Stress Management is Easy with Planning and Equals to Stress Relief

Stress is a part of our everyday life nowadays unfortunately. It is not good for our health nor for our success if it isn’t controllable.

Apparently, April is Stress Awareness Month and this month I want to share with you on how you can reduce your stress level with a series of blog posts about stress relief.

I am a mother of a toddler who is very active and asks for human interaction rather than playing by herself like other kids do. It is precious that she wants to share her time with me but that is also very restraining for my business or household work (even if I try to include her).

I saw that this was affecting my blog and my scheduling and in turn stressed me out. I personally like stress, it makes me work effectively and fast! But this was out of control. Due to I still am finding myself on how I want to present myself to you guys I am not fully comfortable with what I have and trying out stuff along the way.

I wanted to be more creative and not have that negative stress on me. I wanted to be better because of you ladies! Therefore I started with planning my future journey and relieved a bit of that stress.

Now it is your turn to do so and I am sharing how to do it with you.

Taking control of your week and days…

Planning what you do with your time is the key to everything.

1. Track your days for a week

I want you to write down what you do during the days and track what takes how long of your time. You need to know where you have openings, where your dead time lays, how you can be effective by using it smarter.

Have a look at the empty time spots that you regularly have and try out different thing on those times. Write, read, listen, train and feel out which of these fits and feels the best for you to use as.

The more detailed look you have at your day the more of your behaviors you see that you do out of habits. For example, scrolling through Instagram or Facebook.  Are you really using it for business or are you losing yourself in it and then you see you have lost 30 minutes already.

I mean, I love to get lost on Pinterest or Instagram as well but that 30 minutes you take from your job will be a pain in the butt when you need it.

2. Set aside daily planning time

If you have things planned out you will definitely be more effective. Why? You won’t be lost in thoughts on what to do.

This is a small part of your day. It could be something between 10-20 minutes.

If you know what to do next day then you will just jump on the tasks. Write them down from the hardest to the easiest.

When the hardest task is done you will be relieved and you won’t run from it. If you leave it to the end you probably will be postponing it to later or to the other day and it will eventually be not done in time!

So taking those 10-20 minutes will be freeing at least an hour of work trying to figure out what to do.

Have a list of things to be done and write them down somewhere easy to access. Then you can fish up tasks from the list for the next day.

I recommend you to have 3-5 thing on to do list depending on how much time it takes to do them. If you do them all GREAT! Then you can pick something else from your list.

Having a smaller amount of to-do list is relieving when you are able to cross them. If you have 10 things that need to be done in front of you it will automatically stress you out.

3. Set your goals in these plans

It is important to work for a goal. You want to be moving forward.

I find setting yearly goals stresses me out at this point in my life. It feels a bit blurry. Therefore I am setting my goals quarterly.

You can set your goals quarterly by choosing a word for each quarter. Mine was growth. I am aiming to increase my email list subscribers (you need to be in it as well! Click here!), the Instagram following (I hope you are following! If not do it now) and my blog posts by sending them out regularly.

When you set out your goals with specific measurable outcomes you will need to work backward. Say that you want to have additional 100 followers in three months. What do you need to do to get them? You need to find ways to show yourself to a new audience. Will it be through hashtags? By connecting with other people? Through being a part of a community? By hosting a giveaway? Niche down to your target audience?

When you know which ways to use for your desired outcome, you need to plan them and spread them out in these three months. Your action steps will automatically appear in front of you with each step.

Through these plans, you will be knowing which of these worked and which didn’t. Which of these you can use a different approach next time. If one of your strategies worked well for you then you could use more of it etc.

4. Personal time needs to be planned as well

When you are your own boss and you are running your own business it is usually very easy to decline your own needs. This is not something that will benefit you. You need to be rested as much as you can both mentally and physically. The resting will benefit your business and your service/content quality.

This is something I have a hard time doing, to be honest. My husband is a real estate broker in one of the best areas in Istanbul and he works mostly unpredicted times due to work and traffic.

I usually plan to work during the evenings after my daughter sleeps and my husband is usually late in the evenings but when he isn’t we usually watch movies or talk about our day, about Nisa (our daughter) etc. Cuddling is good for you!

I don’t have much of a “me-time” except for a good shower and some Turkish coffee with chocolate when she is sleeping during the day.

The books I want to read are so many but don’t know where to put some reading time. Every spare time goes to my business these days. I probably have MARS somewhere in my chart where I get the push to work.

A couple of tips that could be helpful

I assume that you already have or will have the knowledge of where your time is free and if you don’t know please come back when you have done your work.

In the meantime, I will share a couple of tips that you can do to use your time wisely.

• Write down your ideas for your business, you can write content about it.
• Ideas for content can be easily done with my technique and can turn you into a Content Machine which you can read here.
• Do you travel by public transportation? PERFECT! That time can be used for some reading.
• If you feel nausea when reading on the road? No problem, you can listen to your favorite podcasts ?
• If you feel that you can focus effectively on the road while listening to music? You can plan out your next day or can set up the goals you want to achieve.
• Listen to a podcast episode when you are cleaning the house or cooking.
• You can listen to a podcast episode when you are shopping. A good way to not buy many things unnecessarily!

These are some ways to be productive, relieved of stress, practical.

I would love for you to share some of your tip and tricks. Don’t be shy about it!

What is your word for this quarter?

What are your planning secrets and how to be productive?