Vicky Biccy's Blog

Paralysis

My older sister used to really irritate me. She’s the worrying type, you might say, and during her school exam years, the workload sometimes got on top of her. She would come home from school, stressed out, and relay to me in high-pitched tones the mountain of coursework that she had to do before next week’s already extended deadline. Stress is fine, we’re all affected by it from time to time, and I would say ‘there, there’ and head upstairs. But here’s the bit that used to bug me – when I came downstairs three hours later, she’d be reading a newspaper in the kitchen, still stressed, but not doing any of her coursework.

My mum would say that when deadlines loomed, my sister made like an ostrich and stuck her head in the sand. I thought it was stupidity. But really, it was more like paralysis. The fear of not making her deadline filled her head so much that she couldn’t focus clearly on the task in hand. So she avoided it, which just made it worse. And I wasn’t exactly a helpful little sister at those times.

Cut to present day… I’m given a fresh ‘to-do’ list at work. Everything on it looks difficult, and will probably take a week to accomplish. But I have a day, maybe two. So what do I do? I stare at the list, stare out of the window… and try to put off the inevitable. If my sister read this now, I’d have to eat my hat.

Sometimes, the only way forward in these situations is to bite the bullet, try to forget about the deadlines and the pressure, and start task number one. And then keep going until it's done. And then start on task number two. There's nothing quite like a few ticks on your to-do list to help reduce stress.
 

Created on Wed 3rd September 2008 15:41