Reduce Stress in your Jobs and your Life!

Scot Weeks, our Managing Director, recently attended a seminar run by the David Allen Company. David is the author of a number of books on enhancing personal productivity. The seminar focused on methods for developing efficiency in our work and home lives, but it also addressed the importance of organisation and planning for reducing personal and work stress.

How can people help reduce stress in their jobs and lives?

Everyone experiences stress – it is part of the human experience. It is not necessarily a bad thing though - if you never had any you probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning and wouldn't challenge yourself. Stress is a good thing if it helps you to constructively engage in doing something that needs doing. Unhealthy stress is when you perceive a demand that you can’t deal with, or in David Allen’s opinion, you think you should be doing something but you're not. You know the demand is there but you don’t or can’t do anything about it.

So the trick is to get in control, to determine what needs to happen and then get some action plans in place. David Allen suggests that there are two things you must determine: What is your desired outcome and then what is the next action to achieve that outcome. You need to be very specific and write them down as you go. If you do this with all your major issues or concerns you are well on the way to dealing with the demands in your life and managing the associated stress.

Where Will I Put My Worries?

Most people would have between fifty and a hundred issues, concerns or “projects” going on in their lives at any point in time. But if you try to keep all of them in your head you will create stress, because no-one’s mind can cope with that amount of information and still function effectively.

So, what can you do about this? Write it down! Defrag your brain! Clean the clutter out of your mind by getting everything onto a system where you can review it and decide what you need to do next. You can use a paper system or an electronic organiser, but either way clear it out of your head first. By keeping it in a system that you can work with and trust, you have the best chance of dealing with your issues, concerns, demands and projects.

Agreements with Others and Yourself

David Allen argues that stress also comes from internal conflict about keeping agreements, most of which are with other people but all of which are really with ourselves. The key is to renegotiate those agreements if they are not working for you. For example, if you said yes to a request from your boss or your partner some time ago but still haven’t done what was agreed, it may mean that you never will and you need to go back and renegotiate that agreement. That’s not an easy thing to do, but if you go prepared with an alternative agreement or solution it may show that you still acknowledge the importance of the agreement and want to find a solution through an alternative arrangement.

Procrastinators and High Achievers

So who would this system suit? It may seem more likely that high achievers would benefit most, but they probably have a good system in place already (and are using it!). Procrastinators and the less-well-organised will probably benefit more - they just need to fight their natural urge to have no system. The benefits could be extraordinary if they can put a good system in place and stick with it. Is that you? If so, you may want to read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity which is available at most book stores.