Halftime Wednesdays

Everyone’s schedule is built different, this is no surprise. Some people will work for four straight days, and take three off, while others will go to school four days in a row without work. How you set up your weekly schedule is very to managing the stress of your life. Henrick Edberg, a writer for the Positivity blog, posted some helpful tips on relieving stress at the work place. He notes that “it is also really helpful to find a good balance between work and rest from a weekly perspective. I do that by staying away from work and staying offline – except for one email check – during the weekend,” suggesting that you make some time for yourself. For myself, I like to take my time off on Mondays and Wednesdays (aside from school) and devote it to my son and stepdaughter. You never realize how relaxing playing with Pokemon toys and Barbie Dolls can be until it’s time for bed and you notice you haven’t had one cigarette.

Photo Courtesy of gograph.com

However, how does one get to the point to where they can take such time off? Well for those that only work or go to school, that is simple. Work ahead, in fact, you are already ahead of the crowd. For the rest of us though, we have to be a little more thorough with our tasks. Prioritizing you schedule can be most valuable, and according to the NHS Choices, you can categorize into four groups of priority; “Urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important, neither urgent nor important.” Doing this will help you accomplish the most important tasks first, which will in turn allow you some time off on those important days, if only for a few hours.

Then again, there are those instances where stress seems to just become overwhelming. For myself, I have a bad habit when it comes to handling stress, which I do not encourage. I smoke to help handle my own stress, knowing that it is doing more harm than good. A tad counterproductive, I know, which is why I have been looking for other ways to manage my stress. Helpguide.org does a wonderful job at highlighting bad, if not harmful, strategies for handling stress, and offering some healthier solutions, such as “make time for fun,” in which they offer a chart on relaxing ways for one to handle stress like “take a long walk,” and “play with a pet.” This shows clearly that taking a little time off for yourself each week can keep your stress level down.

Stress is your worst enemy. When you become stressed, it becomes much more difficult to handle your day to day routine, much less special work or school tasks. The American Health Association offers many different links that could prove helpful to managing stress, and even offers you to sign up for free to receive healthy living tips each month. Through the research I have done, I have found one very important common denominator, that being taking time off for yourself. Sometimes, in the deluge of life, we miss the man in the mirror, and this is the beginning of our downfall. If this article was helpful please let me know, especially if you have any helpful tips that I did not cover.