We’ve all heard the expression, “Don’t worry about the things you don’t have control over.” This is a great line because you can waste a lot of productive hours and sleepless nights thinking about ways to change the outcome of something you can’t manipulate. So instead, let’s think about ways that we can alter areas of our life in order to improve our wellbeing and reduce any unnecessary stress and worry.
LIMIT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA TIME
I think we can all agree that we probably waste a bit too much time browsing around on social media. In our defense, it’s readily available in the palm of our hands, we enjoy seeing what our friends and family are up to sometimes on the other side of the country or world, and we as humans just crave the idea of constantly being entertained. In a weird way, it’s not completely our faults that we fall victim to this. However, we do need to take a look at some of the effects it can have on us. One being, an increase in stress to our daily life.
There’s several reasons why too much social media time can increase our stress levels. Some being, disagreements with friends, family, or hot topics in society, constantly waiting around and checking for a new like or comment to give us that quick hit of dopamine, or it could simply be the excessive intake of blue light from the screen. All of these can play a positive or negative role in our daily lives. Similar to your eating habits, it all comes down to moderation.
There’s a few ways you can limit your social media time. Most smartphones have a “screen time” counter in your settings that lets you know how much time you are spending on your phone in general. Social media platforms also now have tools within their platforms that can reveal how much time you are spending on there as well. So, whatever your data may be revealing, treat social media like some experts advise you to treat your emails, check them once in the morning, once again at lunch (optional) and then one last time at the end of the day. Limit these checks to 5 minutes max. This way you are getting no more than 15 minutes of controlled time on social media and will prevent you from going down those rabbit holes that always lead to nothing good.
DECLUTTER AND ORGANIZE YOUR WORKSPACE
Ok, answer this truthfully - are you more relaxed coming home from work to a neatly made bed, with no clothes on the floor and the only thing catching your eye is the hotel-esque bedroom you have created OR a bed with the comforter hanging halfway on the ground, clothes from the past 6 days scattered across the floor, dresser drawers halfway open and those 2 picture frames sitting on the ground that you still have not hung up yet from 7 months ago? If you answered the latter, we need an emergency 1:1 consultation with you and I before this gets out of hand! However, on a serious note, the appearance of our environment and smoothness and flow of our operations can really add to or reduce any present stress that we have. Let’s not make things any worse than they need to be.
Try taking a look at your work environment for starters and seeing where you can make things more efficient and eliminate any unnecessary items. First, do you work from home or on-site? If you are at home, do you work at a desk, table or on the couch/bed? Giving yourself a proper at-home workstation can really set you up for a more efficient work day. If you are sitting on the couch with your laptop on your legs, papers and notes scattered on the couch next to you and you’re also trying to record notes while on a meeting on a separate notepad, then things can get overwhelming. Do yourself a favor and create a make-shift desk, organize the laptop, notepad, notes in areas that are easily accessible and visible to promote a smoother workday flow. Same goes with your on-site workstation - if you have notes and papers that have been on your desk for weeks and are irrelevant for that workday, store them in a folder or filing cabinet that gets them out of the way but is still easy to locate when you do need them again.
SET ALARMS AND STICK TO THEM
I know we have all been here before- springing out of bed saying, “Oh crap!”, quickly realizing our 4th snooze alarm was the one to wake us up and not the initial 6:30 am alarm we had planned our morning and day for. Don’t worry because you’re not alone. However, that does not mean you should turn it into a habit.
As busy as our lives are today, especially if you have kids and a family, then every minute counts. There’s no room for an hour or two of flexibility within your day if you have to get the kids ready and off to school in the morning by 7:30 am, get to work by 8:00 am, only a 30 minute lunch break, kids to pick up from daycare by 6 pm after work, dinner to cook and feed the family by 7:30 pm, kids to get to bed by 9 pm, then MAYBE, 1-2 hours of time to decompress on the couch watching the Bachelorette (I mean, Monday Night Football!). Even if some of you don’t have kids or a family, your day probably isn’t too much different than this schedule. So, you can see how staying strict to your schedule throughout the day can be very important in order to accomplish everything you want. The moment we fall 30 minutes behind due to accidentally sleeping in, is the moment everything in our day (at least the first half) gets behind. This can cause immediate and lasting additional stress to your day.
So, figure out what time you REALLY want to wake up, what time you want to work out at and what time you want to go to bed - set alarms for them and stick to them like your life depends on it!