Two simple methods for people with chronic lack of time

Two simple methods for people with chronic lack of time
Two simple methods for people with chronic lack of time
Anonim

Sometimes it seems like there aren't enough 24 hours in a day, sometimes it seems impossible to get everything done in that amount of time. The different areas of our lives - our work, our family, our leisure ideas - are often in conflict: we are unable to achieve all our goals at the same time. It is as if time is running out around us, while the number of our tasks and goals is only increasing. In such cases, we are obviously not comfortable in our own skin: we often experience guilt, rush, anxiety, and panic.

What can be done in this situation? A good coach would obviously show cool methods for optimizing our time management, but the psychological one focuses on how we could approach our problem differently. According to recent research, there are two simple tricks for this.

shutterstock 383209213
shutterstock 383209213

According to a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research, even stopping for a moment, breathing slowly and deeply, while mentally counting to eleven helps a lot in overcoming the tension over accumulated tasks. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 inhalations, then 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 exhalations. Repeat this a few times.) Of course, this may seem like a pretty useless pastime just when our brains are at a thousand, but our attention its concentrated, one-way direction helps smooth the mind, helps us to be able to look at the tasks in front of us in a more focused and collected way. Just like mindfulness.

The other method also requires the conscious control of our attention, only in this case the focus is not on our body, but on our internal events and emotions. Stress, anxiety and excitement are experienced similarly at the level of physical and mental symptoms, so it is not difficult to mix them up. So it is worthwhile to observe what exactly we feel and try to label it as excitement instead of stress or anxiety. This feeling has a much more positive meaning for us, so we will feel a little lighter.

Thus, according to research, breathing and cognitive reframing are useful methods, but if we permanently experience that the control of our lives is slipping out of our hands, if we struggle with a chronic lack of time, then we cannot avoid fixing the problem itself. For example, by improving our time management.

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