.

Getting organized is not an overnight endeavor. If you’ve seen TV shows that tackled extreme clutter, you may already have a clue as to how much work it actually takes to straighten out a cluttered space.

Even an army of a dozen men will require several days of continuous cleaning and clearing to straighten out two large rooms of an ordinary-sized house.

I am stating these facts not to discourage people from trying but to empower others to start as soon as possible if they want to see results quickly.

Now, it’s important that you set specific goals for yourself as you create a detailed Clutter Map. You need goals and milestones so have clear proof that you are progressing with your de-cluttering efforts.

2. Start Right Now – Starting right now sounds a bit crazy, but there is no better time to get organized than the present time.

As soon as you get up from your chair or bed, start clearing away at the clutter nearest you. If you don’t have a Clutter Map yet, that’s alright: you can make one after you spend a few minutes getting organized.

It doesn’t matter if you can only clear one table or cabinet at a time. The important thing is you’ve actually started something and you can immediately see the difference when you dip your toes into getting organized.

3. Get Serious About Clutter – In all my years of coaching people with stress-related problems, I’ve found that one of the most challenging hurdles is to start taking something new seriously.

I have met countless people who thought “stress management” was simply a fad or worse, a joke – as if millions of people weren’t suffering from toxic and chronic stress.

If you have a similar mindset about getting organized, let me be the first person to tell you that you’re going to have a hard time freeing yourself of clutter if you don’t take things seriously.

Surprisingly, the best attitude to motivate yourself to start de-cluttering your home or office is to get really angry at the disorganization of your living or working spaces.

If you start viewing clutter as the enemy or at the very least, an overstaying guest in your living space, you will begin to take clutter very seriously and you will no longer allow yourself to make more excuses not to clean up.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Dive Into Deep Clutter – Clearing clutter can become a frustrating and anxiety-causing enterprise when you begin seeing the extent of the disorganization that you have to tackle. I call this “fighting from the trenches”.

The effort needed to clear clutter and stay organized is literally a battle against present and future clutter. Here are some tips to stay strong even if you feel like you’re already sinking while cleaning up your living spaces:

• If you can’t think of a good use for something, choose any of these three: throw it away, sell it or donate it.
• People often make 2 piles when de-cluttering their home or office: a “keep” pile and a “throw away” pile. Check your “keep” pile to see if you can discard more stuff. Thin it out a few times to make sure you’re not hanging on to useless stuff.
• When you decide to throw away something, forget about it and move forward. If you keep reviewing your “throw away” pile you will only become emotionally and physically drained.
• Create a small support network so you can call someone if things get too intense or difficult.
• If you can’t throw away something because you might use it someday, put it in a box and write the date that is exactly three months from the day you placed the item in the box.
• If you didn’t even touch the item after 3 months, discard it!

We also learned that in order to seize control of clutter, we have to be willing to let go of our old beliefs and habits so we can make some real progress with getting organized.

How does chronic clutter and disorganization cause stress?

Below are some of the common reasons why chronic disorganization can also lead to chronic stress:

1. Stressed Mind – The more you see clutter, the more your mind reacts to it whether you like it or not.

You can ignore clutter as much as you want, but below your mind’s surface, your subconscious mind is working overtime to find solutions to the clutter. Unfortunately, without conscious guidance your subconscious cannot create concrete and practical solutions.

2. Time Consuming – A cluttered environment is hard to manage and navigate. You will have to spend double or triple the normal time just trying to find the things that you need. Often, people look for things when they are urgently needed so the stress increases even more.

3. Things Are Lost – There will be situations where you won’t be able to find the things you need because of all the clutter. So you will spend a lot of time searching for stuff buried under the clutter and at the end of the day, your efforts will yield nothing. This is the harsh reality of disorganization that we have to accept in order to motivate ourselves to finally get organized.

4. Reduced Living Space – Clutter can easily consume your living space to the point that you will only have a small nook left to move about.

If you don’t believe me, trying watching shows like “Hoarders” to see some extreme examples of how organization problems can conflate to the point where people are actually threatened with eviction by landlords and housing councils if they don’t clean up the messes in their homes.

5. Social Isolation – If your home is chronically cluttered, you may feel embarrassed about the situation and this may lead to ignoring requests of friends to come over.

You may be limited to meeting friends in restaurants and other outdoor locations, which may not always be the most convenient option for all parties concerned.

How can you motivate yourself to become more organized?

Getting the right type of motivation can be hard especially if you’re “going solo” and your support network is very small. Don’t worry – you can still do it!

Here are some ways that you can motivate yourself to finally clean up your clutter at home or at work:

1. Create a De-Cluttering Schedule – Procrastination is the number one enemy of would-be clutter warriors. It’s very easy to say you’ll do something tomorrow, a week from now or 2 months from now.

The human mind cannot fully grasp the passage of time so a year’s worth of procrastination may feel like a week. You will have a much higher success rate if you set a specific day and hour for your first de-cluttering effort.

Do everything to remind yourself to clean up on the appointed day, even to the extent that you have to cancelling other appointments so you can get something done.

2. Kick-start Your Efforts With Visitors – This is one of the fastest and most practical ways to get motivated. Invite some friends over for dinner or a movie night so your mind can finally relinquish its inhibitions about getting organized.

Be sure to invite friends that you secretly want approval from so you will become really motivated to take action. It sounds silly at the outset, but trust me, the most brilliant ways to get rid of clutter come out when you’re having some great friends over.

3. Find Your Tolerance Level – This is extremely important for long-term management of clutter. Some people are averse to the idea of having clutter anywhere in their house while some are completely oblivious to disorganization.

You’re feeling stressed about the clutter at home or in the office because the clutter has exceeded your tolerance level.

You need to identify your tolerance level and use it as a benchmark for staying organized. If you start feeling stressed about the clutter, you have to do something immediately to relieve the stress (e.g. by cleaning up).

This is the only way that you will be able to remove this major stressor for good. Don’t worry – you will soon develop practical routines for getting clutter out of the way!

Mindfulness is an ancient method of gaining self-awareness.

• It is practiced extensively in the East and has strong connections to the ancient philosophical bodies of Buddhism and even Hinduism.
• Mindfulness is one of the key practices taught by many spiritual disciplines because it helps quiet the mind and also helps improve a person’s understanding of his own thoughts and emotions.

NB: In the context of stress management, mindfulness can be extremely useful in changing a person’s general mindset and thought patterns because it encourages conscious thinking at all times.

NB: Too often, we live our lives on “autopilot” to save time and energy on actual conscious thinking.

>>> However, there are many instances where our “autopilot” tendencies produce the opposite of efficiency and convenience: they generate chronic stress.

How does “autopilot” thinking cause stress?

Here’s a good example: it is exceedingly common for people to become annoyed or irritated when they receive calls from telemarketers and similar sales agents.

The common autopilot response to this situation would be to immediately dismiss the telemarketer and feel annoyed that your time was somehow impinged upon by someone you don’t even know.

While the response to the situation may seem appropriate, it doesn’t mean that it’s helpful to anyone. On the contrary, such behavior often causes more problems because it can be extremely stressful to think that someone “stole” some of your time.

We are going to reverse this negative trend so that you can become calmer and more self-aware when you deal with potentially stressful situations.

The Path to Mindfulness

Below are some essential guidelines for developing mindfulness in your life. The journey to mindfulness is never easy, but you will begin reaping the rewards of your efforts very soon!

1. Move Inward – We are often overwhelmed with all the demanding responsibilities and obligations of modern life. Our minds end up focusing on what’s happening on the outside world and we forget to tend to what’s taking place inside.

• What’s happening to your inner life?
• Constant attention to what’s happening on the outside world can cause our inner lives to starve due to lack of nourishment. Our thoughts and emotions become imbalanced and as a result, we feel exhausted, frustrated and even angry at the world.
• To remedy this situation, you must relearn how to take refuge in your inner world. You must become more aware of what’s happening on the inside as you continue to manage your affairs in the outside world.

By doing so, you will become more aware of your thoughts and feelings and you will be able to transform yourself into a calm and impartial evaluator of the outside world.

2. Developing Hyper-Focus – Hyper-focus is a powerful tool that can help lessen the mental load of individuals who are constantly bombarded by racing thoughts and distractions.

Writers, painters and all manner of artists have a natural knack for developing hyper-focus.

Hyper-focus occurs when your mind becomes completely absorbed with what you are presently working on. No distractions, no racing thoughts – just pure, blissful focus that will allow you to complete your tasks with ease and efficiency.

In Eastern spiritual practices such as Buddhism, hyper-focus is used to enhance the positive effects of meditation. We can appropriate the same technique to help you rein in those distractions so you become more efficient and productive.

3. Practice Constant Self-Awareness –

• Like any other new skill, you must practice mindfulness whenever you can in order to master it.
• What I do is I remind myself to be more aware and mindful of what’s happening inside when I’m doing something.

When you practice mindfulness more frequently, you begin to discover your actual thought patterns and the emotions they rouse.

Mindfulness allows people to rediscover themselves completely so they can be more in control in times of stress.

4. Focus on the Moment – This is one of the toughest skills to master: focusing all your thoughts and energy on what’s presently happening.

• The Easter spiritual masters call this “being in the moment”. In the West, this state of heightened focus is called self-hypnosis.
• People hypnotize themselves all the time without knowing it. For example, when you read a good novel, hours pass and you barely feel it. Writers can write for a whole day without feeling hungry or tired.
• Hyper-focus is the stepping stone to self-hypnosis or being “in the moment”. This skill is challenging because we live in an era where multi-tasking is considered a valuable skill. However, not everyone thrives with multi-tasking.

Scientists have even stated that our minds can only focus on one thing at a time and that when we multi-task, our brains light up like Christmas lights.

• The various brain regions don’t “light up” or work all at the same time.

The first part of our current series on acing the art of stress management, we talked about three important guidelines:

First, you have to become familiar with the actual stressors that are causing you feel chronically stressed on a daily basis. This can be accomplished through regular journaling.

Second, you have to identify the negative beliefs and values that you may have. These beliefs and values may be stopping you from successfully managing your stress. This can be done through consistent self-analysis.

Third, you also have to accept the fact that not everything can be done in one day or one week. Stress management is actually a lifelong endeavor which will help create better beliefs, behaviors and thought patterns.

Today’s discussion will center on some additional guidelines which you can also use to improve your handling of stress management. You can find a few more essential guidelines below:

1.Try One or Try Them All – The fact of the matter is that there is no “perfect formula” for fight stress. I personally believe that stress dissipates more quickly through deep tissue massage because I really feel relaxed and happy after a good massage. But that’s just me; deep tissue massage may not be as effective for you.

This is why it’s so important for people to seek out different methods of stress management.

• Do not limit yourself to only 1 or 2 techniques.
• If something doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t mean that you do not have the capacity to manage your stress.
• It just means that you haven’t found the right combination of techniques to bring you to your desired level of relaxation and happiness.

2. Assemble Your Army, One by One – Managing stress is literally a battle against bad habits and a myriad of stressors. What do you need to succeed in any battle?

Your personal anti-stress army, of course!

• This personal army of yours will be composed of different relaxation techniques and behavioral modifications which you will learn as you progress with your stress management efforts.
• The techniques which you will be using must fit the genetics of your lifestyle and way of life. If a technique just doesn’t fit your lifestyle, it won’t work. Learn to adjust and discard techniques that do not conform to what you feel is the right way to remedy stress in your life.

3. Keep Practicing! – Like I’ve said before, stress management is essentially a collection of different skills that will enable you to effectively combat stress before it makes you permanently sick.

If you want full mastery of a specific skill, you must be willing to practice it until it becomes second nature.

This guideline may seem easy in comparison to my other reminders but in reality, it’s one of the most challenging to carry out.

Why? Because old habits die hard. For example, it can be very difficult for a person to listen more during an argument because the old habit was to outdo the other person in a screaming match.

Apart from learning new skills, effective stress management will also require you to change your attitudes and behaviors toward your stressors. In the previous blog post, I recommended that you start writing on a stress management journal.

Your stress management journal is more than just a laundry list of things to do.

• It’s actually a special picture of how you think and behave in response to different situations.
• You need a source of special insight if you want to discover your true self and reinvent it so you won’t be so stressed anymore.

4. Don’t Forget “Me” Time – In order to carry out your plans to conquer stress, you have to create space in your daily schedule for stress management. Now, I know that many stressed individuals feel that there isn’t enough time in a whole day for everything that needs to be done.

• However, I would like to point out that the statement “I wish there were 2 more hours in my day” is more of a state of mind than reality.
• The reality is that 12-18 hours of waking time is sufficient for most groups of tasks. There’s also enough time for relaxation within this time-frame.

If you cannot fit everything that you need to do within this amount of time that simply means that you have poor time management skills.

Evaluate how much time you spend on your different activities and try to create more balance within your day.

How does stress harm both the body and the mind?

For many years now, medical doctors have been warning people of the dangers of poor stress management.

Many people still believe that stress doesn’t affect the body and it’s “just a state of mind”. What the majority of stress individuals do not know is that the body’s natural stress response is mainly a physiological event.

This means that the effects of stress have never been limited to our minds. When a person is stressed, his whole body experiences it, too. So the idea that stress is essentially harmless because it’s somehow limited to our imagination is actually a dangerous belief.

Why? Because a person who experiences chronic stress for many, many years has a much higher risk of making health conditions such as high blood pressure worse. So if you want to be physically healthier, you have to understand how stress actually affects the body.

How does stress come about?

The modern stress model gives us a simple and clear explanation of how physiological stress is roused:

1^st Phase: Mental and Emotional Triggers are Engaged. A person perceives an event, situation, action or idea as negative and stressful.

2^nd Phase: Psychological Stress Engaged. If a person does not arrest his emotions and negative thinking, the present situation causes psychological stress.

3^rd Phase: Physiological Stress or “Fight or Flight” Response: Unmitigated psychological stress often leads to actual, physiological stress.

When the instinctual “fight or flight” response comes into play, a person feels an immediate surge of adrenaline, which temporarily increases a person’s speed, strength and stamina.

A person’s breathing rate and pulse rate also increase in preparation for sudden, intense physical activity (e.g. running away from a real, physical danger).

***

Stress normally abates when the perceived threat or danger finally passes. Thousands of years ago, the instinctual “fight or flight” response was extremely useful for our hunter-gatherer ancestors as they had to battle wild animals and each other in pre-modern society.

Scientists believe that the stress adaptation came about because our ancestors were almost always exposed to threatening or dangerous situations.

 What are the signs that a person is experiencing stress?

Below are some common physical symptoms that a person is experiencing stress:

1. Inexplicable exhaustion or fatigue
2. Acute headaches that have a tendency to disrupt work or chores at home
3. Shallow chest breathing
4. Increased heart rate even when the person is not performing strenuous or challenging physical activities
5. Minor muscular pain
6. Twitches
7. Facial tics
8. Hand and arm tremors
9. A general feeling of nervousness and anxiety
10. Insomnia
11. Oversleeping
12. Inexplicable perspiring of the hands and feet
13. Turning to different substances such as caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and even recreational drugs

The list of symptoms doesn’t stop there. Here is a breakdown of the mental symptoms associated with moderate to extreme stress:

1. Short temper
2. Feeling angry all the time
3. Inexplicable mood swings
4. Feeling of isolation and helplessness
5. Short term memory problems
6. General decrease in work productivity
7. Lowered sexual desire
8. Distracted thinking

Why do people experience psychological stress?

The psychological signs of stress often manifest when a person has been under stress for a long period of time. These signs come about because the mind is trying to escape the stressful situation however it can.

This is one of the main reasons why stressed individuals are often less productive in the office.

Their minds are so sick of the prolonged stress response that their own thought patterns are preventing them from focusing on the things they have to do.

The same thing happens to university students who are overwhelmed with the nature and volume of work they have to complete to pass different course subjects.

How severe are stress-related symptoms in the general population?

In the United States alone, it is estimated that 90% of all physician visits are associated with symptoms related to chronic stress. It has also been estimated that on a monthly basis, 400 million people take medication to ease these symptoms.

Of course, we know now that medicating a stress-related symptom is a futile effort because you’re not addressing the main cause of the symptom – you’re just padding the symptom itself.

Now, it should be noted that the symptoms we discussed earlier may also be genuine signs of other health conditions (and not just stress). Consulting with your physician is still your best option if you experience symptoms such as racing heart rate or persistent headaches.