Are you drowning in work? Is there so much you have to do, so much pressure you can barely handle it? So many different things you don’t even know what to do first?
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. It’s not your fault. These things happen, but you have to get out of there. You must take your life back. And you can – if you follow this free and simple Emergency BluePrint step by step.
Wouldn’t it feel nice if suddenly, all this awful stress just stopped? Imagine you could just drive out to the beach, enjoy the fresh air, wander around with your loved ones, laugh and simply feel happy. No pressure, no guilt, no dark thoughts in the back of your mind – just relaxation and freedom.
The problem is: in order to do so, you must increase your productivity. Get better results with less hassle. Only then can you enjoy the guilt-free breaks you deserve. But if you want to become more productive, you must spend time learning precisely that. And here comes the sticking point: You don’t have that time!
See the trouble? You need to get more productive to save time, but you don’t have enough time to get more productive. It’s a vicious circle most people never break out of.
I’ve got good news for you: You can break out. You can relieve stress now. Other people have done it, too. And I have created this free Emergency BluePrint to tell you how. You see, there’s a key point that most people fail to understand. The reason they don’t get it is because it feels so counter-intuitive. That key point is:
You’ve got to spend time to make time.
Improving your productivity takes work. There may be “gurus” out there telling you that you can sky-rocket your effectiveness in 5 minutes if you just buy their $2000 product, but that is just not true.
For you, that means you have to free time first and then use that time to improve your productivity.
OK, I know how that sounds. It sounds insane. You’re overloaded with work already and I ask you to free up time for yet something else? But trust me, it’s possible if you take the right steps – which I will tell you now.
There’s no way around it. If you want to get more productive but don’t have time to increase your productivity, the only way to make that time is to do less. At least for a short period, you need to drop activities to free time.
Then, you invest that time into your effectiveness, leverage all your time up and eventually even pursue more activities and achieve greater results than you are now.
Let me illustrate that point with a graph, showing your activities over time.
First, you do less. But you invest that extra time to become more productive, and after a while, you can eventually do more and especially achieve far more success than you are right now.
Yes, I know, dropping an activity isn’t easy. It may even seem impossible to you at the moment. And maybe it is impossible to cancel something right now. That’s ok. You just have to try to drop a project or task as soon as possible. I will tell you how to do that and how to survive in the meantime.
To start with, you need to decide which project you want to drop. To help you with that, I have created a questionnaire, which you should print and fill out. Please download the sheet here for free.
When you fill out the questionnaire, do the same tasks, projects or activities turn up again and again? If so, you may have found the ones to eliminate. Take a close look at your answers and use them as a guideline to decide which project(s) to drop.
Rule of thumb: After you drop these projects, you should have dropped at least a third of your workload and gained at least three hours of free time per day.
I know three hours sounds like a lot at first, but note that they don’t necessarily need to be actual work time. Maybe you were so stressed about something that you lay awake at night or had to watch two hours of TV every evening to calm down. Once you drop the responsible project, you’ll also sleep better and not need to watch TV, so you might actually save three hours by that alone.
Once you know what to drop, it’s time to think about how you can actually manage to get rid of these tasks. Sometimes, you can just stop pursuing a project immediately. But usually, there are loose ends to tie up before you can quit.
Focus your workdays on those loose ends.
You want to drop the project as soon as possible. After all, your goal is to relieve stress now, right? Your other tasks will thank you in the future. To help you, there are two short-term techniques you can use to free at least enough time to prepare the drop.
1. Buy Time
Order lunch instead of going out or preparing one yourself. Hire someone to clean the apartment or take care of the kids. Outsource any tasks at work that you possibly can. This step will put a strain on your cash position, but remember that it’s only for a short period of time.
2. Ask for Favours
In addition to delegating tasks in exchange for money, now is the time to cash in favours. Ask others to do work for you wherever you can. Just be honest with your situation. You can always return the favour once you have gotten your life back under control.
And, important: When others try to delegate tasks to you, say “No!” Again, tell them you can’t even handle the stuff you have already going on. Most people will understand.
Once you’re ready, drop what you have decided on. Congratulations, you’ve done the hardest step! Most people never even get here.
Wow. Now you have three extra hours of free time a day. Incredible.
You could use them to work more from Monday to Friday and then finally enjoy that beach day with your loved ones at the week-end.
But you need to hold back on that for a bit. Don’t worry, you’ll have a lot of those days soon if you continue to follow the BluePrint and invest your freed-up time into your productivity.
So, block out your three extra hours. Don’t let them be taken over by any other work or activities. They’re like a very important meeting in your calendar now. A meeting with yourself.
Spend the first 90 minutes of that meeting on wellness: do sports, take a bath, enjoy good, healthy food. You’ll not only start to feel a lot better, but also raise your energy level and hence get more productive during your working time.
Note: Do not watch TV or eat unhealthy food.
After you have relaxed for 90 minutes, use the remaining time to work on your productivity.
Here are a few actions you should take immediately:
1. Analyse the effort/result ratio of your work.
Which kind of work costs a lot of time and energy but brings relatively little results? Be honest with yourself. We tend to assume or want to think that time-consuming work is also important. That’s often not the case.
Which work/tasks cost relatively little effort and bring relatively big results?
Try to spend less time on the first and more on the second category.
2. Tidy up your living and working space.
You’ll gain the feeling of being in control. Stress is reduced. Distractions are eliminated. You can focus on what is important. Also, you will waste less time searching for things.
3. Get good productivity training.
If you want to get serious about becoming a lot more productive, feeling good, and changing your life in the long term, you should get good productivity training. There’s a lot of stuff to learn that will really make a difference.
In my digital workbook, “Beat Stress, Boost Success — Personal Productivity Made in Germany”, I guide you through the exact steps that you need to take to sky-rocket your productivity and get more results in less time.
If you’re ready for the next step, click here to learn more.
Lucas Kleinschmitt
Go back to the Fighting Stress 101 series.
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