What is causing your stress & handling it effectively

Stress, anxiety & burnout

Hi, everybody, its Sal Celly. Hope you all are doing well. Today I want to discuss what makes you feel stressed, anxious and burnt out. Many times people tell me that they’re not being able to focus because they have so much to do. Then they get into a panic, and that doesn’t help either. Is there a framework to handle stress better? Yes!

Stress management framework

For me, the first step is to acknowledge that there’s a lot that needs to be done. That’s the first step. Don’t try to pretend, don’t try to push it away, acknowledge it- that’s the first step.

Step two is, write it down on paper. When you write it down, that helps you prioritize what all needs to be done.  At this stage, just list out all the different things that you have to do. For me, it’s very helpful when I put it down on paper- I’m removing it from my head and putting it down on paper, where I can see it.

Once you list out all the different things that you have to do, then you can prioritize them, based on how important the respective task is rather than urgent. This will depend on your criteria to rank the different tasks-whatever that criteria is, whether it is revenue, or impact, or potential- whatever the criteria may be, it’s important that you use the right criteria, and then you rank the tasks.

Step 3– Once you rank the task, assign timelines to them- there will be certain tasks that are high on the priority list, that you need to get to quickly and there will be others that are low on the priority list- either you don’t get to at all, or you delegate those tasks to someone else, as we have discussed on a previous session. It is not essential for you to do all the tasks yourself. When you can delegate a task to someone else, you are holding the other person accountable, but it’s freeing up your time-time is valuable and time is money.

Impact of the stress management framework

When you do this exercise, it becomes more manageable, instead of it all being a huge mess. You have segmented the tasks into Priority A, B and C-you have assigned timelines to Priority A, and maybe priority C tasks you have decided to delegate or not get to for the time being- that’s okay. It’s not necessary that you have to get to every single task because that is what is causing you stress. You have finite time. And within that finite time, you have to allocate time to the high priority tasks.

It’s a problem of constrained optimization. You will never have enough time to do everything. That is why putting it down on paper, prioritizing it and determining when, what needs to get done and who needs to do it, will help put structure around it. That is turn, will reduce your stress and make it more manageable.

For further details or questions, or if you’d like to schedule a complimentary discussion on how you can handle your stress better and more effectively, and lead a more balanced, fulfilled and happier life, please email me at coach@maximizeu.life. Thanks