When to Trust Yourself

Here is a secret to lower stress and better productivity: know your own abilities very well.

One of the biggest contributors to stress is a misaligned calendar. If you have too much to do or too little time, you get stressed. And if you have too little to do, you start having that FOMO (“fear of missing out”) creep up on you. Often people say “yes” to too many things, not realizing the cost in time and treasure they’ll have to pay.

It is worth the little bit of extra time up front to build ways of measuring your own ability. When you have a big To-Do list and you don’t get through all of it, spend a little time the next day journaling about the experience. What did you get done? How long did it take you? Why did you avoid the remaining items in favor of the ones you completed? This can help you form a more accurate picture of what you can actually get done in a day, and plan accordingly.

Have to do a quarterly report? Start up some tracking software to see how long it actually takes you, how many breaks you take, etc. Then next quarter, you won’t think you can get it done in four hours when it actually takes you sixteen.

We are generally bad at estimating our own capacity. When you can do something quickly and with minimal effort, trust yourself to do so and don’t stress about that thing looming on the horizon. Instead, focus on the things that require greater effort while you still have energy to expend.