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It's one of the greatest ironies of life: We're too frantically busy to deal with the stuff that makes us feel frantically busy -- the to-do's that overwhelm us, the clutter that eats up our homes, the niggling personal and professional issues that preoccupy our minds.
Tackling them might feel like a someday project, the kind you'll get around to when you have the time. Right.
The key to a calmer
existence, experts say, is finding bite-size, everyday solutions for
stressors and releasing what we can, be it physical or psychological
clutter.
"When you start to let
go, your life lightens up because you have less to think about and less
to maintain," says Geralin Thomas, a professional organizer in Cary,
North Carolina. "You finally feel in control."
The payoffs don't end
there -- you can sharpen your focus and even lose weight, too. These are
the strategies that will ease your load and let you enjoy life a lot
more.
Stress and sickness
A unique way to relieve traffic stress
Getting rid of stress
Clear your schedule
As we juggle it all,
we're often fueled by an I-can-do-it! sense of pride. But we might be
deluding ourselves, suggests a study in the Journal of Communication
that found that people misperceive the emotional high they get from
multitasking as productivity.
And we're not even as
good at it as we may think. Another study, published in Psychological
Science, revealed that women's ability to keep track of several tasks at
once dipped significantly during ovulation, when estrogen levels are
high (and can mess with brain function).
Technology sometimes
hampers us more than it helps, adds Laura Vanderkam, author of the book
"168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think."
"Time speeds by when you're on your smartphone e-mailing," she says, "even if you're really not doing anything important."
How to lighten up:
Suss out time sucks.
For one day, every couple of hours, note down exactly what you just
did, including things like "Read Facebook updates for a half-hour" or
"Scanned catalogs for 15 minutes after opening mail," says Vanderkam.
"You start to see the time periods that you're not using as well as
you'd like."
Stop the auto-yes.
"Everyone lives in an optimistic world and thinks that if we say yes we
will find the time, but the truth is we are in denial," says Julie
Morgenstern, one of the top organization and productivity experts in the
country. Instead, experiment with saying, "Let me think about how I can
do that," says Morgenstern. "This way you can step back and evaluate if
you really can do what is being asked."
Have a plan.
"Most people's to-do lists actually create fatigue, because they don't
clarify how, exactly, they are going to handle Mom's birthday, so tasks
feel bigger than they are," says David Allen, a productivity expert and
author of the best-selling book "Getting Things Done." Take a second to
jot down how you'll tackle something. Feel better already?
Just do it.
Allen regularly tells clients to follow his Two-Minute Rule: If
something can be done in two minutes, go ahead and get it done. Explains
Allen, "It will take you longer to look at it again than it would take
to finish it the first time you think of it."
Reconsider rewards.
Carefully examine your commitments, says Morgenstern, and decide which
ones energize you -- and which deplete you. For the tasks that send your
misery Geiger counter off the charts, pinpoint whatever reward you get
from them and find a better way of scoring it.
One client of
Morgenstern's wasn't really enjoying volunteering for the PTA because it
took time away from her kids, but she kept at it because she thought it
showed her children she considered school important.
Ultimately, she switched
over to running the occasional fun class activity and giving her kids
more hands-on help with homework. "These things took less time,"
Morgenstern notes, "and she and her family got more out of them."
Clear your clutter
Dusting, mopping, vacuuming: That's easy. Getting rid of all the junk you have to dust, mop and vacuum around? Not so much.
"Giving things up is
tough because it's not so clear-cut when they're no longer useful," says
Morgenstern, author of the book "Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life."
You don't stop wearing jeggings on a Tuesday at 4 p.m.; you just
gradually stop doing so, even as they languish on a hanger.
The thing is, those
pile-ups of possessions can create anxiety; a study at UCLA found that
just looking at clutter elevated women's stress hormones (although, no
surprise, the men's cortisol levels remained unchanged).
Motivation to get going
on cleaning house: You may look better, too. As Thomas points out, "One
big change I see in clients who have de-cluttered is weight loss. Once
they have shaped their environment, they're ready to shape up
themselves."
How to lighten up:
Think small.
"We know from research that little acts of neatness cascade into larger
acts of organization," says Christine Carter, a sociologist at UC
Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. Forget about organizing the
entire kitchen; focus on, say, the plastic containers taking over your
cabinets.
"With random
de-cluttering, there's always more that you can do," notes Thomas. "When
one category is tackled, there's definitely an end point."
Be a regular. Perhaps
you dedicate, say, 10 minutes a weekday to an organizing project. Or
you commit to doing a couple of hours for a few weekends in a row. The
point is, be consistent and attentive; turn off your cell phone and
schedule child care.
Thomas does a weekly
"Trash Eve" de-clutter: "The garbage in my neighborhood is picked up on
Wednesdays, which makes Tuesdays the night I make an easy supper and
clear the decks!"
Decide what's treasure and what's toss-able.
Ask yourself just one question before you start purging any collection
of stuff, recommends Morgenstern: "If everything was stolen, what pieces
would I go out and buy the very next day?" There you go -- the costume
jewelry, canned goods and linens you truly want and need.
Pre-arrange pickups.
About 40% of people who purge never manage to get the stuff out of
their homes, per a poll of 23,000 people on Morgenstern's website. Avoid
becoming a hoarder statistic by scheduling a pickup before you start to
clean your house. Try salvationarmyusa.org, goodwill.org or excessaccess.org, a not-for-profit that connects people with local schools and charities in need of specific goods.
Clear your mind
It's not just that we
have a lot to keep track of -- it's our DIY mentality, says Dr. Orit
Avni-Barron, director of Women's Mental Health at Brigham and Women's
Hospital in Boston. "I hear women say, 'My husband is so great, he helps
me,'" as if our partners are our sous chefs instead of co-cooks.
Another issue: Women
worry twice as much as men, research shows. "Worrying impairs
concentration and memory," says Robert Leahy, director of the American
Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York City. "You can't tend to the
present and worry about the future at the same time. It's
overwhelming."
How to lighten up:
Pop annoying thought bubbles.
Psychologists talk of the Zeigarnik effect, named after a Russian
shrink who realized that a waiter could more easily recall incomplete
orders than served ones. The follow-up study showed that people are 90%
more likely to remember undone tasks than those they completed. "Tell
your brain when you'll get a task done," says Carter. "It kills the
worry loop."
Control what's possible.
"When we don't know how something will work out, we worry to get
certainty," says Leahy. Yet one study at Penn State University found
that 85% of things people fretted about had neutral or positive
outcomes. To quell anxiety, throw yourself into what you can accomplish
-- say, writing the introduction to the PowerPoint document instead of
ruminating on the presentation. "You'll feel good about the present and
put other thoughts on pause," says Leahy.
Be hands-on.
Weed, knead dough, do a craft, says Dr. Gayatri Devi, associate
professor of neurology at New York University. "When you think about
something tangible, you stop thinking about the theoretical."
Grade perfection on a curve.
"We have reached a tipping point in perfection. People are realizing we
can't do it all at the level that we used to," says Morgenstern.
That means you, sister!
Start with the obvious: Divvy up more responsibilities with your
partner, even if he does them differently. And try Morgenstern's
Minimum, Moderate, Maximum strategy: Decide what level of effort you can
give tasks (and get away with). As she says, "You may be surprised to
find that everything works out OK."
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"The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, don't settle."--Steve Jobs
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