Scheduling My Stress

I am a recovering nervous wreck.

And one thing that now helps me manage my stress is:

Scheduling my stress.

I know that sounds ridiculous.

But for most of my career, I've worried about everything.

If I had a big meeting, a difficult conversation, a major decision, or a presentation coming up, I could spend days stressing about something that would last only 30 minutes.

I'm by no means a physician, but if you think about it, a lot of bad habits and health conditions in our lives come from stress.

So I started budgeting my stress.

When something important is coming up, I tell myself: tomorrow evening from 8 to 10pm, I'll prepare for this.

That's also my time to stress about it.

During that window, I prepare and let myself worry, but outside that window, I am not thinking or stressing about it, especially when it's work stress that isn't life or death.

When the worry comes, I tell myself: it's not our stress window yet. We have time to stress about this later.

It sounds small, but it has helped me a lot.

In general, I find that most of the disasters I worry about never actually happen.

The hours I spent rehearsing imaginary conversations go to my kids now, and to my garden (and to watching the World Cup :).

You can't cancel stress.

But you can schedule it.