Stress kills.
So reducing stress is pretty important, wouldn’t ya think?
Now I know some of you are thinking “what do you know about stress, Keener? You’re retired, so what could stress you out, dude?”
Well, it turns out that retirement is pretty stressful, racking up 45 stress points out of a possible 100, with the death of a spouse being the item that racks up the maximum stress points. And, as some of you know, I’ve dealt with that, too.
But, a common, yet often-overlooked source of stress, is procrastination, which is something we bring upon ourselves. And, unfortunately, most of us are afflicted to some degree with the disease of procrastination. It’s a disease I’ve never completely overcome, although I have gotten better over the years at just going ahead and doing my tasks.
One thing that I have found to be very helpful is to just go ahead and get my unpleasant tasks over early in the day. Every time I do that, it makes me feel so much better. The stress that comes from thinking about unpleasant tasks often makes one feel much worse than the actual task does. In fact, that is very often the case.
How have you reduced procrastination in your life?
What else do you recommend for reducing stress?
If procrastination is thinking about one thing while doing something else, the problem is how to bring thought and action together. I used to focus on trying to do more of what I thought I should be doing. That just left me stressed and not very productive. More recently, I’ve been ruthlessly purging my to-do list. That way I can focus on what I am doing instead of dreaming up more things that I never seem to get around to.
David Allen suggests that you not try to fight procrastination. Instead, he proposes a system where you define tasks in advance to procrastinate with (based on your goals and purpose). If you have a wide range of things to do defined(!) in a list, you will almost always find something you feel like doing. You may not be doing the most important thing but still, you’re progressing with your life. As I am a big fan of the “fail more” and “ready/fire/aim” approaches, this totally resonates with me. Instead of forcing myself to complete 10 things I “need” to finish, I do 90 other things which I feel like doing. Once I get moving it is almost effortless to do what I didn’t want to do in the first place. Additionally, I move forward in lots of other areas in my life which results in a bunch of new ideas, connections etc which leads to things I couldn’t even imagine before, if I had focused only on the 10 things. I would also feel bad forcing myself to do what I didn’t wanted to do.
David Allen also says that stress comes from unkept agreements with yourself. Interesting thought. In my experience it is true.
John and Norbert,
Thanks for sharing your practices and philosophies. Very sensible and very effective at getting stuff done.