How to Stop Being Stressed When You Have Too Much Going On

For the last few months my life has been very busy. I have been trying to sell my London flat, publish a book, launch it and do all the other things required by my daily life. Not knowing when I’m going to move has also added the difficult dimension of not being able to make solid plans for things like holidays or ensuring that my work commitments fit with the geography of my new home. Throughout this time I have often felt stressed and overwhelmed.

There is a silver lining in every cloud and in spite of this stress I have come up with a time management method that has proved very effective. Every Sunday I give a few minutes thought to the week ahead and I decide upon three things that I would like to achieve that week. Examples of these are: decide on a web designer for the website for my book, contact solicitor about changes to the lease of the flat and find out how one of my friends launched her book. This week my goals are to sort out the book launch evening, see if it is possible to establish a timetable for completing on my flat sale and starting thinking about PR for the book.

The beauty of this method is that you break down a scary task, such as a book launch, into manageable chunks that you can get done alongside the other demands of your work and family responsibilities. Committing to just three actions is effective because it is not so many that it is too onerous to get them done every week yet over the course of a few weeks you will make great progress towards your goals.

Doing this has helped me stay on track with everything that is on my plate. While there are many tasks that lie ahead, some of them daunting, I am gradually ticking more and more items off of my to-do list. Occasionally I am not successful and one of the tasks may appear on my list for a couple of weeks but even when this has happened, I have usually made some progress towards completing it.

This Sunday evening, before you go to bed, decide on three things that you can get done in the week ahead that will take you closer to your dreams and goals. Then imagine how good it is going to feel the following weekend when you have done them and can come up with three more.