3 Tips to Help Manage Stress During the Holiday Season
As we approach winter and the holiday season, amidst commitments that can sometimes tax families and parents, a blog by sociologist Christine Carter has some good tips on how to minimize stress. A quick summary of her tips on how to prevent burnout and breakdown during the holiday season are below, with the whole article at this link.
1. Get enough rest. You will not fulfill your potential unless you get the sleep your body, brain, and spirit need. We also need to rest during the day. After about 90 to 120 minutes of high output, we need a period of recovery–or stress and exhaustion start to build, and productivity starts to decline. Rest periods needn’t belong (10-15 minutes will do) if you truly take a break.
2. Do only one thing at a time. Multi-tasking talent is nothing to brag about. If we just focused on one task at a time, we’d actually be more productive in the long run, and we’d be less exhausted at the end of the day. This is because multi-tasking exhausts more energy and time than single-tasking does.
3. Reduce the amount of “junk stimulus” that you need to deal with. This week, take notice of all the clutter in your life. Start with your environment. Where is there “junk stimulus”—stuff that makes you feel tired when you see, hear, or otherwise experience it?