Time & Stress

Photo with words related to content of time and stress

Strategies for
Effectively Managing Time and Stress

Lessons Barbara Has Learned
from Years of Self-employment

“Time will always expand for you when it’s important and necessary.” – Barbara

“If your blood pressure readings have been rising lately, maybe you don’t need medication. Maybe you just need to stop doing that particular thing you wish you didn’t have to do any more. It’s not easy to make a major change in your personal or business life, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do it.” – Barbara

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• A Perfect Formula for Getting Anything Done. This idea from a leading business consultant gave Barbara the motivational push she needed when she knew she had to change directions as a writer to retain her enthusiasm for her work.

• Are You a Procrastinator? If so, it doesn’t mean you’re lazy. It’s just “the Zeigarnik Effect” kicking in. Understand it and you can beat procrastination.

• Are You a Workaholic Heading for Burnout? What Barbara missed the summer she let the demon on her shoulder convince her that her work was so important she couldn’t take time to enjoy life.

• Business Deadlines Were Made to be Broken. Are you stressed because your happiness and time with loved ones is slipping away as you allow business deadlines or customer demands to dictate how you live your life? (“This is one of the most important articles I’ve ever read,” one businesswoman wrote.)

• Dealing with Holiday Stress and Burnout. Barb’s cure for both—with tips on planning a “staycation,” a story about Houska, and a reminder of the reason for the season.

NEW: How to Find Enough Time for Everything. Our goal must be to make every minute count, and as we’re counting, we should also keep reflecting on what we’ve accomplished to date.

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.” – Louis Hector Berlioz

• How to Stop Worry at the Gate. If we don’t get a grip on worry, it can completely debilitate us from the inside out.

NEW: Humorous Stress-Busting Strategies. Many find it a constant struggle to find ways to build in some down time to relieve stress and just have a life. In fact, the more creative you are, the harder this will be to do.

“Laughter is a great stress reliever. Whenever you find yourself in water over your head, keep afloat by latching on to the lifesaver raft of laughter and take a tip from society gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell (1883-1963), who once advised, ‘Laugh at yourself first before anyone else can!’” – Barbara

• I Already Did That! A New Year’s resolution that Changed Barbara’s Life. Now is a good time to think about eliminating things that are causing you stress because you no longer want to do them.

• The Many Faces of Stress and Why Women Handle it Better than Men. An experience with forgetfulness taught Barbara a new lesson about how stress can affect our daily activities.

• Pruning Your Life to Encourage Growth. As we grow older, we need to think about ridding our lives of things that are stressing us, taking more time than we want to give them, or are simply becoming a burdensome physical responsibility.

• Stress and Blood Pressure: What Stress Does to You and What You Can Do About It. How Barbara dramatically lowered her blood pressure by identifying the one thing that was causing most of her stress. (Includes perspective on stress and the Pandemic).

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” – Bertrand Russell

•  Time Flies—but How Did We Get This Old So Fast? Do you know how to estimate how long you might expect to live? The good news is that your life expectancy increases with each passing year.

• What Time is it on Your Cell Phone? A little levity for time-challenged home-business owners.

“You get my age and you can’t avoid thinking about time. When I was 20, it used to take a year for a year to go by. Now a year goes by in two and a half months.” – Paul Newman, on his 55th birthday

“The Pareto Principle—the 80/20 rule—applies to matters of time, meaning that 20 percent of what you do will probably yield 80 percent of the results. Thus, in setting priorities on things to be done, you need to identify and place uppermost on your to-do list the 20 percent of the work that’s the most important to your business or personal life.” – Barbara

Back to Top

All Articles T/C