Is The End Of The Year A Stressful Time For You?
We’re quickly approaching the time of year that can be very stressful for small business owners and leaders.
It’s the end of the year and there is a lot to wrap up. Then there’s planning for next year. Not to mention the current day-to-day business to manage. And let’s not forget what’s happening in your personal life or that of your team’s.
It can be stressful and overwhelming. Yet it’s important to navigate the storm for both the health of your business and you. Here are some stress-reducing techniques can be used year-round:
- Assess Your Goals and Time Budget. When someone is stressed, their goals and their budget for spending their time may not be in alignment. Are the goals you’re working toward realistic? Based on everything else going on, do the goals need to change? And based on the goals that you need to achieve, are you allocating your time accordingly? Sometimes that means reassessing your goals, but often it means that your time has to be adjusted to allow for the activity needed to reach your goal. And that might mean you have to let something else go.
- Let something else go. You can’t do everything. We know that’s hard to accept, but it’s good to acknowledge that sometimes you have to let go. Letting a task go might mean putting a project on the back burner, slowing down the progress of a task, or even better starting to delegate tasks to others. Remember to rely on your systems and processes to make what you do more “teachable” so that it’s easier to delegate those tasks.
- Create a double vision solution. Instead of trying to clear your task list and manage incoming tasks with one solution, look at them as two issues. Put a system in place that helps you slow down the incoming tasks. This might be as simple as communicating longer deadlines to clients or co-workers. Or it might be a more complicated system such as hiring a virtual assistant to manage incoming calls. Once you’ve slowed down incoming tasks, then focus on working through your task list. This not only helps you manage the stress now, but also have better control of your work pace due to the solutions you implemented.
- Don’t forget to celebrate. When times are stressful, people often forget to celebrate. Take time each day to celebrate your successes. Be sure to include your team in this practice. It allows everyone a moment to breathe and helps uplift everyone’s mood.
- Take moments to destress. It may seem counterproductive to take a moment when you’re stressed or overwhelmed as it feels like there isn’t a moment to spare. But taking a moment to destress is an investment in productivity. The key is to find a calming activity that you can do in a 5 to 10-minute time frame like meditation, taking a walk or talking to a mentor. And then take a moment every day to do that activity. Those 5 to 10 minutes can help you increase productivity for the rest of your day.
We all experience stress in some form, but learning to control your stress will allow you to boost your productivity, manage your employees and maintain a strong, healthy business.
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