SKILL: Effective time management.
EQF LEVEL 3 (INTERNAL REFERENCE)
Keywords
1 - Relationships
2 - Planning
3 - Delegate
4 - Priorities
5 - Stress6 - Time
7 - Self-Esteem
INTRODUCTION
The hustle and bustle of daily life together with problems that we need to deal with at work and in relationships can create stress and tension. In addition, we often have goals to meet and tasks to accomplish. All this can lead to us not being able to manage our time, which also creates stress.
In this LU you will learn strategies that help you deal with stress and manage your available time so as to accomplish goals without overloading yourself.
Specifically, the intended learning outcomes are:
- Understanding how important it is to recognize bad stress
- Understanding the importance of delegating and carving out time for yourself
- Understanding how nurturing personal relationships can help prevent stress and live more peacefully
- Learning to say no and work on your self-esteem
TEXT
We all experience stress in multiple situations in our daily lives. We feel stressed at work or because of personal situations. We also often feel stressed because we are not able to manage our time, are not organized and tend to put off our tasks often. However, tress needs to be kept under control, otherwise it can lead to further problems. It can cause difficulty sleeping, lower performance, and even physical problems.
In order not to risk getting to these nasty consequences, it is essential to learn how to manage your stress and your time.
How can we learn to manage stress and time?
- Learn about bad stress: So-called "bad" stress is chronic stress, which has a very negative impact on our lives, sometimes even accelerating our aging process. But stress is not always of this type: there are people, in fact, who can be more operational only when under pressure. There is a dose of stress that is positive and allows us to increase productivity. It is essential to recognize if our stress level is positive or if it causes us agitation, anxiety, depression and poor performance.
- Prioritize what's important: It's critical to distribute the workload based on priorities, differentiating what's important from what's urgent.
- Delegate when possible: Being able to detach yourself from things does not necessarily mean losing control or power. Delegating some of our work can help us to permanently reduce our stress load.
- Do Something Meaningful on a Personal Level: It is important to find a goal in life on a personal level that has nothing to do with work. This is very helpful because if something goes wrong in the other areas of our lives, we will always have a way to de-stress and focus on our personal goals.
- Learn to Say NO: Setting your own personal limits is critical to not overload ourselves with personal commitments and goals.
- Strategic Planning and Scheduling: These are key activities to be able to manage your time and stress. Being able to plan for the long term allows us to be much calmer when we have deadlines.
- Nurturing Your Social Relationships: Our psyches depend a great deal on the relationships we have with others, particularly those we feel emotionally close to. When emotional relationships are compromised, our minds and bodies are affected. The end of a love affair, the breakup of a relationship with a friend or child, or departed ones, are often experienced with very intense grief. Having good relationships with others helps with this process.
- Working with your self-esteem: Sometimes we get very stressed because we tend to devalue our every achievement and focus only on the negative aspects. Working on self-esteem can be very beneficial in these cases.
For more detailed information, here is a dedicated section on how to manage time and stress: (230) Managing Frenzy and Restlessness (LIVE) - YouTube
