Unemployment and Time Management

How to Regain the Importance of Your Day!

If you've been following me on Facebook you know that in October of 2009 I got caught in a reduction of force (RIF) at my company and was laid off. (After 11-1/2 years of exemplary service, but hey, I'm not bitter.) It's now July 2011 and I'm still searching for a job. But this blog post isn't about the job search process per se; rather, it's about the impact being unemployed has had on my time management. I thought that in today's economy I might not be the only one in this boat and so wanted to share some thoughts and tips with you. I hope you will get something out of this and please share your thoughts with me.

You would think that being unemployed would be boon to my personal time management practice. I mean after all, I now have all this spare time, right? I have all the time in the world to sit down and plan and track everything. Those excuses of too many phone calls and emails, of not having enough time, are gone.

But you would be wrong... wrong on so many levels.

First off, let's look at this thing called "free time". I've discovered that being unemployed is apparently a lot like being retired. As soon as people find out you "aren't busy" you become inundated with requests on your time - some of it very well meaning. And you take them up on it too. You get yourself involved because you want to be busy; you don't want to sit at home alone and wallow - you want to get out there and at least act like you're productive. Before you know it, you find that every spare minute is consumed.

But these things really feel more like busy work. It's not your "job" because you arent' getting paid for it. It doesn't feel important and you don't bother tracking it. Besides, tracking it often just becomes a reminder that you aren't working anymore.

The time that you do track is a single task: LOOK FOR WORK. You could track each and every job you apply for (and I actually do recommend that you track these in some manner) but if you're like me, you're sending out so many resumes in a day that it becomes counter productive to track them all.

The other problem is emotional. Being unemployed for any length of time wears you down; it eats away at your self esteem. I find this especially true as someone who is middle-age with a career that has been in middle to high management - those jobs just are too few and far between right now and the competition is fierce. It really takes its toll. When this happens you get depressed. You start to lose hope and sitting in front of the TV seems so much more inviting - and who wants to track TV time on their task list!?!

So your time management practice slips. It slipped for me, and I bet it has slipped for you. This is no time to beat yourself up for this; it's natural and it happens. Don't worry about it.

I've discovered (with the help of some great friends) a few things that can help.

The daily routine is broken - it's gone, and you won't get that back until you start that new job. It's time to create a new "day at the office routine" that will give you a sense of doing something. When you were at the office the day was filled with phone calls, meetings, coffee breaks, projects, tasks, and even lunches, parties and meeting with the team for drinks after work.

I realized it was important for me to take the very things I was doing throughout the day and give them the same "work" importance. From the important things (like job research and searches, Dr's visits, and charitable work) to the mundane (like doing the laundry, cleaning the kitchen or bathroom, and shopping) to the fun (like dinner with friends, meeting someone for lunch, or working on my web site), I began to log these things as if they were parts of my "business" day.

I decided not to track these in my task list or calendar - I continue to use those at a higher level - but rather, I use a simple spreadsheet. I plug in the things I know are coming up and each day I block out the time as things come up. It's best to plot them in ahead of time rather than retroactively, but the most important thing is to get them posted.

At the end of the day it looks like an actual work day, with meetings, projects, lunches, etc. My day feels productive and I'm less prone to drift off and waste time.

Depression, Anxiety and Time Management

For everyone, depression and anxiety are part of the natural ebb and flow of our emotional make up. Everyone feels depressed at some point in their life. It is a natural part of the grieving process; a response to some significant loss.

We also experience anxiety at the prospect of some impending "doom" (whether it be a test we're not prepared for or that meeting with the boss that was called unexpectedly.) Anxiety is our "early warning system" that primes our defenses and readies our fight-or-flight reflexes.

For the majority of people these emotional responses are usually relatively short lived and have a minimal impact on our ability to function. But for many these emotions can darken the world into an ever spiraling vortex that is debilitating and paralyzing. Some take medications to level the playing field and minimize the damage; others hunker down and wait it out; still others seek out various coping mechanisms - some good, some not so good - to help weather the storm.

Regardless of where you fit in this spectrum, it is important to know that depression and anxiety will have an ill effect on our daily routines in time management. Our emotions play a vital part in both our desire and ability to be focused, proactive, and consistent. When we are depressed or anxious our tendency is to avoid the things that we feel are fueling those emotions, whether or not they actually are. All those things on our to-do list look like big red buttons hot-wired directly into our depression and anxiety and the last thing we want to do is face them and deal with them. They don't just loom large on our horizon, they are gigantic! They are the monsters hiding in our closets; they are the stuff of our nightmares - literally.

The result? We avoid doing our time management. It's amazing all the things that can creep up to crowd out even the possibility of sitting down to do it. I, myself, am partial to the "crawl back in bed and pull the covers over my head" response. And what do we do when we avoid doing the work? We beat ourselves up and tell ourselves how really bad we are. And that leads into more spiraling downwards, more anxiety, more depression... and more avoidance... and... and... and...

I know from experience that the reality of those to-do items is never as dire as we feel. On more than one occasion, I've bitten the bullet and faced my fears head on and discovered that it really wasn't so bad after all. It didn't dissipate the depression or solve the anxiety, but I was able to at least stop beating myself up for a little while. But for those who suffer from extremer bouts of depression and anxiety, it is often the rare occasion that they can muster up the ability to forge ahead and get down to work.

I will tell you right now that we are all victims to our emotions. Even those who only suffer mild, or "normal," depression and anxiety are victims of these emotional quagmires -- they just may not be as long lasting or as debilitating. But even if you suffer from chronic depression or have an anxiety disorder, either taking or not taking medication, your reactions to them are perfectly normal.

These emotional mine fields derail us, regardless of the severity of them. They throw us off the track of our daily planning and review, as well as our ability to monitor our activities throughout the day. While our instinct, as well as our fears, keep us focused on our being derailed, that is really not the right place to focus—especially during the time of derailment.

Instead the better focus is on what we need to do to get us back on track. The first thing may be to do absolutely nothing. During the throws of the depression or anxiety it may be impossible to do anything we might consider “productive”. Usually that just makes us feel worse, so let me give you permission to just do absolutely nothing. You have enough to worry about, so why add this to your plate? As the saying goes, “this too shall pass.” So you can wait this out and pick back up when the storm is over.

The next thing to do is to be gentle with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up or put yourself down. Be forgiving. Also, don’t try to analyze the situation right now. Once you’re back on track and some time has gone by, then it will be time to review and see what happened and what got you back on track.

And finally, realize that the things you are worrying about probably aren’t as big as you think. All those action items on your to-do list will take far less time than your fears are telling you; the severity level of them is probably much lower than you think; they will still be there—without much damage done—when things settle down.

Once the depression or anxiety has subsided, gently return to your practice. At first it will feel overwhelming, so take it smaller bites. Start fresh – don’t grab your now stale to-do list and try to pick up where you left off. Grab a fresh sheet of paper, a new page in your planner, whatever you’re using and start anew. Then, focus on the prioritization aspect. Don’t worry about the doing of the tasks, just the prioritizing of them. This is when limiting your “A’s” to just 3 is really important. You will want to make up for lost time – that’s natural. Fight this urge and force yourself to limit you “A” priorities to only 3. Focus on these for now and leave the rest.

Next, look for those things that can be scheduled forward, or better yet, completely cancelled. Getting them off your plate now will free you up considerably.

After a few weeks, when things have returned to something you consider normal, and you sit down to do your weekly review, look back over the events and analyze it. But don’t look for what went wrong. Instead, look at the things that got you back on track. Focus on the positive actions you took. These are the tools you will want to file away in your “tool box” for later retrieval.

The most important thing to remember is to not beat yourself up—realize that you are human and that what you’re going through is 100% natural. You’re not alone and you’re not the first person to have this problem. Focus on self care and then work on gently (and this is really the key word) returning to the practice.