What is the one factor that affects our mood more than anything else?
How we spend out time.
My goal for this post is to help you:
- Improve your ability to manage your time,
- Clarify your reasons for finding time to relax,
- And review a simply yet very effective strategy to do so
So let’s get started.
Time during the Covid-19 pandemic
Perhaps you have more free time than ever and you find yourself pacing your house or watching endless hours of Netflix. Maybe you barely have a moment to yourself between homeschooling, working, and trying to keep your house from looking like a tornado came through.
Our situations may be different, but everyone has a new routine to adjust to. Regardless of your situation, the way you manage your time is impacting your level of stress.
Never enough time
For most of us, time management was already a problem. In our fast-paced, achievement-oriented culture, most people struggle to manage their time effectively.
Workloads have increased but people also value work-life balance more than ever. Therefore, companies and individuals want to become more efficient. The goal: increase productivity while reducing risk of burnout.
With the current economic climate, if you are lucky enough to have a job your workload may have increased, making your time more precious than ever. For those not working, particularly if you are job searching, time management is essential for maintaining a positive mood and feeling in control.
How our daily activities impact our mood
The way we spend our time is a major predictor of our mood. In general, to maintain a positive mood and reduce depression risk, we want a combination of activities that give us:
- A sense of achievement, accomplishment, or purpose
- Enjoyment, pleasure, or relaxation, and
- Connection with others
You don’t necessarily need all three every day, although it can’t hurt. If you look at your week, and you don’t have some combination of purpose, enjoyment, and connection, you may be at risk for depression. Therefore, it’s time to re-evaluate and consider ways to make a change in how you spend your time.
Can you get better at managing your time?
Absolutely. Research on a variety of time management interventions found it improved over time in most of the programs studied (Green & Skinner, 2005).
So whether you are excessively busy and barely have a moment to yourself, are retired and living alone, single and looking for work, and anything in between, time management skills are relevant and you can improve them.
Steps to improve your time management
1. Start with awareness
First, you must take an honest assessment of how you spend your time.
Think back to the past 24 hours and write down every activity you did starting from when you woke up to when you went to bed. If you can’t remember, start today. Just keep a notebook with you and take notes each time you switch to a new task. The more detailed you can be the better, and yes, scrolling on your phone needs to be written down.
2. Evaluate without judgment
After you write it all down for a day or two, it’s time to evaluate whether these activities are serving you. How do you feel after you do them? Are they really necessary? How much time do you spend on social media and reading or watching the news? I don’t need to find a research article to tell us that the news makes us feel anxious and depressed, and this has never been more true than right now.
Also, many of us get our news from social media. Given that social media use is also associated with depression (Lin et al., 2016), we are combining two of the worst things for our mood when we look at news from social media.
When I started limiting my news and social media intake a few weeks ago, my mood improved dramatically. I now limit news reading to no more than 20-30 minutes after work, and try to avoid looking at it right before bed. My mood is better and I also use my precious time in the evenings on things that actually help me relax and recharge.
3. Make a plan
Once you’ve identified areas where you want to make a change (for example, less social media, more meditation) then write out your plan. When will you meditate? How will you remind yourself? What might get in the way and how can you make sure it doesn’t happen? For example, if you usually get busy and forget, set an alarm. If you struggle with motivation and convincing yourself that meditation is worth doing, see section below on increasing internal motivation.
Flexibility is the name of the game
I get annoyed when I hear advice that you have to “stick to your plan no matter what” if you are really committed to a goal. If you have kids with variable sleep and wake routines, and moods, this may not be possible and you may need to be flexible.
This may also be true of people without kids. Worry about staying employed is at an unprecedented high. While I would never condone working around the clock, the more you learn to anticipate the needs of your employer, work smart and provide value, the better. So maybe it isn’t your kids who need you, but your boss, and you may need to adjust your plans and expectations to help out when it’s needed.
That is, don’t give up on your goals, but you may need to be flexible about your methods of getting there.
I use this method to keep up with blogging. I have every other Friday off and I used to spend those days writing and planning content for this blog. Now, I’m taking care of my kiddos that day and my husband is working. So my blogging occurs whenever it can. I have no set time for it, I just try to work on it when the opportunity is there.
My goal of putting out regular content has not changed, but my methods for making that happen are more flexible.
Adjust expectations
Expectation is the root of all heartache.
– William Shakespeare
Our happiness is not determined by our circumstances, but by the way our expectations line up with our outcomes.
Never has this been more applicable than when it comes to baby sleep. When I compare my son’s sleep to my daughter’s who was a super sleeper, I get super frustrated. But after I re-adjusted my expectations to remind myself that many babies do not sleep through the night until they are 6 months or later, life got a whole lot easier. Now, when he sleeps poorly, I expect it and my attitude is much better. When he sleeps well, I’m pleasantly surprised.
My point here is, re-adjust expectations for the season of life you are in. Don’t give up on your goals, but know that right now, they may take longer or might be a little messier, and that is just fine.
Prioritizing has never been more important
It’s essential to look at what is truly important right now, and what can wait. Where can you re-adjust your expectations without sacrificing your values?
Are you obsessing over the house not being clean when you should really be focused on something else? Are you worrying about making sure you child sticks to your previous screen time limits before the pandemic? If so, it might be time to re-evaluate. I have decided that it is fine to have my daughter watching a little more screen time right now, if it allows me to make dinner after work. And maybe it’s alright to have a home that looks like a toddler has been playing in it for weeks since that is 100% the reality.
What’s truly important is to get the essential tasks done in your day. This probably includes searching for or keeping a source of income, doing activities that keep everyone healthy, and connecting with loved ones.
Most other things can probably wait.
Adding in Relaxation – Evaluating your “Why”
Just like any change in behavior, it’s important to evaluate your reasons for making the change to make sure the change is truly going to stick.
This is true for exercise, eating well, and pretty much everything we do, including relaxation.
My last post went over why you need to build in relaxation, but don’t just do it because I told you to. It’s important to figure out why it’s important to you and reflect on that early and often to help the habit stick.
So why is relaxation important to you? Why might you care to add in activities from the list below?
- Deep breathing/relaxation training
- Guided imagery
- Mindfulness meditation
- Physical exercise or other movement-based relaxation (yoga, walking in nature)
- Gratitude and giving support
For each of us, it is going to be a different. I know deep diaphragmatic breathing is good for me, but I actually don’t do it to relax. I do it because I really want to get back to running and I know that intentional diaphragmatic breathing helps strengthen my core. While I don’t naturally love the breathing exercises my physical therapist gave me (in fact, I find them boring) I remind myself before, during, and after that I’m taking a small step towards a more functional core, that will help me get back to running and lifting my kids without pain.
When it comes to guided imagery, I had never been that motivated to do it either. I learned about it years ago during my oncology rotation at Rush University Medical Center. Guided imagery helps you relax by visualizing a relaxing scene (like walking on the beach, or getting into a warm pool of water), and can help you cope with difficult feelings like chronic pain. It can also help you visualize how you want to perform under pressure (like in an athletic event, giving a speech, or while giving birth).
During my 2nd pregnancy, I took a labor and delivery class called Gentle Birth. I learned about the science behind guided imagery and why many professional athletes use it. This information gave me the push to use it regularly during my pregnancy, as having a positive birth where I felt calm and confident was extremely important to me.
All this is to say, our motivations will be different and will change during different phases of our life, but the more we clarify and reflect on why habit changes are important to us, the more we are likely to keep up healthy habits over the long-term.
Some other potential “Whys”
Below are some other reasons you might want to add in relaxation to your day.
Stress is associated with:
- Faster aging (Epel et al., 2004)
- Increased risk of chronic diseases, like heart disease (Epel et al., 2006)
- Worse memory and learning (Schwabe & Wolf, 2010; Sindi et al., 2013)
People who practice relaxation show:
- Reduced inflammation (Dusek et al., 2008)
- Reduced exercise induced oxidative stress (Martarelli et al., 2011)
- Reduced anxiety (Chen et al., 2016)
Simple and effective: Diaphragmatic breathing
Now that you have determined your specific reason for adding in relaxation, let’s review a simple and effective strategy for this: Diaphragmatic breathing.
This strategy is used in many fields, from health psychology to physical therapy to athletic performance because it works, and can be done without any special tools. Just you, your lungs, and some time and practice.
Steps for Diaphragmatic Breathing
- Lay down on your back with your head supported and knees bent. You could also sit in a chair.
- Put one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach just below your ribcage
- Breathe in for a count of 4, pulling air into your belly, such that the hand on that area moves up or out
- The hand on your chest should not move much at all
- Hold for a count of 4
- Breathe out for a count of 4
- Hold for a count of 4
- Repeat this for 5-10 minutes
That’s it. You should already feel a little more relaxed after completing the steps above.
The more you practice, the more skilled you will be at starting the relaxation response in your body, and getting the various benefits of relaxation.
Call to Action
To review I urge you to spend a few minutes writing down:
- How you spend your time over 24 hours
- How you want to improve this (Be specific! How much more breathing, how much less phone use?)
- Write down at least 2 reasons to add relaxation to your routine
References
Chen, Y., Huang, X., Chien, C., Cheng, J. (2017). The effectiveness of diaphragmatic breathing relaxation training for reducing anxiety. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 53, 329-336.
Dusek JA, Otu HH, Wohlhueter AL, Bhasin M, Zerbini LF, Joseph MG, Benson H, Libermann TA. Genomic counter-stress changes induced by the relaxation response. PLoS ONE. 2008;3:e2576.
Epel, E. S., Blackburn, E. H., Lin, J., Dhabhar, F. S., Adler, N. E. et al. (2004). Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress. Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101, 17312-17315.
Epel, E. S., Lin, J., Willhelm, F. H., Wolkowitz, O. M., Cawthon, R. et al. (2006). Cell aging in relation to stress arousal and cardiovascular disease risk factors. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 31, 277–287.
Green and Skinner (2005). Does time management training work? An evaluation. International Journal of Training and Development, 9, 124-139.
Lin, L., Sindani, J. E., Shensa, A., Radovic, A., Miller, E. et al (2016). Association between social media use and depression among U.S. Adults. Depression and Anxiety, 33, 323-331.
Martarelli, D., Cocchioni, M., Scuri, S., & Pompei, P. (2011). Disaphragmatic breathing reduces exercise-induced oxidative stress. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, doi: 10.1093/ecam/nep169.
Sindi, S., Fiocco, A. J., Paul Juster, R., Pruessner, J. & Lupien, S. J. (2013). When we test, do we stress? Impact of the testing environment on cortisol secretion and memory performance in older adults. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 38, 1388-1396.
Schwabe, L., & Wolf, O. T. (2010). Learning under stress impairs memory formation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 93, 183-188.