“Indeed, nearly 24% of employees report experiencing psychological distress, while 6% suffer from depression and 4% from burnout.” Blanc Marie-Ève, Marchand Alain and Durand Pierre, “Genre, catégorie professionnelle, secteur économique et santé mentale en milieu de travail : les résultats de l’étude SALVEO”, Canadian Journal of Public Health, May-June 2015.
Work-related performance anxiety is felt in many ways. For example, according to a 2016 survey, 58% of people won’t take their vacation completely, in order to complete a few “absolutely urgent” tasks. Or, according to a 2015 report by the Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréées, more than 40% of Quebecers remain connected to the office, and therefore reachable, during their vacation. That’s no mean feat, and not to be taken lightly.
Mental health problems affect more Canadians than all other problems combined, including cancer and heart disease.
One in four people will experience a mental health problem significant enough to cause them to stop working. Not only that, but one in eight people will be hospitalized for a mental health problem at least once in their lives.
So how can you avoid overwork, or at least prevent the exhaustion associated with stress and anxiety at work?
There’s no magic bullet here, it’s all about getting better organized to manage your time effectively. It’s an essential skill to develop if you want to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate your organizational skills, especially if you aspire to a management position. If you don’t know how to manage yourself, what’s going to happen when you have to manage a team of 10 people, who also have very tight deadlines and a growing workload? You won’t.
First of all, you have to accept that any change takes time to settle into a routine. The long-term frequency of a practice to integrate a habit is essential, hence the importance of perseverance. You also need to start with a solid foundation.
You must also avoid falling into certain time management traps.
- Satellite tasks: We plan a busy 8-hour day, but we quickly forget about time-consuming tasks, such as preparing for meetings, making urgent calls, helping a colleague… By factoring them into your schedule, you actually avoid putting too much on your shoulders.
- The unexpected: Last-minute meetings, priority calls, a colleague to replace for the day… quickly, if you’re not careful, your 8am day turns into a 10am day. The only way to avoid this pitfall is to carry out a time study beforehand. By calculating the average time a task takes, you can plan your day to include unforeseen events and satellite tasks.
- Lack of planning: Today, we’re more in reactive mode than proactive. We receive requests from all over the place, and we try to respond to them now, right now! The key to success when it comes to time management is to plan for the short, medium and long term.
- Prioritize: One of the biggest challenges when it comes to planning our schedule is prioritizing good business. Yes, sometimes you have to put a job first, for the good of the company. In reality, you have to know how to triage requests like an emergency doctor. And between you and me, when a customer has an “emergency”, it’s often because there are gaps in their own schedule.
