How to Free Yourself From Excess Work

Stress is the inevitable by-product of the high-powered lives we live. Most of the time, there’s little we can do to even-out the pressure, right? Wrong, say stress-management experts. Your boss, for example, who manages to juggle work, home, and personal fitness, or super-productive employeeswho never seem to lose their composure. How do they do it?

Step 1: Make a list of all the things you have to do.

Take an hour out for yourself, order yourself a tall, sinfully-indulgent chocolate latte, and type out all the tasks you have to accomplish in the immediate future. All your activities, from business to leisure. Don’t write it out…typing will help you sort and order better. Write the completion deadline beside each task, and then sort tasks with the most urgent at the top.

Step 2: Remove to a separate list all the items that nobody but you can perform

This part of the list should contain high impact mainly work-related tasks that are your responsibility or those that require your expertise to perform. If you can delegate the task, it cannot make this list. These are things that will severely impact your business, or non-postponeable personal commitmentslike your partner’s birthday celebration. Let’s call this one List A.

Step 3: From the main list, separate important tasks that you’d hate to delegate, but which could be done by someone else

Be ruthless with yourself. Yes, it’s difficult to let hold of the reigns, but for the sake of your sanity, you must. Beside each task, put down the name of the best person you could delegate the task to. Then send each person an email with details about what to do, with deadlines and specifications if that makes you feel better. Then forget about these. Just let go. Let’s call this list, List Z.

Step 4: From the main list again, identify all low-impact items that you took up out of a sense of obligation, or to create goodwill

These have to go too, and you know this. Now compose a short email explaining that even though you offered to do the task, you now have too many things on your plate and can’t complete it. Offer to check back with the people concerned as soon as you have some time on your hands, but be firm about not being able to help out at the moment. Mail merge, hit send, and you have List Y off your hands. (You’ll hate doing this, but do it anyway).

Step 5: From your (much shorter) main list, separate those tasks that are of medium impact but non-urgent

These can be postponed to a later date, and should be. Check deadlines here, but chances are that the world won’t come to a stop if you don’t do these immediately. Voila, List X.

Step 6: Almost done!

The rest of the tasks on your main list becomes List B. Now check Lists A and B. Identify the tasks that would take less than an hour to complete and vow to finish doing those today itself! This way, you have fewer things to worry about, and you’ve already crossed at least one item off the list by the end of the day.

Yes, this was a lot of information. Yes, it’s easier to groan that you’re too busy for words, and groaning will get you more public sympathy than delegating some tasks and refusing others. Yes, you will lose a whole hour just making lists. But you know that these six steps make sense. It’s your life that you’re de-stressing and uncluttering, after all; you could just sit tight and go on complaining, or you could reach for that latte and your laptop…