Someone asked me if I could address what to do when you’re anxious about the next calendared event, which prevents you from focusing on the current thing you’re trying to work on. Let’s discuss – both in terms of if certain things cause that feeling to set it and if it’s everything you calendar.
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Full Transcript
Ep 65. When You’re Anxious About The Next Calendared Event
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: Welcome to The Bright Method Podcast where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up The Bright Method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all, personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep proud of what you got done today and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in!
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Kelly Nolan: Hey, hey! All right, so today we’re gonna talk about what to do if you are struggling to focus on what you’re trying to focus on because you are anxious about something else you have scheduled coming up.
Now, someone asked me to talk about this. They just reached out and said, “Well, how do you deal with if you’re continually stressed out about what’s next on your calendar and that anxiety feeling prevents you from focusing on what you’re trying to focus on now?” And I can very much relate to this. I think it’s a great question, and so, I wanted to address it. This might be a shorter episode but hopefully will have some good takeaways that make it worth it for you!
So the main question I would first kick off with if I were tracking you is are we talking about everything on your calendar or are there certain things that cause that feeling to come up because those are really different things. Like, if everything is stressing you out or, I shouldn’t even say stressing you out, but if you are continually anxious about what’s coming up next, then that’s a different discussion than if it’s just the occasional thing that stresses you out or causes your focus to break and be too fragmented to focus.
So that’s the first thing to think about if the person who asked is listening or if you resonate with that is really thinking about, “What types of things cause this feeling to come up for me or is it everything?” And I’m gonna address both today.
Now, I’m gonna kick off with actually when it’s more of a one-off thing. If you can sit here and you’re like, “Actually, it’s really only when this and maybe this and this type of event happen or activity happen, that’s what causes that anxiety for me,” and so, let’s talk about that, and then we’ll talk about if it’s everything else.
If Certain Types of Things Cause Stress or Anxiety – 2:06
If it’s a certain type of thing that causes you, I don’t know if it’s maybe stress, anxiety, you’re just focused on the thing, if it’s a big enough thing that you’re worried about that you struggle to focus on anything else, then I would just own that. And what I mean by that is I would just accept that that’s how you’re gonna feel and plan for it. And what I mean by that is actually blocking your calendar from just reminding future you that you’re gonna feel that way and to not schedule things that will require high focus and instead matchmake tasks to that type of energy that you’ll be in in a way that makes sense. So I’m gonna give you some examples.
The first might be less relevant but is, I think, important enough to share is speaking is like that for me. When I give corporate workshops, it’s not even a high-stress thing for me anymore but it’s enough stress that if I have a corporate workshop, let’s say, at 11:00AM, I know that after my kids are in school and I have a couple hours that I could do a lot of focused work if I wanted, that focused work’s not gonna happen. My brain is gonna be a little too fixated on wanting to think about the corporate workshop and delivering a good presentation and all that kind of stuff.
So that’s just something that I used to plan on in the way that I’m gonna talk about next but also factors in on the question of, “Do you want to still keep doing that type of activity?” Now, you might not have the flexibility to be able to make that decision, and so, just ignore this. I know it can be frustrating to hear. But if you do have the ability to make that type of call, factor in those hours of that feeling into your decision. And by that I mean, I’ve talked about this before, you can check out an episode on an example of saying no, like why I’m not doing speaking engagements this year. But part of it was realizing that the opportunity cost of giving corporate workshops was not just limited to the hour of the workshop that I was giving but it also included a lot of other things including the hours before because I started recognizing, “Hey, it’s not just the hour that I’m giving a workshop that I can’t do other things. It’s like the two or three hours before it where I’m kind of stressed out, I’m not really focusing. Those hours are also hours I’m giving up from doing higher-leverage activities.”
And so, if you are having these dread feelings, factor it into, “Is the cost of me doing this activity worth it?” And if not, then consider eliminating it. Now, again, that’s not super useful for some people, and so, let’s talk about an example that is potentially more useful.
I also get stressed out and even more stressed out I think because it’s just such a high-importance thing for me, is when I’m running one of my eight-week programs, particularly those first couple weeks I am weirdly still stressed out. I’ve run these programs 13 times, and I still get very stressed out in kind of the days leading up to it but definitely the day of the first call and probably the first three calls.
Now, I’m not gonna get rid of those calls. Even though I’m worried about them, I find them incredibly rewarding, very fulfilling, obviously it’s a big part of the income I bring into my business. I’m not gonna get rid of them. It’s very worth it to me even though the time commitment is more than just that hour call that I’m gonna be on.
But I also have to own that that is how I’m gonna feel. I am a big fan of embracing reality and working with it, so I need to embrace the fact that those calls are at noon my time here in Minnesota, and basically from when I drop off kids to the call, I’m not going to be able to focus super well. So what I do is matchmake energy to that time.
So in the morning, I get home from kid drop off, things like that. I take a longer walk with my dog. It lets my brain kind of settle and get some of the energy out. I also tend to workout, take a shower, get ready, which takes more time than normal because I’m trying to be, like, quasi camera ready, and I don’t normally do that. I also eat a good meal. I prep tea. I do the activities that I would do probably later in my day, typically, or during the time of the call. They get dislodged. They’re activities that I want to do anyway for the most part, but I’m moving them into a time that works, where what I could have done was do the program and then workout because I also have that kind of nervous energy after the program. But that’s actually not the best use. Typically, there are some things I have to do after each call, and then once those are over, I can typically dive back into some other work. But beforehand, I just know my focus isn’t there.
So I just share that as an option for you, that even if you can’t just workout and shower, you have to do some work, really thinking of the type of work you could do. I could do probably my finances during that time as well. I could do one social media post if I had to. Those types of more bite-sized, less high-intellect-required activities are good fits as well. So I would just really think about, “Okay, I’m gonna feel a little scattered. Maybe I just clear my email inbox.” Those are little bite-sized things I could do, the progress will feel good, things along those lines really might be better matches for how you’re gonna feel.
So, just to recap, when they’re really stressful things that you’re going into, own it, account for that when you’re doing your cost-benefit analysis of doing a type of activity, account for the hours that you might feel that way, and then for the things you are still going to keep, matchmake lower-energy things to those windows, or maybe not necessarily lower-energy things but lower-focus-required things to those windows of time.
I’m a big believer that if you have been concerned that with what you’ve scheduled is too distracting, then just owning how you’re gonna feel and matchmaking in that way will allow you to make the best use of the time that you can without you feeling like you’re banging your head against a brick wall trying to focus when the focus just isn’t there.
If Everything You’re Calendaring Cause Stress or Anxiety – 8:23
Now, if everything you’re calendaring is stressing you out, that’s a bit different because you can’t do what we’ve been talking about for everything in your day. So obviously that type of approach doesn’t work in the same way. So some ideas for you.
The first one is to check out — and I’ll link it in the show notes — Dr. Chelsea Pierotti’s episode on this podcast on how to deal with stress at work. That just might be a really helpful thing for you to listen to to get her overall approach to dealing with the stressful parts of work that are just stressful. No matter what we do, they’re just stressful, and that can be really helpful.
I also have three other ideas for you. They’re small but I hope that they help.
The first is to really schedule your prep time for the things that are stressing you out or everything if it’s stressing you out. If you need prep time for those things, then part of the anxiety for me is will I have had enough time to prep for it, things like that. And so, what you might want to do is instead of — well, first of all, you might want to just schedule prep time, like half an hour the day before or the morning of to prep for something.
But also you might want to think about instead of, let’s say, you have a 10:00 AM call, and you plan to do a certain task until 10:00 AM, what I might recommend is end the task 10 minutes earlier, give yourself time to go to the bathroom, get some tea, and then also just get your head on, review. Even if you don’t really need it, take the five minutes to review what is this thing that I want to do next, get your head on right, or if it’s just an activity, like another task that you’re rolling into, give yourself the five minutes before you put the pressure on to do things to just orient your brain, let your brain settle in and orient so that it can turn to the next thing. That prep time, even if you’ve already done your prep work and you don’t need the prep time particularly before a meeting or a call, just giving yourself those five, even two minutes to just get your brain in the right brain space [Laughs] can be really helpful in a weird way. It can really help reduce at least my own frantic energy a little bit when I’m going into that.
Another thing that really helps me is setting alarms. Partly, when I’m really anxious about something coming up, it’s a fear that I’m gonna miss it, that I’m not going to remember to switch gears in time, and I’m gonna blow through something and then it’s like that anxiety of I’m gonna miss it. And so, really embrace alarms for that if you want. You could set an alarm for 20 minutes before something and then also 10 minutes before something and then also 2 minutes before something. That will help you transition and know, “Okay, it’s gonna remind me when I have 20 minutes left that I can start winding this thing down. It’s gonna remind me when I have 10 minutes left, then I can really make sure I’m done and have switched gears. Two minutes before the thing will remind me when to start going into the Zoom room,” whatever makes sense to you.
And the reason for this is not to become really rigid. What I really like it for is then it allows me to relax into whatever the thing is before that I was trying to do. So let’s say I have that thing at 10:00 AM and it’s 9:15, and I really want to get into something, if I set those alarms for myself, then I can really let myself immerse into the next task, the task I’m trying to focus on, without worrying I’m gonna forget about the next thing I have to do. So alarms have been really powerful for me in that regard. Everything should still be calendared, but what you’re doing is you’re allowing alarms to support you living out what’s in your calendar. So that can be really beneficial.
The last thing that I wanted to talk about here, too, is really building flex time into your calendar, and I know that I’ve talked about that before but I bring it up in this context because when I imagine being really stressed out at complying with my calendar all the time, if I pretended that was me, it comes from my concern that if I don’t live rigidly in accordance with my calendar, it won’t all get done. And I’m a big proponent of building flex time into your calendar as well, like physically blocking time for flex, which I talk about a lot with clients, and I’ve probably mentioned here on the podcast.
If you knew and had the assurance that you do have some breathing space built into your calendar, that not everything in your calendar has to be followed so rigidly, my hope for you is that that could allow you to relax and use the calendar more as a tool to live and execute but play out the life that you want, live out the life that you want instead of thinking of it as so rigid. So I just throw that out there for you if it’s helpful.
So if you are someone who’s anxious about all the things in your calendar, you’re kind of always worried about complying with a calendar and that feeling, then as I’ve said before, just to recap, I would check out Dr. Chelsea’s episode (Dr. Chelsea Pierotti) on managing stress at work. I would calendar prep time because I think it will help you feel like, “Okay, I have time protected to prep. I don’t need to be thinking about this all the time.” I would use alarm clocks, alarms on your phone — or a separate alarm if you don’t want your phone near you — just to help you know that you won’t blow through it and can relax and immerse yourself in what you are trying to focus on, and then I would also build flex time into your calendar so that you have that breathing space so you don’t feel that pressure that you have to live really, really rigidly with your calendar or it’s not going to come together.
All right? I hope that helps. I hope you’ve found one or two things that will be useful to you. If you have something that you want me to address that I haven’t addressed yet, please feel free to reach out to me. You can email me at ke***@ke********.com or send me a DM on Instagram. I love trying to address the specific things that people have issues with, so I’m happy to do that for you. And if you don’t mind helping support this small but mighty podcast, I would so appreciate if you would share your favorite episode with a friend or two and also rate and review. It is a huge help, and it matters a lot to the algorithm gods and for the growth of the podcast, so I really appreciate it! Most importantly, thank you for being here, and I’ll catch you in the next episode!
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