Physical Impact of stress on the Body – Part 2.

Most people now have at least one smartphone, normally a work phone, a blackberry and a personal phone.  With our professional and personal inbox's bulging, is constantly checking our email turning us all into unproductive email junkies?  An article in this Thursday's Evening Standard called "Supertask me", made me think.  Now that we live in a world where we only are without email on a flight (a blissful respite that I am sure we will loose soon) are we all email junkies? Checking your email is a double edged sword.  On the one hand if you check it too often then it becomes too frequent an interruption, you feel very busy but checking it too often will adversely impact your productivity.  On the other hand we’ve constantly got to be checking it, or risk the wrath of the bosses and co-workers that are trying to communicate with us. If we don’t respond to an email within 5 minutes, we’re seen as lazy or unproductive. As calling a co-worker when you want an urgent response has been replaced by email, the temptation is to constantly check your emails to demonstrate you are at the top of your game. With the amount of email we receive now and need to respond to now, its very easy to feel overwhelmed.  In today's world we are all adept at multi-tasking but really this means we are great at switching from one task to another.  So how often so you switch from your real work to checking our email?  This constant switching requires more mental effort than our actual work.  Remember there’s a huge difference between being busy and being productive. So how often should you check your email?  There is no accepted norm, and you know your job better than any expert,  so take the time to reflect on what will work best for you.  Some experts suggest that you don't check your email first thing in a morning or you only check your email first thing in a morning.  Personally I think these strategies only work if you are very high up on the food chain.  Rod Kurtz of Business Week argues that you ought to be checking your work email five times per day.  “Check your inbox only five times daily–first thing in the morning, mid-morning, after lunch, mid-afternoon, and end of day. Or even less if you are capable. This works when you turn off the automatic send/receive function, allowing you up to two hours to focus on your work, rather than to be continually interrupted. It works when you group the sorting of your e-mail, making you more productive and efficient in dealing with it.” With regards to dealing with email, every time you open a new email, ask yourself 3 basic questions: 1. Is this relevant? 2. Can I solve this? 3. Will it take less than 2 minutes of my time to deal with this? - If so deal with it straight away. Make sure that you schedule your email time in such a way that you avoid confusing the being busy with email and real work. If you approach your email with the correct attitude, you can boost your productivity by leaps and bounds and you free yourself from being an email junkie.

In general in life I am very self-motivated, which is essential when you are self-employed.  However this is the time of year of my annual bout of procrastination kicks in.  Each year I promise myself its going to be different, I will fill out my tax form early and every year, like ground hog day, I leave it as late as possible.  So this year I decided to research options for helping me tackle my procrastination around doing my accounts and filling out my tax form. I read the reason most people procrastinate is that they consider the task unpleasant or boring or they associate unpleasant feelings with the task.  To me this is blatantly obvious as no on every puts of anything they enjoy.  For me tax forms manage to be both unpleasant and boring.  So I decided that this year I would try a new approach to tackle my procrastination. Firstly I decided to focus on the end goal.  As filling out a tax form leaves me cold, I decided that focusing on the fine for not doing it on time would motivate me, after all my money is on line.  As in life I tend to prefer more positive options, I decided to pencil in a treat for myself when I finished, so I am going to arrange a girlie lunch for a specific date so I have something positive to look forward to. In the past I have dedicate one sold lump of time to doing my accounts and tax form and plodded through it.  This year I decide that I would split it down into little chunks as this should help me do it with a smile on her face. In addition some experts recommend roping a friend so that you have a buddy to help motivate you and also making a public commitment to completing something helps motivate you.  So this is my public commitment. So now its just a case of taking the first step and staring.

Following on from last week’s entry on building resilience, it is important to state that resilience don’t just help you manage stress but it fosters inner strength to help you meet goals, life challenges and achieve success. Most of my clients hold more or less physical tension which I would like you to think of as a bad habit that relaxation will help you break.  Relaxation is like changing the idling speed on a car.  When a car turns over too quickly, wasting expensive fuel and putting a strain on the engine, the mechanic can reset the idling speed to a much lower level.  Similarly when busyness, concerns, time pressure have speeded us up too much, making us tense and irritable, we can learn how to let go and attain a much calmer state of being.  So taking the time to learn what relaxes you! It is worth re-emphasising the point that it is possible to make an enormous difference to your state of mind through yoga, tai chi, relaxation and meditation and all other sorts of physical exercise. While most of celebrate our wins, it is also important to celebrate when we do good for others, as often other’s don’t notice.  We all know life has its ups and downs, when your life is in turmoil, you may not do things "perfectly".  Rather than worrying or simply surviving turmoil, why not ask what you can learn from the situation.  But don’t beat yourself up, remember you always do your best, when you know better, you do better! One habit that I try to cultivate to help put a smile on my face especially when I am feeling down is to cultivate a gratitude attitude.  However bad my day goes, before I got to sleep I try to think of three things that I am grateful for.   These don’t need to be big things; it can be as simple as “I am grateful that the transport system ran on time” as I had a busy day.  A gratitude attitude helps foster joy, fulfilment & peace of mind.