|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
By Anson Frost
Stress Can be Reduced in Your Life With a
Few Simple Changes to Your Daily Routine That Take Only a Few Moments
Each Day
Perhaps 2003 need not be a repeat of 2002 too much to do with not
enough time in which to do it; uncompleted projects; promises not
kept (to yourself as well as to others); frustration and guilt; overwhelmed
with work at the expense of other aspects of your well-being!! Now
is the perfect time of the year to invest a moment and design a better
2003.
We’re going to look at workers through their behaviour regardless of vocation, occupation, or employment status, and categorize them into different levels of organizational expertise and accomplishment. See what level you’re in and more importantly, assess what you want to do about it in the coming year.
But first let’s look at stress in the context of the workplace (however your ‘workplace’ is defined), and see the relationship between getting organized and different stress levels.
Understanding Stress: First Step to Coping
Effectively
Stress is, quite simply, the response of the body to demands made on it. It takes different forms in each of us. While mild stress can enhance our life as our hormones react to the challenges of day-to-day existence, an overload of stress lessens the body’s resistance to breakdown. The immune system starts to weaken, allowing for invasion by illness and disease. And the existence of one stress tends to diminish resistance to other forms.
Family/work conflicts are often a source of stress for business people. Two-thirds of people feel torn between family and work demands at least once a week, according to Priority Management’s "Just in Time" report. Ten percent of people feel this stress on a daily basis.
Being self-employed seems to help. People who are self-employed feel less stress on a daily basis and are less likely to feel their job is more stressful than five years ago. Working long hours doesn’t seem to help. Our survey shows the more hours people work above the normal work week, the more likely they are to feel stressed every day.
Irritability, a feeling of being out of control and an unbalanced lifestyle-these are the key ways stress affects people, according to the survey. The solution? One in three respondents said it would reduce their stress if their employer trained them to cope.
With the current pace of change today and increasing competition in the business world, the most effective way to reduce stress is to acquire personal management skills. If you are using your time effectively, able to identify and manage your priorities and plan well, you can maintain a balanced lifestyle. The result will be increased productivity, more energy and a manageable level of stress.
Since eliminating stress from our lives isn’t an option, learning to manage it is critical for your success and your health.
Finding a Manageable Level of Stress
While stress can quite literally be a killer, it is also a necessary element for high levels of achievement. Olympic athletes and performers don’t fight stress, they channel it into their performances. A rush of adrenaline provides tremendous energy and creativity. And we all need a certain amount of stress just to live. But feeling stress too often, or being unable to manage it, will sap your energy and ultimately result in poor health.
The key to managing your stress is to be alert and able to act before it gets out of hand, according to Richard Carlson, author of "Don’t Sweat the Small Stuffand it’s All Small Stuff."
"When it’s small, it’s manageable and easy to control," he says. "Once it gathers momentum, however, it’s difficult, if not impossible to stop."
Here are a few ways to stop your life from
becoming too stressful:
1. Watch your schedule. If you’re starting to be late for appointments or you’re starting to forego personal commitments to fit in more work obligations, slow down and re-evaluate your priorities.
2. Monitor your energy level. If you approach a new task with more resentment than energy, give yourself a "time out". Whether it’s a short walk or a short trip, do what is needed to rejuvenate yourself.
3. Limit your list. Add up the time it would take you to do everything on your "to do" list today. If you don’t have enough hours to accomplish everything, move the low priority items to another day, rather than having them on today’s list as an unmet obligation.
4. Know what works for you. For some people, exercise helps relieve stress. For others it’s a bubble bath or an escapist movie. Be aware of what’s best for youand make it part of your regular regimen.
The 5 Levels of Professional Performance:
Where are you?
While most workers have better educational and job-related skills than ever, they are sadly lacking the most vital skill of all for the information age performance management. It’s possible to classify workersknowledge workers into one of the five distinct levels... from the least productive and least fulfilled employees at Level One to the masters of productivity and personal balance at Level Five.
At Level One we have the Time Challenged Knowledge Workers. Their work area tells the whole story...
Their desks are littered with half-finished projects and documents too "urgent" to filereminders or action items they desperately don’t want to forget. These folks probably have a pocket calendar around somewhere and when they think of it, may even jot down events like appointments and birthdays. But the truth is they keep most of their schedule in their head because "hey, who’s got time to write anything down?"
Nonetheless, the trusted memory isn’t doing much for their reputation. They miss deadlines, arrive late for meetings or forget about them altogether and spend a cumulative 30 minutes a day just looking for items on their desk.
Let’s move on up to Level TwoThe Note Takers.
For the most part, workers at this level claim to rely on their day timer or else on the lined notepad or journal they lug to every meeting like Linus’ blanket.
But when push comes to shove, anything goeshieroglyphics on scraps of paper, on backs of envelopes, on phone message pads and of course on the veritable forest of sticky notes strewn east, west and sideways across their work area.
They do have more organizational experience compared to their Level One colleagues. They’ve probably taken a time management course and are familiar with the principles of goal setting, preparing to-do lists and how to prioritize. Unfortunately, they believe since they’ve taken the course, they can cross that off their list: "Been there, done that. I’ve graduated. Time to get down to real work."
Let’s see how Level Three knowledge workers, the Techno Meisters, avoid many of these problems.
First, we see big improvements in their planning skills. Their filing systems are much more effective, usually alphabetical. They have written, long term goals and they do review them. They do try to plan and set priorities, although it is hard sticking to them. They spend a lot of time in meetings, a lot more than they would like. But that’s the nature of the beast, or so they feel.
Overall, they’re working too hard and running too fast. But that doesn’t bother them as much as it does their families.
Even though they are good at managing their own time, they can’t seem to integrate their system with the rest of the organization. That’s why they are less productive than they could be.
A saving grace at this level, in their eyes at any rate, is the way they adopt electronic technology. For them, time management is old fashioned there must be a high-tech way to manage appointments, to-dos and communications. This can be good until they start relying on gizmos instead of on performance techniques. You’ll know this is happening when you see them spend 5 minutes on their electronic organizer to schedule a 20 minute meeting with you next week!
The most obvious difference we notice at Level Four is a superb ability to organize and delegate so let’s call them the Organized Delegators.
Level Fours not only plan their own work, they encourage and initiate planning and business goal setting as a team. This distinguishes them from people at the earlier levels, yet they can be anybody from the executive ranks right out to the front line. The golden understanding they have is that in today’s flattened organization, delegation is no longer a top down activity; it’s just as likely to be sideways.
Being a Level Four delegator means being a good team player, and working as a team builder. Anybody with the right self-management skills can make that happen.
Level Fours are not afraid of technology and they are not dazzled by it. They are very systematic in their priority and time management and routinely support their electronic tools with manual ones. They have a clearly defined mission and goals, personally and professionally, and review them daily.
These are people who are rarely late and never miss appointments. They are hard working and because they are so well organized, they cover a lot of ground in a day. How? By using a sophisticated filing system, by opening one file at a time, by recognizing that time management is not an add-on, but a mission critical skill. Above all, despite the pride they take in being on top of things, they are still open-minded enough to embrace new and better ways whenever they come up.
So this brings us to Level Five: The Highly Effective Priority Managers.
They’ve mastered Level Four and are going well beyond it. They work surprisingly few hours 35 hours per week maximum. They believe in getting things right the first time and expect the same of their organization. Their priorities are clear and openly communicated. They have polished verbal and written skills, and a passion for details. They have come to realize the true responsiveness and versatility are not inhibited by but rather a result of excellent priority management skills.
They work from a clean desk. Always.
They have an effective, fully integrated process for managing the rapidly-increasing volume of e-mail. Even during crisis situations, Level Fives never lose their composure. For them, decision making is a process, not an emotional event.
Delegation comes naturally and because they are surrounded by Level Fours, their teams work extraordinarily well.
Level Fives also lead balanced lives. They have no trouble taking time off for holidays, family, golf, church, community. Incidentally, they are also very well compensated, for obvious reasons. A good part of the credit lies with their total respect for time. They invest on a regular basis in time management training for themselves and for their employees.
And that is the moral of this article. Moving from one level up to another is not rocket science; it simply takes a commitment to mastering the right tools and techniques.
The benefits will be increased productivity (and more profit), improved customer service, less stress, greater balance, heightened morale and of course more time.
So now we know what good organizers look like and how their skills and habits manifest a less stressful environment for themselves and those around them. Where do you see yourself? Level one? Perhaps level four? If you’re at level five, congratulations!! You know the benefits of being organized and the control you have over your life.
Anson Frost is the owner of Priority Consulting Group Inc., the Vancouver office of the Priority Management group. Priority Management is a Vancouver based global training company having over 180 offices worldwide and offering management training in a number of areas including Time Management, Project Management, and Selling and Negotioating skills.
 Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
