Curing Stress with "Whitespace"

If you have to rush to finish the current task because there is another waiting right behind it, and this is how your whole day goes, you have created a very stressful environment.  I say that "you have created a very stressful environment" because you have created the situation, not somebody else.

It's your own fault by saying "yes" to too many things.  Now, if one single thing goes wrong, everything after it gets screwed up.  If you have to stop at one extra red light, you'll be late to pick up your kids, then you'll be too rushed to call your spouse, and then you spouse won't know that the plumber called to say he will be there at 11 AM instead of 9 AM, and on and on.  You have to live in a constant mode of fear and time-checking, and that's terrible for you and those around you. 

The real indicator of whether you are stressed too much is if you have your to-do's held together by a delicate and thin lifeline of anxiety and pressure.  That's bad.  Really bad.  Now think about the opposite lifestyle, where you actually have the time to do things well and enjoy them.  Sound better?

A great bike ride happens when you don't have to rush out the door, forgetting to pack half your fuel, air up your tires, and check the weather to discover there is a squall coming in 30 minutes.  Stress makes you drop the ball in little ways over and over again because you can't afford to take the time to pay attention.  Those details add up to causing even more problems than if you did fewer tasks better in the first place.

I will cover the art of saying "no" to clean up your schedule in a future post/podcast.  In the meantime, the first thing to do is realize if this describes your own situation.  If it does, you will find huge value in slowing down enough to make sure you aren't jumping from one task to the next.  The "whitespace" you can create between tasks allows you to think a little bit before you do them.  When you can plan and think before and during your execution, you stop forgetting little details that end up causing even more stress in your already crammed schedule.