Could you ask for some help with any of these tasks?
For example, your partner may be able to help out more with looking after
the children while you are coping with stress (such as having a hard time at
work). This won’t solve your problem at work, but would give you more
energy to solve those problems yourself. A colleague at work may be available
to offer suggestions to make work easier.
Try asking other people how they deal with these stressors
People you know may have really good or enjoyable ways of dealing with
their own stress. Does a friend have an interesting hobby or pastime that you
could do as well?
Group 3:
Unavoidable stress
Some factors to consider:
Consider why you feel that these problems are unavoidable. Are you aiming
for ‘better things’ that you value highly and therefore accepting the current
stresses as a price you are willing to pay?
Other unavoidable tasks include things we “have” to do, such as picking up
children from school or completing a certain number of tasks at work.
For both group B and group C you should use as much practical and emotional
support as you can get.
8
Time management
Clear and open time management is not just a matter of creating
opportunities to get more done. It can also be used to allocate time to relax,
unwind or do things you enjoy. It should also help in being assertive, as having
a clear idea of how much time you can give to a task will make it clearer
whether or not you are the best person to be doing it at that point.
Some tips on managing your time:
The next activity will help you to review your day and how you actually used
your time. You can then consider a harder question: ‘How did you use your
time in terms of priorities?’
In the box on the next page list the things you do in your day under the
heading ‘What you did’. Then under the heading ‘How long’ make a note of
the time you spent on this, try to be as accurate and honest as possible. If you
spent 10 minutes thinking about doing a task and working yourself up to do
it, and the actual task took 30 minutes, then you spent 40 minutes in total on
this item.
Generally
Making lists
•
Selecting things - prioritising
•
Paying people to do things at
•
home
Planning - daily, weekly, monthly
•
and six monthly
Getting up earlier and using
•
prime time well - ie, I’m fresher in
the morning, therefore I will use
this time to plan my work
Remembering what you want to
•
achieve, reviewing and goal
setting
Getting each family member to
•
be responsible for cleaning/
tidying his/her own room
Breaking a project down into
•
small manageable items
Being organised - a place for
•
everything
Building in breaks and leisure
•
time daily, weekly, monthly, yearly
Using available technologies, i.e.
•
e-mailing rather than writing and
posting letters – even if it feels
that you are ‘reducing your own
high expectations of yourself’
Looking at a whole day as a series
•
of time slots, and plan accordingly
Keeping diaries
•
Delegating
•
Specific time savers
Draining, not drying, the dishes
•
Cooking ‘quick meals’
•
Buy shopping online
•
Not hunting for dirty clothes, just
•
washing what’s in the basket
Living with a dirty car
•
9
Think about how important each task was to do. Under the heading ‘Code’,
mark ‘A’ -the tasks which really needed to be done urgently and are a top
priority; ‘B’ - tasks that needed to be done at some point soon but were not
yet urgent; ‘C’ - the tasks that did not need to be done soon and were a low
priority. It may have been possible for some tasks to have been delegated, or
given to someone else; mark these with a ‘D’. Finally, for slots of time that you
were wasting when you feel you should have been doing specific things, mark
with a ‘W’.
List everything you did today, from the moment you woke up, in the space
below. Use a new line for each item. Add roughly how long you spent on each.
Bracket together things you were doing at the same time.
Now go through the list. Take one item at a time and ask yourself if doing it at that time was
the best use of your time right then? Next to each item write:
A - if it was a top priority for use of your time today.
B - if it was a medium priority for use of your time today.
C - if it was a low priority for use of your time today.
D - if you could have delegated it to someone else.
W - if you were wasting time when you had said you would be getting on with something
else.
What you did
How
long
Code
10
Review your categories
Do you think that too many of your A list items were there because they had
reached a crisis point and this was the last day you had to tackle them?
Are you spending time on things that really are a priority, or are you doing B
and C group jobs but not finishing your A list.
Time that I would have needed to finish all ‘A’ list jobs: .......................................
Jobs that I could have postponed to finish ‘A’ list jobs: .......................................
........................................
.......................................
•
•
•
•
•
•
Items that were at crisis point
A-list jobs
Finished Not
finished
11