In the past, there were already things I did to cope with all of the previous. This was especially important about 1.5 years ago when two good team members left in a short time period.
- When I come back from holidays, I process mails in some sort of burst mode. I assess whether it would take me more than 5 minutes to handle the mail. If so, I schedule a separate 15 or 30 minute meeting in my agenda to deal with it. Otherwise I process the mail immediately. The goal is to clear the mail box as soon as possible.
- Take power naps. This is officially possible at my work, although you have to badge out first.
- Talk to my boss about all of this. He is very understanding and convinced management to hire an extra person to be able to distribute the load.
- Take a Yoga class once a week. This is something I have been doing for over 15 years now and I feel it helps to drain some of the build up stress.
The first two items weren’t done very systematically. Therefore, the results were limited.
The extra person is hired 🙂 It will take another half to full year before the results will be really felt.
This is part of my “40 days without stress” series. You can start from the beginning or go to the next part on time management.
