5 Ways to Make the Workweek Feel Less Stressful and Draining

In my earlier job as a technique marketing consultant, I felt fortunate once I managed to sleep greater than 4 or 5 hours an evening. During the workday, I subsisted on our workplace stash of espresso and Cheerios as a result of there wasn’t time to stroll to lunch and nonetheless get all the things accomplished. When Friday afternoon lastly got here round, I virtually collapsed into the weekend, utterly depleted.

Whether your work takes place inside or exterior the house, with or with out pay, likelihood is you’ve felt equally overwhelmed sooner or later. “‘Time poverty’ is the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it, and it’s really common these days,” Cassie Holmes, PhD, a professor of promoting and behavioral resolution making at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management who has spent the final decade learning time and happiness, tells SELF.

And whereas many people really feel drained on the finish of the week, “there is a difference between ‘My life is full’ exhaustion and the ‘Life is passing me by’ kind,” Dr. Holmes says. When it’s the previous, she explains, you’re extra prone to head into the following week with a “bring it on” angle fairly than one among “ugh, here we go again.”

Some energizing information: You don’t essentially want infinite hours within the day to attain the “bring it on” spirit. In truth, Dr. Holmes, whose guide Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most got here out earlier this month, says time isn’t solely the issue; it’s additionally the answer. “The goal is to make our time more fulfilling during the week, not just full,” she says. You should have a jam-packed schedule, however by making your time really feel extra significant, you may also really feel much less mentally spent (even if you happen to’re nonetheless bodily pooped).

Here, Dr. Holmes shares her high suggestions for benefiting from your weekday hours—earlier than, throughout, and after work—in order that they really feel much less aggravating and draining.

Track your time and happiness.

To add extra comfortable hours to your day, you first want to grasp the way you’re spending your waking hours and the way every activity or exercise makes you’re feeling, Dr. Holmes says. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple as saying, “Work makes me sad and being elsewhere makes me happy.” Instead, she recommends monitoring your time for every week or two—in a journal, say, or a notes app. Her methodology: Log your day by day actions in 30-minute increments and charge them on a happiness scale of 1 to 10, the place 1 is by no means comfortable and 10 could be very comfortable. Think of happiness in its broadest sense: “What we’re going for is overall happiness of the activity, including feeling excitedly energized or blissfully serene,” Dr. Holmes says.

To set your self up for the evaluation section of this train, fairly than jotting down “work” as one among your 30-minute time blocks, get particular and notice issues like “staff meeting,” “restocking,” or “charting on patients.” And seize the situational nuance if you happen to can: Maybe making dinner on Wednesday evening in your children whenever you needed to be someplace 20 minutes later felt terrible, however stirring selfmade risotto on Friday evening whereas sipping a glass of wine to a soundtrack of Jon Batiste was pure luxurious.