Leaders under fire and National Stress Awareness month
Whether you call it stress, overwhelm, or some other name, I constantly hear from leaders that they are pulled in too many directions, expected to multitask relentlessly, and have significantly more input and information coming in than they can ever effectively process. In short, they live their lives as though they are constantly under fire.
As a result, many leaders are anxious and unable to sleep despite exhaustion, suffer impingements on family and personal time and, yet, still have a sense of not really ever getting anything done. They lament to me “If only I could get a better handle on my time management.”
April is Nation Stress Awareness month. During this month, I will write a series of short articles about the things that leaders do (and that are done to them) that leave them stressed out and less productive. We’ll look at what leaders can do to take control and feel more centered, relaxed, and productive again.
We’ll examine this issue of time management and see if there isn’t another way to frame it. After all, can we really manage “time?” We all get the same 24 hours a day. No one gets more or less. We cannot create time or make more of it. So is it time that we need to learn to manage? Or it is our ourselves? Perhaps we simply need a new approach.
