Episode #26: Stress Kills

We create stress for ourselves don’t we. We often do this through being disorganized and time poor at the same time. We get into a habit of how we work and it is usually not the most effective system. There are some simple steps we can take which will really help us to get more efficiency out of our way of working. Let’s take a look at how we can be more productive.

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately. It is hard to get married in Japan. In the 1930s nearly 70% of marriages were arranged. By 1960 that number fell to 50% and in 2015 it was down to 5.5%. The proportion of people who have never married by the age of 50 has climbed from 12.6% of men and 6% of women in 2000, to 23.4% for men and 14% of women in 2015. Basically it has doubled. As a result more and more parents are attending matchmaking parties. Living Mariage holds these parties three to four times a month up from an average of once a month, up until three years ago. In 2017, the company held 40 matchmaking sessions drawing around 2000 participants. The parties last two hours and cost 10,000 yen per person. Naoya Hirano from Living Mariage says, “the biggest advantage of matchmaking parties for parents is that they can meet potential ln-laws in advance and get a general idea of the family’s outlook and values”. People living alone will make up nearly 40% of all households by 2040. So if you are single and want to marry a Japanese man or women, there is a big supply of unmarried partners available here.

This is episode number 26 and we are talking about how to End Your Stress.

Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

It is no shock and awe surprise that most of us spend more time working than we do on any other activity. As the pressure to do more, faster, better with less continues to mount the work day just dominates our lives. Life is becoming more and more hectic, as we all switch to a 24/7 lifestyle, thanks to IPads, smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Line, etc. As a consequence stress levels seem to be constantly rising. If we don’t want to have major health problems, we must find simple ways to reduce stress at our workplace. Today we know the link between stress and heart attacks, strokes and various other debilitating illnesses.

There is no need to for things to get to that serious stage though. Here are some working habits that we can adopt to minimize worry, fatigue and potential ill health:

1. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.

The reason we have all that paper around us is we are filing it on our desk. Every flat surface becomes an archive of work we need to do but haven’t gotten around to doing just yet. TRAF it instead.

T is for Tossit away. Whenever I look in my physical files, I always notice that there is a lot of paper which I never look at and never need. At the magical point of deciding to toss or file, I utter these fatal words to myself, “I had better keep this just in case I need it”. Years go by and I never actually needed it. In fact, I have usually completely forgotten I even had it in the first place. I am sure I am not alone. So let’s toss it out earlier rather than later.

R is for Referit to someone else for action. This is Delegation 101, but most of us are weak on the delegation front, mainly because we don’t do it the right way. Normally, we say dumb things like, “It will be quicker if I do it myself”. When we do actually get around to delegating tasks, we just dump the offending documents or projects on their desk, tell them to take care of it and then breezily glide off into the distance. Instead, we need to have a proper conversation with the delegatee on why doing this task is in their interest and map out the follow-up process. The leader’s job is to build people and the way to help staff rise is to give them tasks they would have to do at the next level. This is why delegation is there to help them get a sense for what the boss’s work entails. We need that conversation so that we get their buy-in. If we get their ownership, then we can hand over responsibility, lighten our load and move to a “monitor only” mode.

A is for Actionit. Either we knock it off right there and then, if we can do it in under two minutes OR we should park it and add it to our To Do list, prioritized for a later time. To do it later, go to your diary, find the day when you will be able to do it and make an appointment on that day with yourself, to devote to completing that task. Putting the item in the diary and nominating exactly when during the day you will work on it, increases the chance of it getting done when it needs to get done. Putting the piece of paper back in the file doesn’t mean it will ever get done or done on time.

F is for File. Before you take the plunge and file it, ask yourself if you really, really, really need this information? Maybe you only need a small part of it, in which case take a photo of it or get that bit into Evernote or some similar alternative. You might scan the document and file it electronically and eliminate the physical record completely. Maybe you don’t feel comfortable doing this with certain bits of paper, but I will guess the majority could be safely scanned and then unceremoniously dumped.

Some workplaces have adopted the paperless nirvana and everything is scanned and stored digitally. The team get a tiny little wheeled cabinet to hold everything! I look at that and say to myself, “if they can do it maybe I can do it too!”.

2. Do things in the order of their importance.

Major insight - not all bits of paper have the same value!!! Prioritising work is a must. We can’t do everything, but we can do the most important things. We just need to decide what they are and start there. We keep moving the paper around our desk, as we grapple with what to do with it all. The sheer volume starts to weigh on us and we have trouble sorting the numerous sheafs littering our desk. A quick sort into two piles of high and low priority will soon having your eyes occupied with only the most important items rather than drowning in paper. Better to get rid of the paper altogether, but if you can’t, at least sort in into Chaos One and Chaos Two piles.

So what more can we do to become more productive?

3. Learn to organize and delegate responsibility.

This is similar to Refer except that with expert delegation the task never arrives on your desk in the first place! You head it off at the pass, and make sure it is re-routed to the delegatee first. Our job is to discuss the task with the delegatee before they start work on it. Monitor their work to make sure they are on track and then let them do it – don’t buy it back under any circumstances. We also need to inform others in the team, that from now on the delegatee and not you, need to see all the information on the topic. Get helpful team members to stop copying you in on every related email and all the other irrelevant emails they copy you on in as well, clogging up the inbox! I hate those replies that go to all the people who were included in the original email. Try to avoid that and just send your answer back to the person who sent the email and leave everyone else out of it, unless there is some reason they need to know what your answer was. Encourage others to do the same.

4. Don't keep putting off problems.

Having said that though, there is both positive and negative procrastination. Deciding not to do something now may be the best choice. We just need to be aware that this is what we are deciding. Negative procrastination is not doing something we should, when we should be doing it, because we are immobilized through fear of making a decision. When you have a problem, solve it then and there, if you have the facts necessary to make a decision. As the saying goes, “if you have to swallow a frog, do it in one gulp!”.

None of these ideas will be news to any of us. We know all of this, but we just don’t do it. We understand the concepts but we don’t apply. We get it, but we do nothing about it! Distress arises when we feel overwhelmed and somehow paper and email gang up on us to increase our stress levels.

Simple works best, so let’s get started with some simple solutions to our work overload situation.

Some key learnings:

1. TRAF our way into better productivity
2. Prioritise
3. Delegate
4. Swallow our frog in one gulp