Erin Rocchio: Executive and Team Coach

Thrive. Lead. Impact.

How Can Time Management Help You To Manage Stress At Work?

Remember college? You would get an assignment for a 3,000-word paper due in two weeks, and, without fail, you would say to yourself, “I am going to start TODAY.” But, ‘today’ would happen, and something more exciting would come up. A week would roll by, and pretty soon, you are sitting with a paper deadline in 24 hours thinking, “I should have scheduled my time better.” Many of us still experience this in one way or another throughout our careers, and that is where time management can come in handy.

What Is Time Management?

We are all well aware of the common thoughts on time management. Whether you work on time blocking your schedule to accomplish all that you can in the day or abide by the time management matrix, all of us have learned the tips and tricks to be productive. What few resources fail to mention, though, is that there are deeper drives to time management as a whole.

The scheduling of our day occurs at the behavioral or external level, which is important but certainly not the root of why you can’t seem to get tasks done. There are deeper drives at play. Beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and values motivate our behavior—as they should. So, how do you align your actions and structures with your thoughts, core values, and deep commitments?

1 | Focus On What Is Important

Your schedule should not just be a reflection of tasks that drop a dime into your bank account every few minutes. Instead, it should reflect what is important to you. There is a popular process creatd by Stephen Covey that puts tasks and commitments into 4 quadrants of time management: Urgent + Important, Not Urgent + Important, Urgent + Not Important, Not Urgent + Not Important. This works well, but it is not all that you need to have successful and holistic time management values. Instead, this can be step 1 of 6 needed for wholeness in time management. We would urge you as you work through this, though, to not just only think through your workday, think through personal tasks as well, and allow your schedule to reflect you as a whole person.

2 | Prioritize Your Day

Now that you have your most important (and least important) duties laid out in front of you, it is time to prioritize. This is separate from the quadrants because something could be urgent + important, and easily delegated. You know the saying, “You have the same amount of hours in a day as [insert accomplished person’s name].” And it is true. But that sentiment doesn’t cover the fact that whoever you thought of would more than likely delegate one or many tasks a day. Everything from getting ready in the morning, picking out clothes, accounting, and the like can be delegated for some of the world’s most successful people. While we all don’t have that privilege, we can consider what is a priority for ourselves: jumping on a client call, going to your toddler’s baseball game, launching that new project you’ve been working on for months, etc., and then move down the list from there. 

3 | Align Your Core Values

We could write a whole book on values, but we don’t want to get too deep into that here. Values aren’t just something you have painted onto your office wall and think of passively. They should ease their way into the fiber of everything you do. Just as your personality comes to light in every one of your interactions, your values should be clear even in time management. As you think through how your time is being used up each day, ask yourself it is aligning with the values you hold true? If the answer is no, it might be time to drop the task or delegate to someone who would find alignment. 

4 | Keep Your Overall Vision In Mind

In this context, vision is synonymous with goals. But, vision encapsulates not just the endpoint where you can check off a box and say “done,” but how do your tasks feed into your overall vision for you.

Imagine you are just starting your business, and your vision is to someday expand your one-person accounting firm to an office full of accountants, investors, and financial representatives. Something like a marketing task might not align with the image you have for yourself, but without being able to delegate in this phase, it is good—if not helpful—to think of your overall vision. “If I work hard on marketing now, some day I can fulfill the dream of owning a full-service financial firm.”

Aligning tasks with your vision is an excellent way to restructure your feelings about some things that simply have to get done but don’t necessarily feed your fire. 

5 | Leave Time For Renewal

Often overlooked in time management is renewal. For those of us who were or are athletes, we know how essential rest is to ultimate performance. Working out every single day may seem like it would set you on the fast-track to ultimate strength and agility, but, on the contrary, your muscles are actually building and repairing on your rest days. So, the rest is where your power comes from.

Similarly, when you schedule a time for rest and renewal in your workday, you will be a stronger executive or team member when you return. There are science-backed ways to rest at the beginning, middle, and end of your day. The thing is, you must be intentional about it. Scheduling out a 20-minute walk when you typically experience your mid-day slump or being intentional about your sleep will not only make you feel better, it will also ensure that the time you spend on tasks is meant with the vibrancy and energy you so wonderfully have within you. 

6 | Practice Essentialism

All of these steps may feel like an arduous task in itself, but they are leading us to a fundamental process: essentialism. What is essential today in your life? By going through these five previous steps, you are more equipped to say “no” when an un-essential task raises its hand and “yes” when something essential comes up by aligning your day with your values, vision, etc—which is one of the main benefits of time management in this form.

Yeses and nos start to become more comfortable. Think about how good it would feel to be able to confidently say, “No, I do not want to take on this project because it does not align with my overall vision.” It can happen with practice. What you do not do in a day is just as important as what you do. If you are putting more effort into the things that don’t get you any results in your work and personal life than the things that do, it is time to reevaluate. As you work on effective time management, we hope that you view it as not just management of work time, but your time as a whole. That you use positive stress to fuel you and avoid negative stress.

Renewing your spirit, prioritizing things that are important to you, and avoiding burnout. As always, I am here to help you in whatever you may need.

What Is Positive Stress In The Workplace?

Imagine yourself at work. You’ve just given a presentation or received an annual performance review. It didn’t go well. In fact, there is so much cortisol pumping through your body that you feel like you can’t breathe. You take a few deep breaths to calm down and remind yourself that you are not your job, that your job does not define you. 

That sense of distress lingers for a few hours, a few days, maybe even a few weeks. But eventually, there’s a chance that you’re going to have a moment in which something clicks. That sense of stress and panic all of the sudden becomes something useful. You decide that instead of being upset at yourself over your performance, you’re going to use that energy to turn a failure into a challenge for future success. 

This is the transition from negative stress to positive stress, and it will become useful in your professional life. So what is positive stress? How does this work? Let’s dig into it. 

First Things First: What Is Stress?

One of the most important aspects of—well, being alive—is maintaining your cool as a world of chaos unfolds around you. Getting cut off in traffic, an accidental coffee spill, a fight with a partner, or subtle disagreement with a coworker—you name it—our daily lives really come down to managing stress. It is our brain’s duty to try to keep our bodies in some semblance of homeostasis in which it can calmly and effectively get you through each and every day. 

When we’re thrown too far out of homeostasis, our performance suffers. We miss details, we have trouble focusing, and our relationships with others can be impeded. The term “stress,” which occurs when we deviate from homeostasis, was added to the medical lexicon and expanded upon by Hans Selye in the mid-late 20th century to two distinctive types of stress: positive and negative. These are also known as “eustress” and “distress.”

Eustress (Positive Stress) vs Distress (Negative Stress)

The easiest way to parse these two types of stress responses are:

  • Eustress = challenge
  • Distress = threat

The difference between a threat and a challenge is that one is bad for the body and the other actually quite good in small amounts. When we face distress for too long—we call this “chronic stress”—that is where our performance suffers. We face low energy, headaches, insomnia, a weakened immune system, and more. 

Eustress, or “positive stress,” on the other hand, actually leads to a stress response that is positive, constructive, and healthy. It typically results in a positive outcome. Positive stress examples include taking charge during a meeting or trying something new at the gym. While we still feel a racing heart and a surge of hormones as we start talking or exercising, by the end of the day the stressor has been mitigated and we come out feeling better—proud of accomplishing a challenge we set out for ourselves.

Positive Stress and Your Team

So up until this point, we’ve focused on the self as it relates to positive stress (“I”) in the workplace and beyond. But what about positive stress for a whole team of people (“We”)? 

We experience eustress when we choose goals and activities that get us excited and hopeful. The key to having an entire team of inspired people is to frame their challenges to be positive and optimistic. 

You’re a leader in your environment and it’s so important to use words of encouragement to show your peers that you are on their team, that you want to see them succeed. When we feel supported by those who surround us, it’s much easier for us to slip into the “challenge” mindset rather than the “threat” mindset that can be brought on by being criticized in a negative way instead of a constructive one. It is your job to guide people toward taking on the challenges of the tasks that cause the most negative stress and turning them into an opportunity. Cultivating an environment that makes people feel safe to try new things and push to succeed is vital to shifting stressors at work from negative to positive.

Once your team (“We”) sees your shift in attitude, their performance will improve, which is where an entire company can see a positive shift. As you focus on projects massive and minuscule, your system as a whole (“It”) will see an evolution that trends toward collaboration, synergy, and progress. One of the most incredible aspects of positive stress and developing that comfortable, encouraging environment is how very contagious it can be to the whole. 

Mindset Matters: Turning Negative Stress to Positive

How we approach stress and the ways in which we shift our framework of thinking can be incorporated into our lives if we give it an honest effort. 

A few ways of practicing that shift include:

  • Considering your resources. When faced with a problem, you have to dig into your arsenal of tools knowing that you can use them to set out on your goal.
  • Looking at the bright side. Failing in your presentation means you have an opportunity for proving to yourself and to your coworkers that you can learn and improve.
  • Don’t forget how amazing you are. Play to your strengths and remind yourself of them whenever you need a mood boost. 
  • Have a “jar half full” mindset. Try not to give the part of your brain that’s telling you the sky is falling any attention. 

This isn’t always realistic, so don’t feel bad if you and your team face a stressor that you can’t just turn into a positive. Those feelings are still valid and important, so do your best to feel them quickly, collectively address them, and move forward. 

When it comes to positive stress in the workplace, be careful—don’t turn your office into a game of creating eustress. Not everything has to be a challenge, and our societal obsession with “the grind” can cloud our thinking when it comes to improvement. There is something to be said for appreciating a comfort zone but getting outside of it when you and your team need to. Think about eustress like the eject button in James Bond’s Aston Martin. Try to maneuver a situation calmly and carefully before you push the exit button and get to grinding. 

Going Forward

Find a moment to sit down, take stock of this advice, and consider how you can use positive stress for yourself (“I”) and your team (“We”) to establish a welcoming, exciting, progressive environment (“It”). And if you need a little backup in getting those ideas to a place where your team can utilize them, I’m here to serve as a gentle push moving you forward.

Work and Stress: How Do They Correlate?

As humans, we spend almost 30% of our lives working, equivalent to about 25-30 years. Add the additional 36 years we spend sleeping, and you’ve got little time for much else. It’s no wonder why work-related stress is prevalent in so many of us. Work and stress correlate. They have no chance not to. Today we want to talk about that correlation as it relates to an individual (“I”), a team (“We”),  and work systems (“It”) to give you a better understanding of work-related stress.

What Is Stress?

You may be thinking, “I don’t need to read about what stress is—I live with it!” but it is essential to dive into the science behind stress because stress isn’t all bad. Stress is an integral part of being alive. It is what tells us, “This situation doesn’t feel right, and I need to leave.” or, “The deadline is tomorrow!? Time to pull a few extra hours.” This fight or flight feeling dates all of the way back to our ancestors when they needed to decide if they should fight an animal or dangerous situation or flee from it.

The problem exists when we can’t get rid of this feeling—when we feel stress in day-to-day situations. Chronic stress can create many issues, from low energy, insomnia, jaw-clenching, aches and pains, difficulty paying attention, poor judgment, forgetfulness, and more. When this stress is being caused by work, it is time to look at the sources and see how we can combat them.

Causes of Stress At Work

According to The American Institute of Stress, the leading causes of work stress are workload (at a whopping 46%), personnel issues (28%), juggling work and personal lives (20%), and the lack of job security (6%).

Some unnecessary stress at work can be thwarted by simply thinking ahead. We outlined how to navigate through a political season on our blog. Thinking through situations like these can help employees feel included and help keep some personnel issues at bay. Helping us thwart stress within the system of the workplace (“It”), which can trickle down.

With that in mind, knowing the workplace stressors that most employees feel on an individual level (“I”) can help you in working with your team to think ahead. Stress about job security sometimes comes down to your employees simply not receiving any feedback on their work. They may be working day-in and day-out to meet goals and deadlines and doing a wonderful job at it. However, if you do not have a feedback protocol in place, you could be missing an easy way to make sure that your team feels heard. A solution for this is to have an open dialogue with your team. Give them clear benchmarks and award good behavior. A simple “Great job.” could be the difference between your team feeling secure at their job—and thus, keeping stress within your “We” (team) at a healthier level.

Your employees also want to feel a level of control over their work outcomes. As leaders, we can sometimes want to see something done our way and only our way. But, an employee is hired to help solve a problem within the workplace. Allow them a level of freedom to get the job done and even provide new solutions to problems that could make your workflow stronger than before (“It”). Allow your employees to make suggestions and be open with you about how their job could be enhanced, and then take the suggestions seriously. You might not always want to take on an employee’s recommendation, but seriously considering what they say will make them feel heard and could save you money in the long run.

The Cost Of Work-Related Stress

For those who think in numbers or wonder how stress impacts our businesses’ bottom line, we wanted to lay out some numbers for you. According to the same article by The American Institute of Stress, job stress is expensive. In the U.S. alone, it is estimated to cost 300 billion dollars annually. Not just from workers’ compensation and less productivity either. Accidents, absentees, employee turnover, less productivity, and medical, legal, and insurance costs are outlined. So, it makes sense not only for our teams that we care so deeply about but also from a business perspective to be proactive about stress reduction and the overall positive work culture.

How To Recover From Work-Related Stress

The good news in all of this is that stress doesn’t have to lead to that 300 billion dollar price tag or for your whole team to feel a level of burnout. You can work proactively to encourage self-care and build a happy and resilient team.

We all can see burnout creeping in. Whether you feel it as a leader (“I”), you start to see your team showing some symptoms (“We”), or you start to see stress cracks in your systems (“It”). This is when it is time to take action. On an individual level, you can give your employees resources to work on their stress-levels. Fitness and mindfulness apps, time for reflection or rest, and healthy foods in the breakroom can help. For each of us, coping with stress may look a little different, but by providing the resources someone might need, you can help them get through the moments we all experience. 

Another thing to help is to think proactively. If there is something big coming up like a deadline, annual sale, a shift in the marketplace, or a shift in your team, it is essential to sit down with your HR professional and think of proactive ways to maintain your healthy workplace. Though we can’t always be proactive, it is best to get ahead of any arising issues than fight them when they are already festering. This can help keep stress within your team (“We”), and within your systems (“It”) at bay.

Wholeness At Work

This all may sound a little daunting, so having a coach or consultant come in to give some outside perspective is one great way to help. Erin has almost 15 years of experience helping leaders and teams work through burnout. Through her passion for the scientific reasons burnout persists and how to combat it, she has also created a self-guided coaching program that you can do with your entire team called Wholeness At Work. This program is meant to help you get straight to the source of your burnout and find lasting ways to the feeling of wholeness.

As you move through your professional career as a leader or an integral team member, you will feel stress. By knowing what it is and its causes, you can equip yourself with the knowledge to make you a stronger and happier colleague for your entire career. So, let’s take a moment to imagine your lasting happiness and success and celebrate it. To your future!

Erin Rocchio

Wholeness at Work