Did you know that time management and anxiety are linked?
Without time management, you can feel stressed, overwhelmed and anxious about work and personal issues.
Ultimately, you need to feel in control of the demands and pressures in your life.
Introduction
Few people realise the link between anxiety and time management. This is why I often talk about time management strategies to banish anxiety with my clients who want help to feel better.
Let me explain why.
If you feel that the demands on your time are overwhelming, this will increase stress and anxiety.
The aim is to maximise your time on essential topics and prioritise.
Time management helps you to increase your productivity and work smarter. Therefore, effective time management is essential for reducing stress and anxiety.
What are the links between time management and anxiety?
Poor time management can lead to cognitive, emotional and physical problems.
Cognitive overload can cause people to feel exhausted and overwhelmed, which can lead to excessive worrying, struggling to make decisions, and coping difficulties. So, you might find it difficult to make decisions at work or struggle with life-changing decisions in your personal life. For example, you might not know if you should move house, change jobs, or even change your partner.
Emotionally, with poor time management, there may be anger, guilt and fear if the person struggles to meet the demands. These negative thoughts and feelings can trigger anxiety. If you are not organised, you can forget things, and this can lead you to feel more stressed and anxious.
As the stress builds up, you feel out of control and then start to worry and feel anxious about yourself.
Physically, they find it difficult to concentrate and have low energy levels. Some people may get headaches, stomach problems, and sleep problems. Some people with high anxiety levels start to imagine health-related issues. For example, you might think something is wrong with the muscles in your leg because your leg keeps twitching, yet after a check with the doctor, you are still worrying about the feelings in your leg.
Why do I feel more anxious when I think about managing my time?
When people think about the amount of work they need to do, they feel overwhelmed, which leads to feelings of not being good enough and being out of control. If there are other personal demands on top of work demands, this increases stress, anxiety and feelings of being out of control.
Many of my clients want to be perfect in everything they do, but that isn’t always possible.
Nevertheless, nothing is perfect in nature. Look out of the window and check this out.
However, these anxious feelings can also trigger a fear of failure, which adds to their anxiety.
On the other hand, you might think that you are managing their time well. You believe you need to do everything on your to-do list, but in reality, the list is too long, and you realise that you haven’t prioritised things.
Forcing yourself to do everything when the demands are too high will lead to stress and anxiety.
Time management is about getting things into perspective.
It takes time management and skill, which you will need to learn.
How can I start managing my time better without increasing my anxiety?
The first step is to identify that you are feeling stressed by the amount of work you have. You might already have anxious feelings or believe you must be perfect and deal with everything yourself.
If you think the demands are too high, speak with your manager. If you are the manager, see if you can delegate some of your work to others. You may also consider doing things smarter.
I wonder if you have ever been taught how to manage your time more effectively. So many of my clients who have moved to a manager role have never had additional training to manage staff or the extra demands on their time.
Considering this, you might realise that you have never been taught time management skills. If this is the case, read a book, take an online course, or talk to colleagues about time management skills.
You must be kind to yourself and realise that you can’t do everything in life.
Sometimes, you need to ask for help or delegate.
What are some anxiety-friendly time management strategies?
Be realistic about what you can and can’t do in a day.
Start with small, manageable tasks.
Here are seven ways to manage your time. Try one or all of the strategies.
1. Let’s start with the usual planners, writing to-do lists and weighing the most urgent tasks against the most essential tasks.
2. Next, the Eisenhower Matrix is a valuable tool for visualising your tasks. Look at the diagram below and decide what is urgent and important in your daily schedule.
3. Taking some time out to relax, even if it’s only for a few minutes, can help you focus your thoughts, reduce stress and anxiety, and clarify your priorities.
4. Dividing your work into smaller chunks is also a good idea because it makes the demands on your time more manageable.
5. Notice where all your energy is going. The Pareto principle (20/80) states that you can achieve more if you focus on the 20% of tasks that produce the best outcomes.
The way to do this is to list your demands and then give a score for how bad or difficult the root cause of the problem is. Then, you group the issues with the exact root cause. Finally, add up the scores of the groups, and you will be able to see which problem you should work on first.
6. Another method of managing your time is the Pomodoro technique. The idea here is to work for 25 minutes, then stop and rest for five minutes. You then start the process again until you have four rounds of working for 25 minutes and taking a break. The last break is more prolonged, 30 minutes.
7. The “eat that frog” technique is a time management idea that states that you must do the most arduous task first in the day. This allows you to spend the rest of the day doing more things you enjoy.
Many more techniques can help you with time management, but if you try these first, you need to be consistent, and you could be amazed at how your stress and anxiety are reduced.
If you need more help, contact me for a free initial consultation. Let’s determine the best course of action. You might need to talk about the issues. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) counselling techniques can help you learn how to cope. Alternately, hypnotherapy might appeal to you more, and you can use the power of your mind to change things. Please visit my website and book a 30-minute appointment.
Linda Witchell
