How to remain easy while being busy?

Do you wish you had more than 24 hours in day? Do you wish you had more than 2 hands? In this fast pace life, can we remain easy, efficient and effective?

Here are the few tips and tools that I used myself to remain easy while being busy.

1. There are 24 hours in day, 10-12 hours you are spending at work. You need 8 hours of sleep. How much time is left for you and your family? After working longs hours, you are discharged and you go with that energy at home. You give what you have. You might not be able to spend quality time with family when you are discharged. And then you go to bed with thoughts of your today’s meetings and next day meeting and same cycle repeats. When are you charging yourself?  Are we machines? We charge our machines also e.g. phone and laptop but we don’t have time to charge ourselves. If you don’t have positive energy you will not give it to family and friends.

2. Pressure is good motivator to get us going but if we feel pressure for long time and continue to work in that mode, soon we will be stressed out.

Stress = Pressure/Strength 

 Pressure is there in high demanding jobs and it will be there more going forward but do I need to get stressed out. I don’t have control over numerator but how can I avoid stress. Answer is obvious to increase inner strength/Resilience. We know when we put same amount of pressure on different metals, different metals have different stress because of difference in resilience of each metal. In same work environment, few people enjoy their work while others feel stress. What is the difference between these two categories of people? It’s their inner strength/attitude, which is making difference. While working hard what kind of thoughts am I generating? Am I worried that I won’t be able to finish it or what if missed out my deadline? Our state of mind impacts our inner strength and quality of our work and life.

3. When it is raining or it is too cold, do I keep complaining about weather? I do take measure to protect myself by using umbrella or putting warm clothes. Similarly when there is too much pressure would I complain about it or find a solution to protect myself. Under such situation when you need protection, talk to yourself the way you would to your good friend. You would always tell your friend that it is just temporary phase; things will be fine, just do your best and leave rest on God. Take control of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions and deeds.

4. Do personal SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats).

Clarifying your strengths (What are the particular personal strengths that you can depend on the future?)

Acknowledging your weaknesses (What old weaknesses, if they could be removed, would have the greatest impact on your life?)

Recognizing Possible threats (What are the greatest risks or negative challenges that you will have to deal with in the future?)

Identifying golden opportunities (What opportunities can you see opening up in your life right now?

Having self-awareness is very critical part to maintain good work-life balance. Sometimes you might not be leveraging your strengths. You could be in a job role, which you may not be enjoying. It can cause stress in your life.

5. Embracing Change: Everything around you is changing, all the time. So you might as well get comfortable and embrace change, rather than resist it. Understand what's changing and what change you need to make. Change with change, and you might just discover that change is, in fact, an energizer, an opportunity! 

6. I am as I think. Our quality of thoughts decides our quality of life. So it is very important to observe what am I feeding to my mind. We need to learn art of positive thinking and avoid negative and wasteful thinking. We have very little and precious space in our memory, we can’t fill it with past resentment, grudges and hurt. We need to put virus scan on our brain memory and clean such virus every day. If you always do as you have always done, you will always get as you have always got. Similarly, if you always think as you have always thought, you will always do what you have always done. So to change your action, you need to change your thinking and attitude.  If negativity crowds your mind, replace it by positive thoughts. Divert your mind by not focusing on the negative exclusively. Negative thinking will just drain your energy, which is not helpful. It’s just a waste of time. This reason alone is a validation to stop thinking negatively.For instance if you catch yourself worrying about losing your job, stop yourself and divert your attention to an enjoyable game or recently watched movie.

7. In silence, we connect with our inner values and start the process of healing. It is simple and easy to do. No matter how tired or busy you are, you can give yourself the gift of just one minute –a long, deep breath in your busy life. A moment of silence can

1. Slow down your heart rate and breathing 
2. Normalize your blood pressure
3. Help you use oxygen more efficiently 
4. Slow down the aging process 
5. Improve your immune function

Take 1 min break after every hour. When something spills on your couch, you clean it immediately so that stain in not permanent. Similarly we need to clean our mind every hour. If my last hour was not good for some reason, I need to clean it to make my next hour enjoyable.

8. Take the responsibility and ownership of your own situation. You don't have control over others but you can keep your control with you. We mostly give our remote control to others and feel controlled by them and blame them. Be master of your own self, your emotions and feelings. Others cannot give me hurt until I take it. Even if they are throwing garbage at me, I need to be smart enough not to collect garbage and spoil my mind or mood.

9. Share your feeling with family or good friend. Have a network of people who are very positive and supportive. You don't need to go in complete silence or become violent. Remain cool, calm and connected. If you don't have any one around to share just start writing it on piece of paper. From my experience I always felt better putting my thoughts on paper. I started with complains but came out with positive out look.

10. Start your day we positive thought. Your mind is like a bloating paper in the morning and whatever information you feed, your quality of the day will depend upon that. Similarly end your day reading something positive and expressing gratitude for what you have.

Do what you love and love what you do. You will enjoy work as well as life as there is only love and no labor. You will remain easy while being busy!