Changing how you do things can help you reduce stress in your life. There are many ways to accomplish the same task. Using the best tools available can help you get things done faster. By improving your personal efficiency you can reduce the amount of time something takes, and therefore give you more time to relax or do activities that you truly enjoy.
You've decided that Monday is a good day to do food shopping, Tuesday is good for banking, Wednesday is good for dry-cleaning, etc. Combining trips and sequencing them so that you travel time is minimized will add time to your "Life Bank". For example:
Travel to: food store - 10 minutes; bank- 10 minutes, dry-cleaning - 10 minutes. Total travel 30 minutes.
If travel to bank on the way to food store and dry-cleaning on the way back the total travel time will be 20 minutes. You will save ten minutes every week, It's almost 9 hours of each year out of your "Life Bank" that you could use to read a good book or plant some flowers. You do not hear of an older person wishing, that if they could go back and change their life, they would spend more time driving to do errands?
Change how you do activities. Combine tasks to save time. Redoing things over and over again drain your energy and your "Life Bank".
Change your surroundings. Get organized. Living and working in chaotic environments adds to your stress. When your clutter is neatly arranged you begin to feel control over your life. Think about the places that relax you. When you go to a hotel on your vacation one of the things you get away from is your clutter. Start small, pick a space in your house or appartment where you have nothing but minimum essentials. A place where you can totally relax. A bedroom would be a good place to start with, make it a place where you can escape from daily routine. Take charge of your stress, change your surroundings and you can change how you feel.
Chris Brown
