4 Steps to a Stress-Free Day

By developing the habit of scheduling a daily planning session, you are on your way to learning how to lead a proactive, deliberate life. Your daily planning session need last no longer than 15 minutes each day.

Schedule a regular time for your daily planning session, and put it on your schedule as a recurring event. Night owls may prefer to schedule a regular evening planning session; early birds may feel fresher early in the morning. It’s best to develop a regular time for your daily planning session.

Use your daily planning session to:

• Review - Reviewing tomorrow’s schedule. 
  • Add any additional tasks that have come up. 
  • Make notes on tomorrow’s tasks that may be helpful.

• Prepare – Gather all items you’ll need tomorrow, and place them on your “launching pad”.

• Preview - Glance at your schedule for the remainder of the week so that you can think ahead and avoid surprises later in the week.

• Balance - Take a moment to think about the balance in your life.  Ask yourself whether you’ve left enough time for family, friends, and self-nurturing.

Make a commitment to a month of daily planning sessions.  You’ll be amazed at how this single habit can help reduce your stress level, increase your satisfaction with daily life and help you feel more in control of your daily life.

Returning from Vacation

If you feel that you need a vacation to recover from your vacation, try these steps next time you take a trip.

So many people don’t plan well before their vacation. It’s a bit like throwing everything into the closets when company is coming. If you don’t plan well for your trip, you’ve tossed everything not related to your trip into the closet. When you open that closet door the day you return from vacation, everything comes tumbling out – unpaid bills, piled up phone messages, mountains of email, looming deadlines at home, at school and at work. Coming home can be a time of dread rather than a time to savor the vacation and enjoy the last night before resuming your daily routine.

As with almost any challenge, pre-planning is the key. Just as a good day begins the night before with a good bedtime routine, a good return-from-vacation starts with pre-vacation planning.

Life generally runs more smoothly if you don’t stick your head in the sand about tasks that need to be done shortly after your return. So, in preparing for re-entry, use this checklist BEFORE you head off on your trip:

1. Write checks for all personal bills that are due shortly after your return. That way you can just pop them in the mail when you get back – no need for stressful late-night catching up on unpaid bills when you come back.
2. Create an organized, PRIORITIZED to-do list at work – waiting for you on you’re CLEARED OFF desk when you return.
3. Do a review of all important work-related tasks that are pending the week after your vacation.
   • Delegate any tasks that you can to others on your team that will be in town during your absence.
   • Arrange to communicate by email during your trip if any work other team members do needs your review or approval.
4. Set aside limited time (no more than 30 minutes) each day to review email during your absence. Returning to a mountain of email, some of which is urgent or overdue, creates a highly stressful re-entry.
5. Delegate any urgent tasks that come up during your absence by forwarding urgent emails to your designated back-up person.
6. Use the inevitable wait times associated with travel for productivity. Instead of sleeping on the plane or wandering through airport shops between flights, use this valuable time for important reading, writing or planning.
7. Use vacation time as time to think about your work life and home life from a big picture perspective. Use long walks on the beach, or peaceful evenings gazing at the surf as time to re-evaluate the big items in your life. So often, the frantic flow of daily life keeps us from having time to look at the big picture and make important changes.

Try these steps next time you’re out of town – whether on business or pleasure. You’ll have a calmer and more productive re-entry at home, at work and at school.

Stress-Free Vacation Planning

If you’re like many others, getting ready for a summer vacation can be a very stressful time, which can take the fun out of a much-needed break. If you’re on vacation countdown, try these five steps to feel more organized and prepared.

1.  Write down the names of every major “project” – whether personal, professional or school-related.  During this summer season, your list may look something like this. It’s a mix of work, personal and school. And, as you’re preparing to be away from work and school for 10 days, you’re feeling under the gun.

Work

• Write meeting summary and distribute to attendees
• Research cost and features of new phone systems for office
• Edit memo Ed sent and forward to Chris
• Write agenda for weekly team meeting and distribute
• Return calls from Outcast Media and Calventure

Summer vacation

• Confirm airline reservations.
• Check on rental car.
• Send emails to Aunt Linda about hotel in San Diego
• Buy travel guide to Southern California
• Cancel paper
• Make reservations at dog kennel

Part-time MBA program

• Paper on micro-economics, due Friday – 12-15 pages.
• Read chapters 3&4 – Business Management

2.  Estimate how much time each task will take. Write down your time estimate next to each task. Then schedule each task (work tasks during work hours, lunch hour for personal phone calls related to vacation; school and personal tasks during after work hours).

3.  Then, organize your tasks according to deadline.

• If you’re leaving on vacation at the end of the week, your vacation plans are high on the list. Set aside an hour, and you’ll be able to knock off all 6 items that have been nagging you for the past week.
• Look at your work items, and check off those that MUST be completed before you leave. Set aside specific times at work to complete each MUST-DO item this week. Schedule the others after your return.
• Set aside Thursday night for packing if you depart on Saturday. Then turn in your paper on Friday, and you’re ready for your trip with a fairly clean slate!
• Look at your school items. Your paper is due Friday - which means you need to set aside specific chunks of time to complete it. Mark off 3-4 hours on Mon., Tues., and Wed. nights to complete your paper.

4.  Look for extra little “corners” of time to get tasks done. For example, if you’re flying to California, you’ve got at least 8 hours of flight time going out and back for you to read your assigned chapters for class and to write some of the memos and summaries that will be due when you get back.

5.  Set aside a regular (but LIMITED) amount of time each day to keep up with email. That way, your re-entry will be smoother and less stressful.

Overcome Email Overload

A crowded e-mail inbox can be a source of nonstop digital distractions. This 11-step program will help anyone get organized to tackle e-mails before they pile up.

Use the following strategies to manage time, get organized, and keep digital messages from crowding out important tasks that need to get done at work and at home:

Limit Messages

The fewer email messages that come in, the fewer you have to deal with.

1. Set e-mail software filters for messages you want to receive, but don’t need to read right away. They will automatically be archived or moved to a folder you designate. To set up a filter in Outlook, choose “Rules and Alerts” from the Tools menu; in Gmail, click “settings” (at the upper right of your screen), then click the “filters” tab.
2. Mark unwanted e-mails as spam. Future messages from the sender will go to your junk-mail folder.
3. Use an e-mail-filtering program to limit access to your inbox. These programs, such as ChoiceMail, automatically approve e-mails only from the senders you know and trust. Unapproved senders will be blocked.

Manage Messages You Receive

1. Resist opening e-mails first thing in the morning.
2. Ask others that you work with regularly to only CC you on truly important messages.
3. Don’t allow others to set your agenda. Set a schedule to attend to e-mail -- a half-hour before lunch and a half-hour before you leave for the day.
4. Turn off the e-mail notification function. Having attention called to each new message is a distraction that you don’t need.
5. Limit follow-up e-mails. Create a subject line that lets the recipient know exactly what your message is about.
6. Respond to any e-mail that requires a brief response as soon as you open it. Don't put it off to re-read later.
7. Mark e-mails that require an action. You’ll be able to quickly find the action items later on.
8. Empty your inbox every day. Old e-mails that require no immediate action distract you from more important e-mails that require your attention.

Follow these simple rules, and you’ll soon find you have more time for important tasks. Don’t spend your day in “reply mode” – set your own agenda!

Organizing, one drawer at a time

I’m going to get organized! After “losing weight”, “getting organized” is the most common New Year’s resolution. We all want to be more organized; we just don’t know how to do it. We imagine that the people who are organized are impossibly self-disciplined. We look at our clutter, feel tired, and let out a sigh as we turn on the TV, pick up a magazine, or answer the phone.

Clean out the garage? I don’t know where to put all that stuff! If I take it all out, I’ll only have to put it all back after I sweep the floor. And the last thing I want to do on a nice day is stay home and dig out the garage! I work hard all week. On the week-end, I need a break! If this sounds like you, take heart. You don’t have to become a perfect person. And you don’t have to give up your week-end.

We don’t create our clutter and mess all at once, and we don’t have to clean it up all at once. In fact, a big dig-out is a lot like a crash diet. The basement or the garage may look great after you’ve exhausted yourself cleaning it up, but you’re soon up to your old habits, and the clutter reappears.

So, instead of the “crash cleanout” try something different- and a whole lot easier. Try to find 15 minutes each day to devote to de-cluttering. Pick a room you’re in anyway, and then look for one small project – one shelf, one drawer, one box – that you can clean out that day. For example, if you’re in the kitchen boiling water for pasta, this is the perfect time to pick a kitchen drawer to re-organize. Or, you might be in the basement doing laundry – a perfect time to pick one storage shelf to rearrange and de-clutter.

Take one small place, and sort the items into:

•  Keep. Place back in the drawer or back on the shelf.
• Throw Away. These you immediately put in the trash.
• Give Away. Put in a box or bag that you will take to your favorite charity or leave on the curb for pick-up.

If you try this one small, do-able habit – and grab a moment to organize each day – you’ll gradually see order emerge. No more need for HUGE clean-outs. Instead, underwhelm yourself – easy does it!

And let order emerge one drawer at a time.