Time Management Tuesday: Using Productive Procrastination During Stressful Times

We have had norovirus in our extended family since early last Wednesday morning. It's been making it's way around someone's home, and we thought it had arrived here Sunday night, since we'd been exposed 48 hours earlier. I spent the weekend calling and texting with sick loved ones, and shopping and prepping food in case we got sick here. Then there was a death in our family Monday morning. Not a close family member, but it meant some time on the phone and e-mailing today.

How I Live Now

The last two days have been workdays and, when I wasn't obsessively cleaning door knobs and counters, I spent a lot of my time huddled down in a spare bedroom in case my husband, who has been kind of sick, but, so far, not as sick as the rest of the family, turned into a norozombie out in the living room. I didn't have any deadlines, I didn't have a boss, I didn't have a time card to punch. I didn't have anything to make me work instead of dwelling on what was going on elsewhere.

And, yet, I couldn't let myself curl up with my iPad watching Netflix. I had enough work guilt to keep me from that. Plus I was saving the iPad and Netflix in case I got sick.

Write Every Day?...Not When You Can Procrastinate Productively

You may recall that last week I discussed the unrealistic and exclusionary insistence that writers write every day. I listed some work-every-day possibilities for writers that weren't writing. This week I've been reminded, as well, of productive procrastination. Productive procrastination is working on tasks that may not be the task you should be working on but will produce something for you.

So for the last two days instead of writing fiction, I've been working on

• blog posts
• transferring notes for a blueprint/outline to a computer file
• researching a new market for a submission
• working on a submission (which I haven't completed because the publication requires so much you'd think I was applying for some kind of government grant)
• renewing my SCBWI membership 

These are all things I would have done at some point, and, really, needed to do. Especially taking care of that SCBWI membership. Productive procrastination can really work for you during distracted, low-energy periods.

Time Management Tuesday: Crash! And What It Has Done To My Time

I'm the one who has crashed, not my computer.

Though my computer is involved in part of it

My Laptop Is Destroying My Body

I started using a laptop six years ago. I've worn the letters off some of the keys I've used this thing so much. I spent at least one summer working on it while sitting on a couch in my sun room, with the laptop literally on my lap. I spent nearly six years of evenings working on it in the evening while sitting on the couch in the living watching TV.

I ended up with upper body pain probably for a year or two before I put two and two together and realized hunching over a computer was a contributing factor. I was able to turn that around quite a bit by working on straightening my posture both while working and doing everything else in life.

Then maybe six or eight weeks ago, while I was still dealing with Lyme issues, I was working away on the couch one evening, typing over some old journal notes into my laptop, when I experienced an excruciating pain from my shoulder to my elbow. No, I wasn't having a heart attack. I self-diagnosed a pinched nerve. It took days to clear up totally.

I haven't worked on the laptop in the evening since.

What My Laptop Messing With My Body Is Doing To My Time

Now, remember, I actually worked in the evening on the laptop while I was watching Blacklist, My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and a variety of scifish shows on Netflix. What was I doing? Blogging. Promoting the blog on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and, before it, too, crashed, Google+. I spent a week of evenings most months working on the Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar. We're talking hours of work a week. When's that stuff going to get done?

• During my daily writing time? That seems counterproductive.
• Weekends? I have been doing more on Sundays, which is laughable. After the death in our family last spring, I decided to make Sunday a Sabbath rest and diversion day. Try to attend church more often. Go for walks. Kick up yoga those days. Watch movies on TV. Read. I got back from a bike ride this past Sunday and then spent an hour or two on a blog post. So having to take on more work on weekends, in a word, sucks.
• I could drop some of this stuff, but I'm too obsessive.

 

It's Not As If My Daily Schedule Was So Fantastic To Begin With

I use the unit system to manage my work days. (Also known as segmented time.) I work 45 minutes with a 15 minute break to trick my mind into thinking it's starting afresh when I go back to work. Also, there's always the possibility that I'll have a breakout experience regarding whatever I'm working on during those 15 minutes.

Well, here's the thing. With those unit system/segmented time plans you're supposed to use the fifteen minute breaks for things like going for walks, meditating, maybe some reading. I use mine to get started cleaning a bathroom. Get some food cooking. Mop a room. Bake a cake. Go to the store. I do a lot food prep things with my 15 minute breaks, because even before my laptop turned on me, I was on diets for what ailed me. To the point that I work near the kitchen instead of in the office so I'm never far from the stove.

In short, those 15-minute breaks have been stretching longer and longer, while  the 45-minute work periods have been getting shorter and shorter.

The not-working-in-the-evening issue added to my personal vs. professional life boundary weakening has caused a bit of stress. Which I am looking at as a challenge.

I am trying a totally new workday, which I will write about in a few weeks when I've had a little more practice with it. It's shiny and new. Shiny, new things are exciting.

A Positive Coming Out Of All This

Now that I'm not working a couple of hours every evening, I seem to be sleeping better at night. Grab whatever gold rings you see coming your way.

Okay. Done with this. I'm going to go clean a toilet.

Time Management Tuesday: "The Upside Of Stress" Wrap-up

I'm ready to conclude my summer read of The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal.

What "The Upside of Stress" Isn't And Is

First off, I want to point out that The Upside of Stress is not a time management book. It is not about how managing stress can help readers manage their time. I cherry picked material from the book to apply to my obsession with managing time.

The Upside of Stress is actually about what it says it's about in the title. The author's argument is that while stress has gotten a bad reputation over the years (and she covers why), there are actually aspects of stress that can help us function better. Thus, there are upsides to stress.

Whether or not we can take advantage of the upsides of stress may be determined by how we perceive stressful situations. McGonigal refers to ways of perceiving stress as "mindsets." She says once we identify our stress mindsets (I, personally, am pretty much full-on flight because stress is threatening), we can change them to be more useful to us.

Stress Mindsets That Might Be Useful For Managing Time

Those of us who perceive stress as a threat and want to flee from it often just drop our work and head off to more relaxing activities. The stress of work can lead to procrastination, a flight from said stress. So finding a more positive mindset sounds as if it should have a positive impact on managing time. I focused on three that McGonigal writes about.

The Challenge Mindset. This may be the most useful mindset for writers managing time while dealing with stress. There's some real action you can take with stress and time, if you can convince yourself that what you're faced with is...a challenge!...rather than a threat.

• Recognize the resources you can draw upon for this stress situation.
• Think of the stressful situation as an opportunity.
• Train for the challenge.  

The Values Mindset. This could be the second most useful mindset for our purposes. According to McGonigal, dealing with stress that relates to a personal value makes the stress less burdensome, because it's more meaningful.

Of course, you have to be aware of your values in the first place. And then you have to actually be able to connect a stressor to one of them. You can see why I didn't put this mindset in first place.

The Tend-and-Befriend Mindset. This seems to me to be a mindset that can help you deal with stress, but won't be a lot of use as far as managing time is concerned. If anything, it could eat up time. Those people who see stress through a tend-and-befriend mindset deal with stress by tending to others and befriending those who can help them or others. It's a mindset that helps those feeling stress become parts of groups...like writing groups or professional organizations...that can provide them with support. The reverse of that is those groups and organizations then need support. Tend-and-befriend can make people feel better about themselves, because membership in groups "takes the toxicity out of striving," as McGonigal puts it. But membership also takes up time.

Is There A Situational Aspect To This?

I've written here before about what I call situational time management. My argument was...and is...that we can't create one schedule or time management model and expect it to work for us in every situation we find ourselves in. We need to be "constantly switching time management plans as situations change because situations change constantly." (Gauthier, Situational Time Management)

Maybe the same is true of stress mindsets. Some types of stress may lend themselves best to a challenge mindset, some to a values mindset, and some to a tend-and-befriend mindset. Some certainly require a threat/fight-or-flight mindset. Being able to identify the correct mindset and switch to it may be the first step toward managing time during stressful experiences.

Time Management Tuesday: The Tend-And-Befriend Stress Mindset

With this summer's stress and time management study, I am trying to find ways to use  the stress mindsets (ways of perceiving stress) described by Kelly McGonigal in The Upside of Stress to replace the best known stress mindset, flight-or-fight, for the purpose of managing time during stressful periods. (Hmm. Yes. That was a long intro sentence.) The flight aspect of flight-or-fight causes us to run from the discomfort of work stress, straight to procrastination. The fight aspect might help us to overcome work stress to get a job done, but it can also cause a lot of struggle on its own.

The last alternative mindset I'm going to write about is called tend-and-befriend. McGonigal says that while flight-and-fight is about self-survival, tend-and-befriend is about protecting people and groups.  That behavior can help us when dealing with stress because it triggers courage and hope and leads us to build social support networks and become better respected. I don't know how much it will help with time management, but I think it does have a particular connection to writers.

The Tend-and-Befriend Stress Mindset

McGonigal says this mindset "may have evolved to help us protect offspring, but when you are in that state, your bravery translates to any challenge you face." It's easy to see how this mindset will work in stressful situations involving parents and children. You have children who are ill or troubled, you want to tend to them. You want to seek out experts to help them. The same could be said for any care giving situation or any helping profession. You tend to others and look for help of some kind to do so.

A U.S. News article, Should We 'Tend and Befriend' in This Stressful Time?, states that tending can involve protecting the self, as well as others, suggesting that being careful about self-care could fall under tend-and-befriend. This article, as well as others I've found, also says that some people believe women are particularly likely to use tend-and-befriend. No, I'm not going to go down that road.

The Stress Mindset Intervention For Tend-and-Befriend And Bigger-Than-Self Goals

If you, whether you're a woman or a man, want to try to shift away from your present stress mindset to one of tend-and-befriend, McGonigal suggests:

• When feeling overwhelmed, look for a way to do something for others. The value for you here is that doing for others makes us feel hopeful.
• You can also make a daily practice of finding an opportunity to support someone else. This would help with building networks.

Additionally, McGonigal writes about bigger-then-self goals, which she defines as goals that have a purpose beyond personal gain and success. These are often related to a team, a community, or an organization and feeling part of them "takes the toxicity out of striving." Being part of these types of bigger-than-self goals help you build social support networks and become respected and better liked.

Writers And Bigger-Than-Self Goals

I may have written over the years of the marketing for creatives workshop I attended long ago at which an artist spoke about how getting involved with arts promotion for others had ended up helping her own career. She believed other creatives can find ways to work within their fields for the field, not just for themselves. This sounds a lot like bigger-than-self goals. Attending that workshop helped motivate me to start the Time Management Tuesday feature for this blog. I saw it as a way of helping writers find ways to manage time for their writing.

I'm aware of many other writers who do work for the field, or for bigger-than-self goals.

• For instance, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is run by volunteers to a great extent. The annual spring New England SCBWI conference is run by volunteers at every level. There are regional SCBWI advisers throughout New England. They're volunteers. Smaller and shorter-term events are run by volunteers. There are informal gatherings that are run by volunteers. Social media contacts are made by volunteers. These are all people who see their connection with the SCBWI as a bigger-than-self goal.
• Writers' groups usually have a point person who keeps people aware of upcoming dates and is the contact for new members. Keeping the group going is a bigger-than-self goal for them.
• Debut writers frequently team up to manage marketing or publicity opportunities for their books. Their books are a personal goal, but working for the team is a bigger-than-self goal.
• Blogging writers have worked as judges for the Cybil award. A time consuming task for a bigger-than-self goal. For that matter, writers are asked to serve as judges for other types of book awards for which they don't receive payment. Maintaining the award is a bigger-than-self goal.
• Writers attend appearances for other writers, read their books, post about them on social media. Supporting others is a bigger-than-self goal.

Treating working for-the-field as a bigger-than-self goal has been helpful for writers, connecting them with agents and editors and providing them with a network that provides support in terms of publicity when they have books published. It definitely can provide tangible value.

 

The Drawback In Terms Of Time Management

McGonigal claims that helping someone else decreases people's feelings of not having enough time. Tending to others makes individuals feel better about themselves as workers. It boosts their self-confidence and that changes how they feel about the demands they face.

However...

• Taking on these bigger-than-self goals could be seen as contradicting the classic time management advice to learn how to say "no" in order to protect your work time.
• I've heard of situations in which writers couldn't work at all during periods when they were tending to a larger-than-self goal like planning a conference or reading for an award. (That last one is from personal experience.)
• I've known of writers who eventually gave up running a retreat or a writers' group, because the time demand became too much. Which sounds stressful.
• Taking on more and more outside helper tasks is also a classic way of committing all your time so you can avoid personal work.

Tend-and-defend sounds like a mindset that may very well help us deal with the "toxicity of striving," as McGonigal says. This one, though, may not be very helpful in terms of managing time.

Time Management Tuesday: A Stress Mindset Involving Values

Questions about the impact of life stress on time management was my original motivation for pursuing this summer's stress and time management study. This week I'm addressing a stress mindset that seems related to those very issues. 

 

Stress And The Meaning Of Life

According to Kelly McGonigal in The Upside of Stress, in terms of the stress related to every day life (rather than the stress related to personal crises such as terminal illnesses or major human tragedies such as natural disasters and war) events and activities we find meaningful cause us the most stress. Child rearing, travel, school, friends, love, family all bring stress with them. Yet, these are all things most of us want in our lives.

Well, studies have shown that being able to think about these types of every day stresses in terms of our personal values, what gives our lives meaning, makes them become more meaningful and less burdensome. We are less likely to find ourselves in a flight (collapse on the couch/procrastinate)-or-fight (blood pressure rising/bang head on the wall) situation.

The Stress Mindset Intervention For Values

McGonigal suggests that when stressed, we go over our personal values and ask ourselves if we can connect our stressful situation to them in some way. Presumably if we can, the stress will become more manageable.

• She describes some studies in which participants were given bracelets or key chains that they could mark with some value important to them that they could look at when stressed.
• McGonigal says that writing about values has been shown to be "one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied." Writing about values makes people feel more powerful and in control. It also can be done once and show benefits months and even years later. (Many of the interventions she writes about have long-lasting benefits.)

A Personal Reservation Regarding The Values Stress Mindset

I can see how developing a values mindset can help with stressful situations in many aspects of life. The stress of childrearing, for instance, becomes manageable because of how important our children are to us. The stress of planning a trip and getting started on it becomes tolerable because seeing the world or some particular experience we're heading out to is important to us. School stress--We value that education, if not for itself than for what it will lead to. The same with work.

So long as we can see that the stressful activity will lead to something  positive that we value, we're headed for improvement. But what happens if we look to our values and realize that this stress isn't going to connect with one that's important to us? That the school or work stress no longer will get us to something we value? The stress of this relationship is no longer worth it?

I don't recall McGonigal addressing this issue, but my guess is that if you come to this kind of realization and get out of the stressful situation then that must be a good thing, too.

Values Mindsets For Writers

Being able to develop a values mindset may be of particular help to writers dealing with work stress. In fact, many writers may already have values mindsets.

• It's not unusual for writers to focus on subjects that are of particular value to them.
• Nonfiction writers, for instance, may specialize in writing about climate change, nature, and the environment. Historians may limit themselves to specific periods or regions. Or they may choose to write about groups of people whose past isn't well known.
• Fiction writers may also have values they showcase in their work. Diversity, gender equality, faith issues, and climate change are all value-laden subjects fiction writers may focus on. 

For writers like these seeing stress through a values mindset which helps them connect their stressful situation to the values that give their work meaning to them can help them get through things like another draft for an agent or editor or the rigors of marketing.

Time Management Tuesday: The Challenge Stress Mindset

Okay! Finally, Gail is getting to a new stress mindset, described by Kelly McGonigal in The Upside of Stress.

Now, remember, a mindset is how we perceive something. We can perceive stress the way our ancestors did as, Oh, my gosh! I have to escape this! (Flight) Or I have to beat this impossible situation, and it's going to be horrible. (Fight)

Or...we can perceive stress as a challenge.

Threats Vs. Challenges

The fight-or-flight stress mindset is a threat response, meaning a response to danger or emergencies. Most of us aren't confronted with true dangers and emergencies on a daily basis, but our minds continue to perceive some of what's going on around us in that way. In the case of writers, we perceive a work-related stress and either run from it (to, say, the Internet and other procrastinating activities) or engage in some kind of psychological struggle to overcome the stressor. A case in point...writing my second book was very difficult, as second books often are for writers. I can recall being up early to work on it, leaving a son off at an evening Boy Scout meeting once and going home to work some more. I would drop everything and go for a walk trying to force a breakout experience, though I doubt I knew that term at the time. Then there was that moment I remember so fondly when I grabbed my husband by the front of his shirt and screeched, "You don't understand! I'm going to have to give back the advance!" Writing that book was definitely an ugly psychological fight.

With a challenge stress mindset, though, the primary goal is to go after what you want instead of either escaping it or using brute force to fight it. You don't feel as if you're in some kind of danger, the way you do with the threat response. You want to perform well. McGonigal says a challenge mindset can be more like pursuit of an athletic challenge than a threat. It's considered healthier for the body than the flight-or-fight stress mindset, because that is designed for short term real dangers. The human body isn't meant to live under that kind of stress indefinitely. It can manage the challenge mindset better.

Additionally, in terms of time management, with a challenge mindset there is less desire to flee the stress, because challenges are good, right? And, thus, there's less reason to procrastinate. We should be able to work more.

Threat Vs Challenge Stress Mindsets For Writers

• In New England, this is the time of year when NESCBWI members are submitting workshop proposals for next spring's conference. Interested parties are encouraged to be prepared to teach two different workshops over the weekend, which means creating two different proposals. Depending on how you write proposals, this could mean going a long way down the road to planning two workshops. Keep in mind that while you're spending time putting together a proposal, you're not writing or submitting. What is the best use of time? Also, some writers are working on these proposals knowing that if they are accepted, they are not going to be at all comfortable teaching. I have submitted proposals twice, and taught once. The challenge mindset doesn't come naturally to me. This was a stressful experience that I now avoid. I know people who love doing this...ah...stuff, though. Perhaps they have a challenge mindset.
• At any point writers can find themselves engaged in agent hunts. In addition to finding one who will be interested in the particular project you're shopping around, you might also like to find one who represents other genres you write in. And one who might at least kind of like you. Personally, I think looking for an agent is a lot like looking for a significant other. Stressful? Or challenging?
• And, of course, there are those points in your work when you realize the new project stinks big time and you should drop it. And marketing worries for books that sold. And what about freelance writers who actually get published regularly and often find themselves with multiple deadlines? Is all this stressful? Or challenging?

 

Do You Have A Threat Or A Challenge Stress Mindset?

Think about whether or not you have the skills and resources to deal with a stressful situation.

• If you believe you don't, you can end up with a threat/fight-or-flight stress response
• If you believe you do, you may go into a challenge response.

Think about the conference example I gave above. I know writers who are experienced teachers. They know they have skills and resources to handle a one- or two-hour class. Prepping for conferences and workshops may very well be more challenging than threatening for them.

Changing Your Mindset From Threat To Challenge

According to McGonigal, to shift to a challenge mindset:

• Focus on your resources. Acknowledge your personal strengths.
• Go over how you've prepared for similar challenges.
• Pray. 
• Reframe stressful meetings as learning opportunities. (Learn from past mistakes?)
• Practice/train because a challenge stress mindset is like a sports challenge, which you would practice/train for.

 

Some Closing Questions

I definitely like the idea of thinking of stress situations as challenges instead of as...hell. But I do have some reservations.

• What if you go over your resources and have to acknowledge that you have none for a particular stressful situation? You have no personal strengths that relate to this?
• What if you haven't prepared for similar challenges in the past? 

I suspect that for many people who do not naturally think in terms of challenges, the challenge stress mindset is essentially a mind game they're going to have to learn to play with themselves. And that's fine. I'm good with mind games. Getting through life is arguably one big mind game. The trick here is making this particular mind game work for you.

So...I guess if you want to face stress as a challenge, the answers to my above questions are:

• If you have no resources for a particular stressful situation, decide what resources you need to seek out. If you have no personal strengths for this, which ones do you need to develop? 
• If you haven't prepared for similar challenges in the past, who has whose experience you can study?

If you'd like to read more on the science behind this subject, check out Threat or Challenge? The Surprising New Science of How We Think About Stress at Six Seconds. Kelly McGonigal is one of the writers the author refers to.

Time Management Tuesday: Stress Mindsets And Getting Started On Changing Them

Getting Back Up To Speed

It's been a while since I've addressed time management and stress mindsets so let's make sure I've covered enough so we can go forth.

This summer I'm reading The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal and trying to relate managing stress to managing time, particularly for writers. Procrastination is a particular problem for writers and stress is very much related to that. Remember, in Upside of Stress McGonigal says that people who see stress as harmful are likely to "try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it" and "focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source." We distract ourselves with procrastinating. We focus on getting rid of our feelings of stress with procrastination. McGonigal also says that "The desire to avoid feeling anxious overtakes other goals." Getting rid of the stress of working toward finishing a draft overtakes the goal of finishing the draft.

Another of our old friends, Timothy Pychl, author of The Procrastinator's Digest, says something similar about procrastination. Procrastinators procrastinate because they're giving in to the need to feel good immediately. Revising this chapter is so much harder than I thought it would be. I am miserable. A Facebook break would make me feel better. Might even make me feel good. I would love to feel good.

You can see why jobs get dragged out forever and ever. At least, I can see why mine do.

Fight Or Flight...The Most Famous Stress Mindset

It's a rare reader of popular science articles who hasn't heard of the fight-or-flight response. The story goes that while we were evolving, the early humans who were good at deciding whether they should flee or fight wild beasts, natural disasters, or other humans were the ones who survived and whose good little fight-or-flight genes got into the gene pool. Nowadays those same genes have a lot less animal/disaster/other humans to trigger them, so turn their attention to things like public speaking, flying, what's happening with our kids, and work.

For many of us, fight-or-flight is our default stress mindset.

But There Are Other Ways To Experience Stress

In The Upside of Stress, McGonigal argues that there are other, more positive stress mindsets we could be using and even taking advantage of when dealing with stress. So far in my reading I've come upon mindsets involving:

• Challenge
• Tend and Befriend
• Values

But where do they come from? If fight-or-flight is some kind of inborn response that we may not even think about, what are these other mindsets? Where do they come from and how do I get one?

Mindset Interventions

My reading suggests that some of these mindsets may be natural for some people and not others. But according to McGonigal, we can all switch to  more positive mindsets by either taking part in a formal intervention or making our own. She describes a number of research projects in which this is done and offers ideas for making our own interventions.

And that will be coming up.

Time Management Tuesday: Stress Is Harmful Vs. Stress Is Helpful

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a couple of mindsets in the Gauthier family. This week I'll cover two very general ones described by Kelly McGonigal in The Upside of Stress. Notice how they could impact writers.

The Stress Is Harmful Mindset

"When you view stress as harmful," McGonigal says, "it is something to be avoided. Feeling stressed becomes a signal to try to escape or reduce the stress...."

Writing can be stressful. Coming up with new material, revising a draft and having to come up with more new material is hard. Creating the perfect synopsis, the perfect cover letter, creates a lot of misery. (That can't just be me, can it?)

"...people who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it. For example, they are more likely to:

• Try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it 
• Focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source."
• And other things like drink, withdraw, etc.

Writers could distract themselves from their stress by addressing its source, meaning writing. But more often we don't deal with it, we distract ourselves instantly by going on-line. Social media may not have been created to alleviate stress, but it does a great job with it.

The Stress Is Positive Mindset

"...people who believe that stress can be helpful," McGonigal goes on, "are more likely to say that they cope with stress proactively...they are more likely to:

• Plan a strategy for dealing with the source of stress.
• Seek information, help, or advice."
• And other things  

These must be the people who actually do their writing. But I'm just guessing.

More Mindsets Are Coming Up, As Well As Information On How To Move From One To Another

Maybe next week, maybe not.

Time Management Tuesday: How You Think About Stress In Your Life

Today I'm continuing my exploration of how stress affects the way we manage time, using The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal.

McGonigal writes about mindsets, "beliefs that shape your reality." The concept of mindsets isn't new. I've always thought of them as, say, a belief system that everything is filtered through. What is new is that McGonigal says that mindsets affect how we perceive stress and that there's a "new field of mindset science" that shows that one short intervention can change them.

I've only made it about 25% of the way into the book so far, and while I was in the early days I was thinking...Meh. Then I realized what my own stress mindset is. (Actually, McGonigal tells us in the book to do that, so maybe I was following instructions. I don't remember.) And very soon thereafter I happened to get an e-mail from a family member (not the archivist I wrote about recently, another one, a nurse) who had read my first stress and time management post and responded with what sure looked like her stress mindset.

A Tale Of Two Stress Mindsets

Gauthier 1. That's me. This is how my mindset about stress goes: I feel that I can only take on one stressful activity at a time. I can't take on Stressful Activity B until Stressful Activity A is over.  I can't even make reservations for a weekend in July until whatever issue is concerning me in May and June is over.

Gauthier 2. The nurse.  She thinks that stress is necessary.  She believes we have stress no matter what the circumstances, because we are so used to having stress that it helps us to get things done.   Feeling stressed gets us motivated to finish the things we need to do.  Otherwise, would we finish anything?

The Gauthier Stress Mindsets And Time Management

How do these mindsets affect how these particular Gauthiers manage time and crank out work?

Gauthier 1. That's me again. If the stars are lined up correctly, I can work toward multiple goals.  Not so much when stress raises its ugly head. In fact, during particularly stressful times, I intentionally narrow my focus to only a few things. Once I get something done, or get that stress behind me, I can take on something else. I can stay on task, because I limit the number of tasks I'm working on. I might, for instance, limit myself to work and family, and cut way back on social interactions and travel.

Gauthier 2. Gauthier 2, who is not me, remember, is able to work on more things over all aspects of her life. She manages work, family, a network of friends, travel, going to movies regularly, and hitting some Broadway shows when they came to Hartford.

Does what I'm describing here illustrate that fight-or-flight business we're always hearing about because Gauthier 1 appears to run for her life to escape stress while Gauthier 2 tends to go "@#!! it! We're doing this?" You'd think so, but McGonigal says that fight or flight is not the only stress response. More on that in another post.

Why Do People Develop Different Stress Mindsets?

Gauthier 1 and Gauthier 2 should have pretty similar DNA (Ancestry.com says so), and except for birth order and the Mom-and-Dad-liked-me-better thing, we had a pretty similar upbringing. So why such different stress mindsets? Is this something McGonigal will cover in her book?

If I had to guess...and this is my blog, so I do...our work situations are a factor here. Remember how I made a point of stating that Gauthier 2 is a nurse? She has spent years in a variety of increasingly responsible healthcare positions, keeping her under stress regularly during her workdays..

Gauthier 1, on the other hand, is a writer. I experience what might be described as punctuated stress. Stress shoots up when trying to meet a contractual deadline. It goes up when preparing for a professional presentation or having to make it. An editor leaves her publishing house. Should I follow her? Stressful. Cover letters for submissions require hours of stressful work, because a sentence phrased incorrectly could mean the difference between convincing an agent or editor to take a look or being passed over. Struggling to come up with new material for revisions? Stressful. But when those high stress moments are over, the stress is gone and I have long periods of working in comfort.

In The Upside of Stress, McGonigal says that "past stress teaches the brain and body how to handle future stress. Stress leaves an imprint on your brain that prepared you to deal with similar stress the next time you encounter it." "Psychologists," she says "call this stress inoculation. It's like a stress vaccine for your brain."  "...going through stress makes you better at it..."

So I'm making the argument that the kind of stress Gauthier 2 has experienced over the years has made it possible for her to better handle it, and her ability to handle stress means she can better manage her time and do more. Evidently my kind of stress has done nothing for me.

Time Management Tuesday: The Impact Of Stress On Time Management

My family member the archivist has, for many years, been studying and preserving old television. For the last twenty months, he's also been the daytime caregiver for a baby, now toddler. Recently he said that he frequently can't work during toddler nap time, because he's worn out from the twenty-four hour a day stress of dealing with what a child should be eating, how he should be sleeping, whether or not he is sick, why he is crying, and keeping him safe and alive. When he gets a break because someone is napping, the archivist finds himself collapsing in front of the TV or with his phone. The stress of Dad Life often makes it difficult for him to take advantage of his small amounts of work time.

This was very interesting to me, because I had just experienced a drop in my stress level after many years of dealing with another family member's illness. I had less to do, less hanging over my head, and less to worry about. Was this new lack of stress, I wondered, going to have some kind of positive impact on how I managed my time?

What Time Does To Stress Is Not The Same As What Stress Does To Time

I went out looking for information on this situation and didn't find much. There's a lot written on weak time management skills causing stress, but far less on stress causing a collapse in time management. One article I did find, How Stress Affects Your Work Performance by Christina Hamlett at the Houston Chronicle's website, deals with stress in traditional work places. A couple of points that could pertain to people who work for themselves:

1. Stress contributes to job burnout and strained relationships. What happens with people who work alone and have no relationships to strain? Maybe burnout was what was contributing to my family member collapsing during nap time instead of working. Or my struggle to get up in the mornings because here's another day of problems, what's the hurry? Or get up off the couch at night to go to bed.
2. Stress affects ability to remember things, evidently both short- and long-term, and makes you easily distracted. Do I have any new followers on Twitter this morning? I should look again this afternoon. Have any of my friends posted pictures on Facebook? Oops. Gotta go check my blog stats.
3. Stress pounds away at your health. It's hard to work if you're sick. Or going to the doctor. Or the pharmacy. Or using the Internet to research what's wrong with you, which kind of relates to what we were just talking about with being distracted. 

 

Some Why From The Time Management Tuesday Archives

Speaking of archives, as we were earlier,a few things we've talked about here at OC's Time Management Tuesday feature could relate to what's happening when we're stressed enough to blow up our ability to manage time.

• According to our old friend Kelly McGonigal in The Willpower Instinct, people who are distracted have poor impulse control and are less likely to be able to stay on long-term goals. Stressors...hugely distracting. And then there is the What-the-Hell Effect. In the case of people under stress, the more worn-out they get and less they do because of it, the worse they feel about their ability to get anything done and...What the Hell? They might as well watch TV during work time. They might as well stay in bed another half hour.
• Timothy Pychyl in The Procrastinator's Digest says that a big part of the reason procrastinators procrastinate is that they're giving in to the need to feel good immediately. Say what you want about social media, it can be an immediate feelgood. McGonigal also writes about how undermining feeling bad can be in The Upside of Stress. People who are shamed or frightened by their doctors over things like weight, smoking, or drinking, frequently engage in those behaviors even more, because now they feel bad. They're humiliated and frightened, and the quickest way to escape those feelings for them is eating, smoking, or drinking. Well, people under stress feel bad. Often for years, if the stressor is child rearing or eldercare. TV, bed, and the Internet are immediate feel goods. Work, not so much. This spring I've noticed people on Twitter tweeting that they're having a bad day and asking to see images of cats, because that will make them feel better. I'd rather look at celebrity gossip on my tablet while lying in bed in the morning or plastered to the couch at night, but to each of us our own immediate escape. 

 

So What?

Well, exactly. We've got some why, but can we do anything about stress's impact on our work time? I've got a couple of things in the OC archive that might help, and I've started a summer blog read,  The Upside of Stress, which I mentioned above. I know I've said I was reading it before, but I must have gotten distracted or stressed or something. I'm really reading it now.

More to come.