Module VII - Time and Stress Management

Learning Objectives:

 Participants should know how to organize tasks depending on their priority

 Participants should know which activities waste their time
 Participants should know what things cause stress and how to address these causes in order to
reduce unnecessary stress

Prioritizing and organizing work according to goals

Knowing how to prioritize work affects the success of your project, the engagement of your team,
and your role as a leader. When you have a leadership position in a company, you face enormous pressure
on a daily basis in terms of many different criteria: ensuring that your company is on the route to making
a profit, maintaining a strong reputation, knowing how to prioritize, keeping an organization intact, and
being the face of a business.

With obligations and priorities coming at you from left and right, it can be overwhelming. All
projects—especially large, complex projects—need clear priorities. Easier said than done. It can be a
challenge to decide which business to tackle first, which tasks you can hold off on, and what you should
delegate. Surprises—pleasant or not—are also common. You can count on technical projects, no matter
how well-planned, to involve change orders, re-prioritization and the regular appearance of surprises. It’s
just the natural order of things.

One of the biggest challenges for project managers and leaders is accurately prioritizing the work
that matters on a daily basis. Even if you have the best project management software on the planet, you’re
the one who enters information into the tool. And, you don’t want to fall into the role of crying “top
priority” for every other project that comes down the pike.

Just as you have to be diligent and have the right kind of project insight to ensure that nobody’s
working on yesterday’s priorities. It takes a lot of practice to get this right.

Time management is actually self-management—it is about using time effectively to achieve

tasks. Increasingly, everyone has to face up to the problem of not having enough time. Clearly, there
cannot be any more time than there is! As much as we might wish otherwise, there cannot be more than
24 hours in a day or 7 days in a week. So, we have to make optimum use of the time we have available.
Successful time management:

 Enables you to gain a better perspective of pending activities and priorities

 Ensures more opportunities to be creative (being proactive rather than reactive)
 Helps you deal with, reduce and often avoid stress
 Helps you gain more leisure time
 Enables you to attain your objectives consistently and systematically.

In this section, we will try to discuss how to better manage your team’s workload and hit deadlines
by proper prioritization and organizing of tasks.

Time management
 Time management is a personal process and must fit your style and circumstances. It takes a
strong commitment to use time effectively. It is about achieving tasks but it is also about prioritizing tasks
and organizing yourself well.

Table 1. Two ways of establishing control over your management of time

Prioritization vs project management and task management

To start, let’s give a simple definition of each.

Project management is a method of organizing all activities related to a project and its parts. The
purpose of a project may range from new product development to a service launch.

Task management is an activity in which an individual or team leader tracks a task throughout its
life cycle and makes decisions based on the progress.

Lastly, prioritization is to arrange items to be attended to in order of their relative importance.

A common misconception that we have noticed is that many people use the concepts of task
management, project management and prioritization interchangeably. In reality, although these terms
coincide with one another, they are completely different concepts.

Project management refers to simply managing projects or big initiatives, which help you to
accomplish your goals.

Each project consists of different tasks to help you complete the project–these are the action
items which help you get closer and closer to finishing your project.

Every company in the world has tasks and projects, and hopefully a strong grasp in regards to task
management and project management, but what sets companies that solely focus on task and project
management but are still struggling apart from truly successful companies?

They are run by a leader who knows how to prioritize.

Again, prioritizing means selecting important tasks from those waiting to be carried out. The trick
is to identify the ones that are important from those that merely seem to be important. It is better to do
the right work (=effectiveness) than to do the work right (=efficiency). There is only one way to judge:
does the task contribute towards achieving the objectives of the company as a whole and/or of the team?
If it does, it is an important task. By ranking your tasks in order of importance, you ensure that:

 You work on important tasks first

 If necessary, you work on tasks according to their urgency
 You concentrate on just one task at a time
  You handle the tasks more effectively in the time scheduled
 The set objectives are attained as effectively as possible under the circumstances
 All tasks which can be performed by others are put aside and delegated
 At the end of the planned period (e.g. a working day, half-term), the most important matters are,
at any rate, taken care of; and
 The tasks by which you and your achievements are judged are completed.

The ABC analysis

The ABC analysis is a simple but effective tool for prioritizing your tasks. It requires you to perform
a value analysis of the use of your time in which you show the relative proportions of actual time spent
on very important (A), important (B) and less important (C) tasks. Studies have shown that actual time
spent on a task does not correspond to the value of the activity.

Table 1. Setting priorities using the ABC method

Time is often wasted on trivial tasks (C), while the few essential tasks (A) are often neglected. The
key to successful time management is to give the scheduled activities a clear priority by ranking them
according to an ABC classification system. The ABC analysis does not imply that only A tasks should be
performed and C tasks may be dispensed with completely, but rather that all activities should be brought
into a balanced relationship with each other, given the correct status, and organized into a daily work
sequence by means of setting priorities. Because priorities change from day to day, today’s B may become
tomorrow’s A as an important deadline approaches. Likewise, today’s A may become tomorrow’s C if
circumstances change. In practice, ABC analysis functions best when you:

 Schedule only one or two A tasks per day

 Earmark a further two or three B tasks
 Set some time for C tasks.

Organizing yourself

Organizing yourself means keeping control of diaries, action lists, your desk, your briefcase, and
the key areas of your life. It means thinking and planning, even booking time to spend with yourself. The
LEADS method is relatively simple and requires an average of 8 minutes of planning time per day.
  List tasks, activities and deadlines
 Estimate time needed
 Allow time for unscheduled tasks
 Decide on priorities
 Scan scheduled tasks at end of day.

Table 2. The LEADS method for organizing yourself

Other ways of improving personal organization

There are a variety of other ways for keeping on top of the administration load:

 Study a colleague who seems to be particularly well organized – never underestimate this way of
learning new techniques. We all work with colleagues who have the strengths in areas different
from our own. You may already be thinking of someone whose personal organization is well
advanced and from whom you could pick up some worthwhile tips for improving yours.
 Use your diary effectively – ensure important deadlines and appointments are recorded, and
include notes in your diary at a suitable point to allow you enough time to prepare for the event.
 Select and organizer/time planner to make regular schedules – transfer key events from your diary
onto a term or year planner to provide you with an “at a glance” facility. This should enable you
organizer your work more effectively and anticipate bottlenecks.
 Draw up a daily list of things to do – it is useful to have a list of jobs to do for each day. It is more
helpful than trying to memorize all that you have to do. The physical act of ticking off completed
tasks is also quite satisfying.

Use of technology in time-management

Few of us can make effective use of our time without some help from information technology. Try
to build your skills in this area – it will pay dividends. Increased knowledge and skills will improve your
efficiency and effectiveness when it comes to:
  Designing systems for storing information
 Developing ways of classifying your information
 Labelling your documents clearly and logically
 Using e-mails for communicating with a range of others; and
 Searching for information speedily.

Eliminating time wasters

No one has total control over their time – someone or something will always make demands.
Team leaders, for example, have huge competing demands made upon their time. The only sensible way
for us to make better use of our time is to analyse how we currently use it and then consider ways in
which we can redistribute it more efficiently. This means learning to handle our time thieves. The activity
you have just undertaken is likely to have given you a pretty clear indication of who and what are your
time thieves. The more common “top 10” are set out in Table 3, together with some suggestions as to
how they might be avoided or made less intrusive on your time.
Taking advantage of your natural daily rhythm

Each of us has a natural daily rhythm to our energy patterns. For instance, we experience troughs
of low energy at some times in the day and peaks of high performance at others. Some people are at their
best in the morning, others peak in the afternoon. Within the context of the role of team leader, it is
important to recognize and come to terms with our personal rhythm so that we can work with it, rather
than against it.

Identifying the causes and symptoms of stress

Being aware of the sources of personal stress is an important step in managing and mitigating its
negative effects. By first understanding where in the workplace stress emanates from, leaders can more
effectively and directly manage it.

Demands on Leaders

As the number of demands upon leaders increases, so does the level of stress. Relationship
building and dealing with conflict, as well as decision making and job responsibilities, are the most
frequent demands contributing to increased levels of stress for leaders. Also adding to the sources are
leadership demands such as developing people and managing limited resources. Many leaders are also
finding physical demands such as travel, work hours and the work environment compounding their levels
of stress.

When asked what demands contribute most to a leader’s stress, 28 percent of responses
described having a lack of resources and time. Stress is caused by trying to do more with less, and to do it
faster. Workloads, budget cuts and travel are demands that create stress. Leadership demands that take
time away from the leader’s primary job responsibilities are another source of stress. These demands
include long or frequent meetings and navigationg organizational bureaucracies.

Developing others (15 percent) is another leadership demand causing stress. Motivating
employees, resolving conflicts and providing feedback were examples of stressful leadership demands.
Establishing and maintaining relationships (11 percent) was also seen as a stressful leadership demand.
These demands included dealing with difficult personalities and relationship building with peers and
bosses.

Interpersonal demands

The most frequent interpersonal demand causing leaders stress is dealing with the negative
aspects of interpersonal relationships. Some examples are interpersonal conflicts, political maneuvering
and dishonesty. Overcoming job-related constraints to maintaining interpersonal relationships is a source
of stress. Leaders find it stressful allocating time to connect with others interpersonally because of
meetings, travel and workloads. Additionally, personal insecurity dealt mainly with stress over how best
to communicate and present to others. Examples include giving developmental feedback and being more
patient with employees.

Roles as sources of leader stress

Understanding the state of stress for leaders today means not only identifying what causes stress
but also who causes stress. Because leaders must interact with different groups of people, stress comes
from different places. While no one group appears to contribute more stress than another, groups such
as bosses, peers, direct reports and customers contribute to an individual leader’s stress in different ways.

There is very little differentiation between bosses, peers, direct reports and customers in terms
of each being a source of stress. Leaders agreed that customers and direct reports were most often a
source of stress, but peers and bosses were not far behind. The implication is that leaders experience the
same amount of stress from these various groups, but it also is the case that leaders experience stress
from these groups for different reasons.

Boss as a source of stress. Stress from one’s boss tends to derive from feelings that he or she does
not support the leader enough or show enough respect for the leader’s authority. Bosses with leadership
and management styles that differ from the individual leader are also sources of significant stress.

Peers as a source of stress. Stress from peers, on the other hand, looks very different from stress
caused by a boss. Competition and lack of teamwork are the primary sources of stress from a leader’s
peers. Peer behaviors that discourage teamwork and collaboration are causes of individual leader stress.

Direct reports as a source of stress. Stress from direct reports and customers is different in that it
could be described as contributing either all or nothing. For instance, having direct reports with
performance problems is a primary source of stress for individual leaders; but in the absence of
performance issues, direct reports are less often a significant source of stress. The same holds true for
customers. The primary source of stress from customers is unreasonable demands and expectations.
However, when not perceived as overly demanding or unreasonable, customers themselves are less often
a significant source of stress.

Managing stress
Individual approaches to managing stress

As previously detailed, leaders today are under a great deal of stress from a variety of sources.
Yet, as leaders, they must find coping mechanisms that facilitate accomplishment of the ongoing demands
of their multiple roles both at work and outside of work.

The most frequent ways individuals report they cope with stress is through physical exercise and
boundary maintenance (the deliberate separation of work and personal time). Gaining focus and outdoor
hobbies such as golf, gardening, hunting and fishing are also reported as important ways individuals
manage their stress. This is a strong indication that it is important and critical for leaders to step away
from their sources of stress in order to be more effective.

Being aware of the sources of personal stress is an important step in managing and mitigating its
negative effects. The leaders surveyed provided a number of ways in which they manage stress; they also
provided insights into how they manage stress from specific sources. The interplay between a specific
source of stress and the techniques employed to manage stress produced by that source revealed two
interesting trends.

The first trend is that regardless of the source of stress – whether it is task, interpersonal,
leadership or physical – most leaders use a variety of sensory pursuits to manage stress from that source.
Sensory pursuits are described here as an activity that produces physical stimulation. An example of
positive sensory pursuits would be running or exercising, while negative examples would be punching a
wall or overeating. The frequency in which sensory pursuits are used suggests that it is important to have
at least one positive sensory activity identified in a leader’s stress management repertoire.

The second trend is that when dealing with stress from task demands such as job responsibilities
and decision making, leaders often engage in behaviors that help them gain focus on the task at hand.
Focusing on the task by planning, organizing and prioritizing appears to be an effective way of managing
task-related stress. Specific behaviors mentioned were: frequently defining and clarifying expectations of
the task, maintaining a project schedule, and completing tasks ahead of deadline. Gaining focus also
includes putting the task in perspective with the overall goals of the organization. The behaviors
associated with gaining focus could reduce stress during a task as well as help eliminate future stress
before the task is started.

Organizational approaches to managing stress

While leaders as individuals must take responsibility for managing their own stress, they also
expect support from their organizations. Organizations have active and helpful human resources
departments that provide wellness-training events which support employees in managing stress. Other
support systems provided by organizations that support stress management include flexible work
schedules, vacation/time-off/holidays and access to gym facilities. These support individual stress
management techniques in that it’s important for leaders to be able to step away from their sources of
stress in order to be more effective leaders.

Other tips to manage stress

 With the challenges facing organizations and their leaders becoming more complex, coupled with
rising uncertainty about the future, stress will only continue to increase. So, what can leaders do to better
manage stress?

Incorporate health and diet into your schedule. The University of Iowa reports that regular
exercise not only reduces stress but also can help leaders reduce anxiety, improve sleep and boost
immunity from colds and flue. Begin incorporating healthy practices slowly. Start with improving your
diet. Add more fruits and vegetables while reducing added sugars, fats and sodium. Then, make a
commitment to exercising (walking, yoga, weights, biking) at least 30 minutes twice a week.

Get a “coach” to help you stay on track. By soliciting a coach, he or she can help you organize and
prioritize your life uncovering ways to boost your energy and time. A coach will help you differentiate
between what is essential or impossible and what is simply a pattern of behavior or habit you have
created.

Create your personal board of directors. Make sure you have a support group in place that is
helping you positively cope with stress and leadership. This diverse group should be made up of peers,
your boss, a family member and a trusted friend. You should be clear about your goals around managing
stress and have them help you stay on track.

Do more in less time by practicing the art of recovery. Athletes have long understood that pushing
oneself hard at 100% capacity, 100% of the time results in little or no long-term gains in performance.
Make sure that throughout your day you are allowing yourself real and frequent breaks. At the very least,
make sure you are taking a 10-minute break every 90 minutes and that you allow yourself a vacation after
an extended push on a project or assignment.

REFERENCES

https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/StressofLeadership.pdf

https://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/how-to-prioritize-work-when-everythings-1/

https://appfluence.com/productivity/prioritize-workload-everything-seems-important/

Management skills in schools: a resource for school leaders by Jeff Jones