Stress management and time management experience

Stress management and time management are never two isolated sets of skills. They are essentially two aspects of the same thing - "anchoring limited attention on what is truly important" - there is no universal perfect template, and finding a way to adapt to your own rhythm is 100 times more effective than rigidly applying any big factory efficiency manual or internet celebrity time rule.

In the first half year of being an Internet content operator, I was really confused. I applied all the four-quadrant principles, GTD working methods, and Pomodoro Techniques to myself. I downloaded 8 to-do apps on my phone, and spent 15 minutes every morning when I got to work to list 10+ to-do items. The Pomodoro clock was set to jingle, but the alarm clock often went off. I was just in the mood to write the article, or when I got off work, most of my to-do list was still red. The more I looked at it, the more panicked I became. My chest was as tight as a half-filled sponge soaked in water. Even on the way home, I was worried about what I had not finished today. After three weeks in a row, my face broke out with acne. When I went to the doctor, the first sentence he told me was "stop making trouble for yourself."

Don't tell me, you are really a fan of the authorities. Later, after talking with colleagues in different positions in the group, I discovered that there is no standard answer to this matter. The two mainstream ideas currently cater to completely different groups of people.

The first type is "Tool Accurate Flow", which advocates cutting time into chunks, breaking down tasks to the smallest granularity, and using tables and APPs to track the entire process. It is suitable for people who are highly receptive to rules and need to handle multi-line standardized tasks. The product manager at the desk next to me is a typical example. He has used Notion to build a complete personal management system, tracking everything from project milestones to how many glasses of water he drinks every day. He has never messed up the needs of three business lines at the same time, and even works overtime clearly. This method is very efficient for him. But for someone like me, whose attention span is easy to wander, I spent two afternoons just trying to match my Notion template.

The other type is the recently popular "anti-efficiency flow", which advocates giving up precise time planning, only listing the three most important things every day, accepting the objective fact that ordinary people can only be productive for 3-5 hours a day, and just follow the situation for the rest of the time. At that time, I tried it with the mentality of being a live doctor. Once when I was rushing to make a content plan for the 618 big sale, I listed three things: "Write the core gameplay framework, align the design requirements, and finalize the talent release schedule." I didn't set a time when the alarm clock was stuck. Once the writing was smooth, I sat down for two hours at a stretch. When I got stuck, I went downstairs to buy a glass of iced Americano and wander around. It was all done before 4pm. I spent the rest of the time leisurely replying to messages and watching half an episode of a documentary. When I walked on the road after get off work that day, even the wind felt comfortable. For the first time, I didn’t carry the baggage of “unfinished tasks”.

That's when I realized that 80% of the pressure I felt before didn't come from the task itself, but from the internal friction of "Why am I so useless that I can't even finish this little thing?" The Stanford Behavioral Design Laboratory has previously conducted research and found that the effective concentration time of ordinary people in a single day is 3-5 hours. Those who advocate "12 efficient hours a day" either count the time spent in meetings, fishing, and replying to messages as "effective time", or they overdraw their energy in the short term. In the long term, they will suffer from burnout or direct decline in efficiency. Think about it, if you open a dozen or so apps in the background of your phone, it will still get laggy. If you list a dozen to-do items for yourself a day, it is equivalent to having a dozen unfinished processes hanging in the background of your brain at the same time. It would be strange if the stress level does not skyrocket.

My current method is actually not "professional" at all. I neither stick to the Pomodoro nor write long to-do lists. Before I leave work the day before, I write down 2-3 core things that must be done the next day on a note, and do the remaining chores as I go. When I feel stressed and out of breath, I stop immediately and stand downstairs for 10 minutes to watch the grandparents dance in the square, or go to the convenience store to buy a popsicle to chew on. It is much more efficient than sitting at my workstation and staring at the screen.

Oh, yes, that’s not to say that those standard time management methods are useless. My college classmate who is doing auditing has to deal with the different compliance needs of more than a dozen clients every day. She must strictly use the four quadrants to prioritize. Missing a node can cause hundreds of thousands of losses. For her, those "rigid" rules are life-saving things.

After all, I have been working on this issue for almost two years, and my biggest feeling is that there is really no need to worry about other people's efficiency methods. When we learn time management and stress management, the ultimate goal is to make our lives more comfortable. It is not to force ourselves into a spinning machine, nor to show off a full time schedule to win likes. If you can finish important things on time, if you can not take the anxiety of work home, if you can have time to eat something you like and go shopping, you have already won over most people.