Some Things in Life Are So Obviously Correlated
That no formal research is needed to verify their relationship. Time management and stress... even though their relationship has been verified many times and in many ways... are two such elements.
While it's true that stress doesn't necessarily adversely affect your management of time I would bet that your management of time definitely affects your stress level. To prove the point let's consider two scenarios.
Dysfunctional Time Management and Beverly's Stress Level
Beverly leaves her job at 5 pm and heads to her friendly neighborhood grocery store.
On the way there she absent-mindedly flips through her mental recipe book in the vain hope that she's able to "grab and go" when she reaches the store. When she arrives she still hasn't decided so she spends a little time wandering the aisles until she settles on hamburger helper (boy, does she ever feel like she needs helped).
By the time she reaches home it's 6 pm and everyone is starving. Dinner is ready in about 45 minutes and everyone crankily sits down to eat.
Following dinner the kids start to do their homework and Beverly wonders why they have so little time together as a family.
She wishes things would just slow down. She's just...overly stressed.
Functional Time Management and Beverly's Stress Level
Let's revisit Beverly after she's had a nervous breakdown, been court-ordered to attend time management classes and completed 50 hours of family night time.
Beverly now gets her crockpot out in the morning puts a chicken and some cream of mushroom soup in it. She throws in some carrots and knows when she gets home she'll boil some pasta and have dinner ready in 20 minutes...no trip to the grocery store needed.
Today, on the way home she listens to a self-help CD in the car instead of worrying about what she'll end up cooking for dinner.
When she arrives home everyone was in good moods that stay while cleaning the kitchen. Because the kids have already completed their homework everyone sits down to enjoy a movie together.
Stress is greatly reduced and what stress is there is not caused by her.
Properly Managed
Life can flow much more smoothly.
Fortunately, great time management is a skill that can be learned.
For college students... particularly nontraditional college students... this can mean the difference between juggling commitments and losing commitments... like a spouse, job, or that promise to make at least a 2.5 GPA.
Are you ready to control life instead of it controlling you? Download my free ebook about Time Management and Students to get started.
Mary_Segers
