Are you stressed out at weekends?

A recent report has revealed that suffering from stress can lead to a one-day weekend.

Between finally unwinding (apparently that is not until around 12.38pm on Saturday!) and starting to fret about work again (typically 3.55pm on Sunday), only one clear day is left to relax.

Quite how the researchers worked out those very specific timings we’re not entirely sure… The unfortunate truth is that thinking and worrying about work eats into our leisure time, eats into our family time, eats into our enjoyment of life...

The researchers who conducted this survey also found that six out of ten people actually work at some point over the weekend, in an attempt to get ahead for Monday.

Half of the 4,000 questioned said work commitments impacted on the amount of time they spent with their families and well over half (53%) said they were too tired to fully enjoy their weekends.

So what is causing this? One obvious answer is that we have far more work to do. Life is busier in general; advances in technology (smart phones, internet and so on) mean we are much more accessible to our clients, our bosses and also far ‘closer’ to our work.

If we wanted to be a little more introspective ~ we could take a step back and look at ourselves. Can we truly say that outside factors alone are the sole cause of our stress and work-overload? Could it be that we’re not managing ourselves effectively? We make the decision to include a work task in leisure or family time, don’t we..?

Whether we call it “self-management” – “work-life balance” – “Life Management” or simply time management; this is a skill worth acquiring if we’re to keep up with, if not on top of, all the demands that life and work throws at us.

A Be More Effective poll found the top 10 time management issues were:

1.    Attempting too much at once and setting unrealistic deadlines
2.    Lack of objectives/priorities/planning
3.    Telephone interruptions
4.    Crisis management – shifting priorities
5.    Inability to say “no”
6.    Emails
7.    Lack of self-discipline
8.    Personal disorganisation
9.    Leaving tasks unfinished
10.  Procrastination

If you recognise yourself in any of these, then watch out for and read the blogs coming out over the next few months; in them we’ll give you a few tips on how to solve just some of these time management / stress causing problems.