Time Management the Key to Reducing Work-Related Stress
One of the significant stressors in contemporary work environment is time urgency. You wake up in the morning and think about your deadlines and the workload for the day. Does this sound familiar? This is when the stress response kicks in, and your cortisol and adrenalin levels begin to rise. Of course, some stress is good for motivation and goal achievement but too much tips you over the edge into feelings of overwhelm, frustration, and anxiety.
A critical factor in managing stress is to have effective time management strategies. This is important because research shows that those with better time management have lower stress levels. For example, one study that trained employees with a time management seminar resulted in less reported worry and avoidance behaviour, in addition to an increased ability to manage their time (Van Eerde, 2003). Another time management training intervention resulted in employees reporting increased perceived control of their time, as well as decreased stress (Häfner & Stock, 2010). One successful time management intervention that resulted in less increased stress in the experimental group, compared to the control group, used task prioritising, goal-setting techniques (setting proximal, challenging, and specific goals and monitoring goal achievement), mental simulations of the tasks the participants desired to perform the next day, and structuring the next workday by deciding where and when they wanted to work (Häfner, Stock, Pinneker, & Ströhle, 2014).
Task Prioritising
Working with a project like focus of task priorities and interdependencies will help you know you are going to get to where you need to go.
Goal Setting
Achieving our goals sets off the reward receptors in our brains which not only increases our sense of self-efficacy and achievement also buffers the autonomic stress response.
Goals setting should follow the SMART framework.
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic and
Time-framed
But should also be focused on core personal and business values. This process of aligning and tapping into values both increases intrinsic motivation and once again activates rewards centers in the brain.
A key thing to remember in goal setting is that the achievement of goals needs to be acknowledged and rewarded in some way. Building on learning theory, reinforcement is the key to keeping the momentum going. The simple task of ticking a goal off can sometimes be enough however, organisations who reward goal achievement have been shown to outperform those that do not (Wood et al., 2013).
A trap for young players in the goal-setting game is not allowing some level of flexibility this encompasses both the realistic and time-frames category of SMART acronym. So essentially, the goal needs to be able to be realistically achieved within a time-range Life isn’t tied up in a neat little bow and allowing some slack (a project related term) within the timeframe will keep your overall time management process
Visualisations.
The human brain is made up of billions of neurons that combine to form neural pathways. The capability of our brains to create, organise, and reorganise these pathways has been observed through patients who have sustained an injury to these pathways and have been able to rebuild their pre-morbid capabilities. The term for this adaption and growth of the neural pathways of the brain is neuroplasticity.
However, what’s really exciting about neuroplasticity is that you can regulate and direct the formation of these pathways. By regularly activating specific pathways, such as with creative visualisation, you strengthen them. Equally, by not activating them, you weaken them (a process called synaptic pruning).
Furthermore, research has shown creative visualisation, when done properly, has essentially the same impact on neural pathways as actually experiencing the event (Guillot, Guillot, Collet, & Collet, 2010) The mechanisms in your brain that forge these new paths can’t tell the difference between an imagined event or real one, so long as the visualised image is powerful enough.
Use 5-minute visualisations at the end of the day to plan the next day and start off the day with the same imagery. Do this enough and you will begin to see the results. But remember neural pruning happens rapidly so consistency is the key,
Lee Spencer
BBus(Mgt), BSocSc(Psych)
See service guide for time-management intervention offering
References
Guillot, A., Guillot, A., Collet, C., & Collet, C. (2010). The neurophysiological foundations of mental and motor imagery: Oxford University Press.
Häfner, A., & Stock, A. (2010). Time management training and perceived control of time at work. Journal of Psychology, 144, 429–447. Häfner, A., Stock, A., Pinneker, L., & Ströhle, S. (2014). Stress prevention through a time management training intervention: An experimental study. Educational Psychology, 34, 403–416.
Van Eerde, W. (2003). Procrastination at work and time management training. Journal of Psychology, 137, 421–434.
Wood, J., Zeffane, R., Fromholtz, M., Wiesner, R., Morrison, R., Seet, P., . . . Osborn, R. (2013). Organisational behaviour: core concepts and applications (Third Australasian ed.). Milton, QLD 4064: John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.