BY: Erik Sherman
You need peace of mind to work efficiently and make
smart decisions. Get back some of your sanity--and productivity--with
these tips.
You could say that stress is one of those #firstworldproblems. But if
you're an entrepreneur, stress is far more than a hipster hashtag on
Twitter. It can be distracting, lower your productivity, affect your
leadership, and even damage your health. (The last comes from my own
experience years ago of developing pneumonia and shingles simultaneously
after a tough time trying to get a consulting business off the ground.)
Author Heidi Grant Halvorson, associate director for the Motivation
Science Center at the Columbia University Business School, has a list of sound strategies
that can help reduce stress and let you focus on what is important, not
what is nibbling at the edges of your peace of mind. Here are four of
them. I've translated them from psych talk to regular business English.
1. Stop beating yourself up.
Halvorson talks of having self compassion, but let's get to the real
heart of the matter. Entrepreneurs are typically driven people and they
often make the mistake of assuming that flogging the horse that has
tripped will make things better. It won't. Beating up yourself (or
others, for that matter) rests on an assumption that the person who
makes a mistake is just lazy or intentionally dense. But no one is
perfect, including you. Admit you're human and focus on finding
solutions to a problem or developing systems that will shore up where
you fall short.
2. Put things into context.
There are all sorts of activities that are time consuming and
grinding. Anyone who disagrees should open their email and see how many
unexamined or unanswered messages they have. But the proper context can
make things more bearable because it helps you remember not just what
you're doing, but why you're doing it. When staying late in the day to
answer those emails or inputting expenses and invoices into your
accounting system, remind yourself that it all goes into building your
business. Suddenly what was an annoyance is a lot more important.
3. Use routine to cut unnecessary decisions.
Halvorson points out that the invisible in life--making
decisions--can create as much stress as dealing with those emails and
accounting systems. It's the mental tension of wrestling among a number
of options that tires you. As she writes, "This is why shopping is so
exhausting--it's not the horrible concrete floors, it's all that deciding." So use routine to reduce the number of decisions you have to make. For example, President Obama uses routine
to make his days less complicated. "'You'll see I wear only gray or
blue suits,' he said. 'I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want
to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too
many other decisions to make.'"
4. Add when or where to the to-do list.
I recently wrote about the legendary time management tip
of prioritized to-do lists. But Halvorson offered a new intriguing
variation: adding the location and time at which you'll do things.
Apparently, many studies have shown that deciding in advance where and
when you'll perform a task--whether working out or returning phone
calls--can double to triple the chances that you'll do it. It further
reduces the number of decisions you make and sets up your unconscious to
look for the opportunity to complete the task. Of course, if you're
using prioritized task completion, where the most important one gets
done first, this may not always work. So do it when it can, even
treating the task as a scheduled appointment.
SOURCE: www.inc.com
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