Reduce Stress and Restore Work-Life Balance
How to deal with stress is a mystery to many of us type-A personalities. Get-It-Done Guy shows you that a little, explicit work-life balance and self-care can go a long way.
Stress.
You gotta love it…at least until it drives you to the point of raising a zombie army and trying to take over the world. That’s when it gets a little over-the-top.
For many of us, stress is caused by poor work-life balance and how to deal with stress isn’t obvious. What we need is a little less self-flaggelation and a little more self-care.
Since you’re listening to a podcast on productivity, I’m going to take a wild, fanciful, glorious guess and suggest that you’re an overachiever. Or you’re my parents.
Part of being an overachiever is the nagging fear that you’re not getting quite enough done, even when you are. Part of being my parents is the sincere belief that you’ve done enough, even when you haven’t. My therapist and I are working on it.
For us overachievers, we really believe if we just do “a little bit more,” then Everything Will Be All Right. Of course, we did a little bit more yesterday and is everything all right today? Nope. All we’ve done is upped the bar.
If you want to know how to reduce anxiety by getting things done, setting goals like “a little bit more” isn’t the way to do it.
How to Deal with Stress? Set Specific Goals
First of all, if you want to know how to deal with stress, look to your goals. What are they? How long have you had the same goals without reaching them? Is there any reason to believe you’ll do it this time?
If you’ve had the same goals for a long time, maybe they’re too big. Yeah, you’re supposed to have a BHAG, or “Big Hairy Audacious Goals.” But if you make them too big, too hairy, and too audacious, then they will just sit in the corner eating all your protein bars and scratching itself.
The Buddha would say that if you use this technique enough, you’ll be present and love your life right now.
The reason your goals are too big may be because you’ve stated them as comparatives, rather than as absolutes. Someone once asked John D. Rockefeller, “How much money is enough?” His answer, “Just a little bit more.” Isn’t that pathetic? No, seriously. Stop and think about it. He’s the richest man in the world, he can do anything he wants, and basically he’s still pursuing money. I’ll bet he was the most interesting guy at the cocktail party. Yawn.
Instead of pulling a Rockefeller, set a specific goal. “Enough money is $100 million in the bank, after taxes.” It’s still a pretty shallow goal, but it’s a specific shallow goal.
This way, you can measure progress and feel good when the distance between you and the goal is shrinking. When you’re anxious that you’re not succeeding fast enough and you don’t know how to reduce the anxiety, just shrink the number in the goal, and voila – in a heartbeat, you’re much closer to the goal!
(The Buddha would point out that repeatedly using this technique would result in you reducing your goal to whatever you have at the moment and simply being present. You would love the life you have, the people you have, the things you have, and you would be happy right here and now. I am not the Buddha, so please send cash.)
Schedule Self-Care
Sometimes it isn’t that you’re doing too much work, it’s that you’re not doing enough life. Work-life balance means you have to spend time doing the life thing, too: taking time off, spending time with friends, playing board games, and taking care of yourself.
When it comes to work, most of us keep appointments we’ve scheduled. But when it comes to life, we don’t even make appointments. So start now. At the start of your year, schedule some holidays and some time off. Every month, schedule time with friends. And every week, schedule some time to do something nice for yourself that is pure self-care. My personal favorite is massages.
Enlist “Little You” in Finding Work-Life Balance
If it’s hard for you to follow through on your self-care, don’t do it for yourself, exactly. Follow my friend Tim’s advice. He says:
“I’m bad at being nice to myself, but great at being nice to other people. So on my day off, I imagine I’m with a small child (who just happens to be named Timmy), and ask him what he’d like to do. I am nicer and more caring towards little Timmy, because I care about him. While I might skimp on taking care of myself, I could never do that to a child I love.”
When stress rears its head, and work-life balance is at stake, you need to know how to reduce anxiety. It might be coming from your goals. If your goals are always-receding and can never be met, change them to be more specific (and realistic). Schedule self-care first and then schedule your work around it. And if self-care isn’t your thing, pretend you’re taking care of yourself as a young child. And if younger you is listening right now, buy yourself a drum set, and if older you doesn’t do the right thing, start practicing.
This is Stever Robbins. Send suggestions for topics and questions to getitdone@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email. I advise CEOs on strategy, succession planning, and people issues. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.com.
Stress opens IMAGE file image courtesy of Shutterstock.
You May Also Like…
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
