The Stress Solution Read online

  Vidh and I began hunting around for something that would stop her feeling this way. I’d love to tell you that it was me who found the solution, but it was my brilliant wife. She started making a detailed daily schedule that accounted for every single minute of the day. She wrote down: ‘Wake up: 6.30, Get ready: 6.45–7.05, Breakfast: 7.05–7.25,’ and so on, like this, all the way through until bedtime. This seemed pretty intense to me. Surely this would build anxiety rather than lessening it? But Vidh found that it worked. She felt more in control of her life. She was able to get more things done and at the same time felt fully able to enjoy the time she had scheduled for herself, to practise her yoga, and even to spend time surfing the internet, without feeling any guilt. Whereas she used to think she wasn’t getting anything done, she would now see a long, satisfyingly ticked list in her A4 notepad at the end of every day.

  In some ways, humans are quite simple creatures. We’re wired to get a little dopamine buzz from completing tasks. We love that feeling of ticking even tiny achievements off, reminding ourselves that we’ve done something. Just by making that tick with the pen we make some positive information for the brain: we’re in control of the day and life is good. But Vidh’s practice of scheduling had an even bigger impact than that. She started to beat her own schedule. She began to enjoy doing so, almost as if it were a game she was playing against herself. She quickly found gaps opening up in her daily diary that hadn’t been there before.

  I’ve since learned that many top CEOs around the world use scheduling for this reason. It helps them be more productive, while ensuring they have ample time to pursue hobbies as well as spend time with their families. If you’re one of the many people who feel there aren’t enough hours in the day and that they never get enough done, take a good hard look at how you spend your day – I expect that, if you did a brutal analysis of your day, you’d probably be shocked to find how much time you’ve whiled away on social media, email or just prevaricating until you have no choice but to get on with things. Of course, you may also find that you really do have too many jobs to try and fit in within a short timeframe. Scheduling will also address this: it will help you prioritize the most important things that you need to do, improve your efficiency and help you find time to do more of the things you love.

  If you feel you don’t have sufficient meaning and purpose in your life, scheduling is critical. Let’s say you want to be a writer. You’re going to give it a proper crack – but only when everything’s perfect: when you have a couple of hours completely free, when you’re feeling inspired, when the house is quiet, when your partner’s mess is off the kitchen table. This is never going to happen. That moment does not exist. It’s why you need to get into the practice of writing every day, no matter if the muse isn’t with you or the house is noisy – and then you’ll find that inspiration will come. Instead of waiting for yourself to feel right, you need to purposefully schedule that action in.

  Throughout this chapter, I am going to ask you a series of questions and suggest a whole array of strategies to enable you to free up more of your time. These strategies will ensure that you can do more of the things you love, feel less stressed and find precious time to be alone and think. I will also share an extremely effective technique that will enable you to start off each day a million miles away from your personal stress threshold and primed for meaning and purpose.

  ‘DO’ TIME, NOT ‘ME’ TIME

  Within just three weeks of beginning her daily scheduling, Vidh found she had enough free time to begin a hobby that she’d always fancied trying: indoor climbing. She’d go to a local centre twice a week and come back like a different person. When she was on the wall for those two hours she was concentrating so hard she was unable to think about the hassles of her daily life. This was a form of pleasure inherently different from relaxing on the sofa or mucking about online. This was not ‘me’ time, it was ‘do’ time. When we’re doing something purposeful and actively absorbing, our attention is forced away from our troubles. For Vidh, climbing had the additional benefit of being something she hadn’t tried before: research shows that it is new experiences that really help the brain grow, by activating different pathways, which in turn also helps it shift out of stress state.

  THREE QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU SCHEDULE

  1. Which activity would you love to spend more time doing, something you feel you can’t find time for in your daily life?

  2. What are the three most important things you want to get done on any given day that would make you feel as if you have ‘won’ the day?

  3. Which person (or persons) would you like to spend more time with than you currently do?

  The best way to achieve these things is to schedule them in. You don’t need to strive for perfection – just thinking about these things and starting to schedule a few of them in will make a big difference.

  THE HEALING POWER OF SOLITUDE

  There was also another benefit to Vidh’s new pastime. When she was up there on the climbing wall, she was all alone. She was given the space to think. One of my favourite quotes is from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg:

  ‘A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us … It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, “Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?” … If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one’s time.’

  I learned this lesson for myself in the months following the death of my father. For many years beforehand, I’d been his carer. I had a young baby, a wife and a busy job as a GP, and every instant I had outside those things was spent doing things for my parents. My phone was never off; I’d sleep with it beside my pillow. I was always waiting for the call: ‘Dad’s fallen, can you come round and help?’; ‘Dad can’t get out of bed, can you come and get him out?’ I was stressed out to the max. Every little thing – a difficult patient, a problem with the kids, a dish being out of place – would bother me because I was way over my stress threshold. I just had no capacity left.

  After my father passed away I found I had space. For the first time in my adult life I began to sit and reflect. I realized that, for years, my life had been going at a hundred miles an hour and I hadn’t had the time to work out who I really was. From the moment we’re born we’re placed on this very specific and narrow ladder of perceived success. We’re told by our teachers and parents, ‘You have to do well at school and, if you get good grades, you’re going to get a good job, and then you’ll live happily ever after.’ We’re also told that we need to marry and have the perfect nuclear family in order to be happy.

  Many of us, myself included, tick these boxes which society promises us are meaningful, only to wake up one day and realize that we’ve been conned. This was true for me, and it may well be true for you. This is what downtime is for: to empty the mind of the noise of the outside world and fill it up with yourself so you can start working out exactly who you are. The time I spent doing nothing but thinking was the start of me living a more purposeful, authentic life.

  THREE THINGS TO SCHEDULE THAT WILL REDUCE YOUR STRESS

  1. Something that brings you joy. It could be anything that gives you a daily dose of pleasure, such as five minutes of dancing when you get home, or listening to music. Chronic stress makes it harder for the brain to experience pleasure, so bulletproof yourself against this with a daily pleasure hit.

  2. Something that trains your ability to delay gratification (see here), such as taking up a new sport or hobby, or learning a new language or to play a musical instrument.

  3. Something that involves movement or exercise. This can be a five-minute bodyweight workout or an hour-long class in the gym. There are no rules, but scheduling it in as an unmoveable part of your day will ensure that it happens.

  STARING AT A TREE

  One of the big problems with mo
dern culture is that it associates ‘busy’ with ‘successful’. We like to feel our schedules are full to bursting because it makes us feel that we are in demand and important. There’s also a pernicious idea out there that to really excel in life we need to give all day, every day, over to our ambitions. Well, tell that to Armando Iannucci, a man who’s not only had a long career as one of Britain’s greatest living satirists but has broken America with his hit sitcom Veep and films such as In the Loop and The Death of Stalin. ‘I refuse to work evenings or weekends,’ he told one newspaper. ‘If a script sees my character meeting for dinner, I put a line through the words and make them meet for lunch. After 6 p.m. I turn my phone off. I told the Americans I don’t do calls after then.’ And what does he do with that time? ‘I really like to indulge in the doing-f**k-all thing. You know, just stare at a tree or something.’

  He’s possibly a smarter man than he realizes. Iannucci might not be aware that ‘just’ staring at a tree can be incredibly productive. We think the brain ‘switches off’ or ‘disengages’ when we’re not focused on completing a task. This is not true. When we ‘switch off’, a system in the brain called the default mode network (DMN) goes into overdrive. The DMN is a powerful source of idea generation. It’s why people come up with their best ideas in the shower or when walking the dog. Perhaps the secret of Iannucci’s incredible creative success is his ironclad insistence on scheduling regular downtime.

  I know you’re busy and under pressure, as we all are. But if Armando Iannucci can do it, I humbly suggest you could too. Ultimately, ‘busy’ is a choice that we make. You’ve not become busy, you’ve done busy. And I totally get it – I also do busy: I struggle with this problem really badly. What I’ve found is that, when I protect my own time by having a strict schedule, I’m infinitely more productive for the rest of the week. I’m happier. I feel calmer. We delude ourselves that we can continue working and keep going every single day, without consequence. We can’t.

  THREE TIPS TO HELP YOU FEEL LESS ‘BUSY’

  1. Protect some ‘me-time’ every single day. This can be as short as ten minutes but, by scheduling it in, it is much more likely to happen. It could be a quick walk in the park, a few minutes of deep breathing or simply sitting in a café watching the world go by.

  2. When you are feeling stressed on a busy commute, why not try listening to an inspiring podcast or some relaxing music, doing a bit of meditation with an app such as Calm or focusing on some deep breathing. You will immediately take your mind away from being ‘busy’ and into a more relaxed and calm state.

  3. Next time you are in a queue for something, e.g. at a café or the supermarket, try to do nothing. Don’t jump on to your smartphone to check emails or social media. We are constantly filling our brains with more and more things whenever we get a moment of downtime. Try to be present with all that is going on around you and use it as a mini-moment of calm. Just be.

  These practices will shift your brain from stress state to thrive state.

  SCHEDULE YOUR ENTIRE DAY

  I highly recommend that you try, at least once, to schedule your entire day. Put in absolutely everything you need to do. Ideally, you would continue this practice for an entire week. It is common for people to find that this practice enables them to get more things done than they thought they had time for. It is a great practice to try, even if you end up toning it down afterwards to scheduling in only the most important parts of your day.

  It is critical that you schedule in your ‘free time’ as well as the tasks you have to complete. This may seem a little prescriptive, but I assure you that you will find this practice will unexpectedly give you much more flexibility to do the things you love!

  As a bonus, at the end of each day, go through your entire schedule and see how much of your day is spent doing things you ‘have to do’ versus doing things that give you meaning and purpose. Try to start shifting the balance towards the latter.

  ZONING IN

  If you think that diving straight into full-day scheduling might be too much, I’d encourage you to at least practise having a regular morning routine which helps you to ‘zone in’ for the day. This is one of the best methods I know for sending rivers of thrive information into your brain and body. It’s crucial to understand that your actions create your mood. The very act of putting yourself through a series of familiar, habitual steps at the same time every day tells your system that you’re in a place of safety and control and helps shift you into thrive state at just the right time. The things you choose to do as part of your own personal ritual will add layers and layers of bonus benefit on top of the routine itself.

  One of my patients found an unexpected cure for her skin condition in her morning routine. As well as eczema, thirty-seven-year-old Victoria suffered from anxiety. She noticed that her eczema would flare up when she felt stressed. On one occasion, she ruefully commented that it was ‘reacting to her life’ – in other words, reacting to the stresses, resentments and the absence of meaning in her never-ending to-do list and the lack of control she felt over her life.

  Victoria would wake up as late as she possibly could. Her alarm would be blaring, the snooze button hit four or five times. Then she would be go-go-go from the minute she woke up. She started each day in a stress state perilously close to, if not past, her personal threshold. I tried to persuade her to work to a morning routine as soon as she woke up, but she resisted the idea. She felt it wouldn’t work for her. She had two children, aged seven and nine, who she needed to get ready for school. Eventually, I convinced her to wake up ten minutes earlier and put a routine in place that appealed to her. She decided to light a candle, spend three minutes doing alternate-nostril breathing (see here), three minutes doing the Sun Salutation yoga sequence and two minutes saying affirmations (see here).

  In all, it would take just those ten minutes, and by keeping the bar low she managed to achieve it every day. Once she had finished her morning routine, she would wake up her kids and carry on as usual. She told me that her mornings immediately felt less stressful. And not only did her skin condition improve, after six months she felt centred enough to start making bigger changes in her life. Not a bad result for an investment of just ten minutes per day.

  MAKING THE TIME

  I appreciate that not everyone will feel that they can zone in first thing in the morning. It is important to find a time that works for you. Some of my patients with children end up doing a ‘zoning-in routine’ for ten minutes in the car after they have dropped their kids off at school or once they have returned home. Some patients do it outside their workplace before they go in. My own personal belief is that first thing in the morning is best, as it sets your body and mind up for the day, but start in whatever way you can.

  For me, zoning in each morning makes all the difference in the world. It primes my body for the day ahead and I’m still reaping the benefits in the evening. But if I wake up a little late and I don’t get time to do it, or if I feel a lack of motivation and jump on to Facebook or email instead, it’s completely different. I start the day much closer to my personal stress threshold. As much as I value sleep, I’d argue that getting up ten or fifteen minutes earlier to give yourself some time and space in the morning is more important. It shifts you from being in a reactive mindset to being in a proactive one. What you do at the start of each day sets up the way you live that day, and those individual days build up into a whole life – a life lived on purpose and a life lived with purpose.

  My own morning routine tends to change from month to month. It currently takes around thirty minutes and is as follows:

  • Wake up at 5.30 a.m.

  • Meditate for ten minutes.

  • Boil the kettle and cut up some fresh ginger root. Mindfully smell the aroma that comes from my mug as I pour hot water over the ginger.

  • Do some light exercises in the kitchen or garden, depending on the weather, while I’m waiting for my tea to brew.

  • Sit at the kitch
en table looking out into the garden, or outside. I try not to do anything else but bathe in the nature and savour my drink.

  • Spend the next ten minutes doing some affirmations, writing in my diary, practising gratitude, reading or perhaps writing down three priorities for the day ahead.

  ZONE IN EVERY MORNING: THE THREE M’S

  When designing your routine, you can choose interventions from any section of The Stress Solution. It can be as short as five minutes or as long as an hour. You’ll want to cover three broad bases, which I call the three M’s:

  MINDFULNESS: This will give you an immediate short-term shot of calm. Think breathing, being in nature or meditation.