A 1-2 hour seminar.
Where's the Pressure Come From? The pressure and anxiety associated with deadlines are not features built into time, not 'facts of life' that we have to put up with. On the contrary, pressure is really a sign that we are struggling with our work. In fact, the strength of the pressure we feel seems to be directly proportional to how much we're resisting what we're doing. Struggling with work is unnecessary, stressful, and a waste of our energy. If we can learn how to directly transform the pressure, we can realize significant gains in both productivity and well-being.
Having researched the causes of deadline pressures since 1988, in 1997 I identified what I believe to be the essential factors involved. The primary factor is not what most of us would guess: our typical way of experiencing time flowing from moment to moment. The ordinary, yet relentless flow of time sets up the trap for deadline pressure. The trap is sprung by a triggering emotion, like fear of damaging one's reputation by not finishing something on time. The emotion intensifies the 'normal' sense of time passing so it usually feels that time's passing more quickly and the deadline is closing in on us. If we can become aware of such emotions, we can easily relieve a lot of the pressure.
But no matter what the particular triggering feeling is, deadline pressure is simply an intense and constricted version of our usual perception of time flowing. Most people don't think it's possible to change the feeling of time's flow. However, we can change it, and anything we do to loosen it up will serve to relieve some of the pressure that is always with us, and actually prevent strong pressures from ever getting established!
After identifying these essential factors, I developed presentations and workshops to relieve pressure and improve productivity and well-being at the same time. It seems I am currently the only person offering this cutting-edge training that directly transforms deadline pressure. Although the principles and methodology of this program have not been widely available, they are the result of twenty years of research, development, and application.
Stephen Randall, Ph.D.
Possible Benefits of "Taking the Pressure Out of Deadlines:"
You will:
- no longer be run by the feeling that you don't have enough time
- quickly cut through pressure and anxiety about time and get more done
- be better able to find the 'zone' of peak performance
- notice a greater sense of effortlessness in the flow of your work
- use mental and physical exercises to effectively transform time pressure while improving productivity
- find that work is a better source of fulfillment, insight, and peak experience
Click here for purchase information on audiocassettes on "Taking the Pressure Out of Deadlines."
At this workshop you can learn:
How Is the Seminar Structured?
This seminar is a combination of presentation, discussion, and mental and physical exercises. Results in No Time, a book on inner time management (not conventional time management--see "Performance and Well-Being Depend on the Paradigm of Time"), is available to reinforce and expand upon the seminar.
A program can be customized according to your organization's needs. A brief needs assessment is done at no cost. Phone 510-303-1035 for an appointment. For a generic needs assessment, click here.
Endorsements:
People loved the deadline pressure workshop. Sue's doing much better. She's been using your breathing technique and everything else. She's a high stress gal, too, on the move all the time. . . . It helped out George. He's got a little more organized, and he's not so tense. He's getting better at finishing things. --manager at a title company
Your portrayal of time as a kind of conveyor belt passing through past, present, and future rooms . . . followed by the exercise where we turned our usual [temporal] perspective around, produced a real shift in consciousness, a new perception of time. --Rev. Stan Hampson, Palo Alto Unity Church
For me the whole concept of looking at time in a different way was something I had never thought about before, and so I struggled with that through the day. . . . And yet experiencing it through some of those exercises . . . Part of me was saying "Oh, this isn't possible," and the other part was saying "Oh, this is wonderful!" . . . I think you really have something rather terrific there. --Lauretta Spenader, HR Department, Syntex Labs
I learned a lot . . . helped me get through an extremely difficult deadline pressure situation at work. --Hewlett-Packard employee
Since your workshop on psychological time I have gained three hours of effective living a day. --Daliya Robson.
The tools you gave me at this workshop will last a lifetime. --Marilyn Bankert.
Highlights and Key Points:
Why is this workshop important?:
- "According to almost three of every four of the executives . . . the most stressful situation was the one that occurred most frequently: work demands and time pressures." (Coping with Executive Stress, Richard E. Winter, M.D.)
- "I would say that 95 percent of the stress in our lives relates to our feeling of time poverty." (Time Shifting, Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D.)
- Until we learn to control time consciously, our lives will continue to speed away from us, and we won't even notice the beauty or the events around us. We'll simply be left with the feeling that something's missing, something's disappeared." (p. 14, Time Shifting)
- Today, for individuals as well as for members of the workforce, shifting rhythm is essential not only to physical and mental well-being, but also to improved productivity. A good many management consultants believe this as much as I do. (p. 150, Time Shifting)
- The business community, in particular, is fast realizing that changes are necessary. Many corporations are aware that they need to alter how they perceive time and its relationship to personal satisfaction if they mean to remain competitive. This change of attitude is gaining wide acceptance as more businesses tabulate the economic and social implications of an unsatisfied or unfulfilled work force. (p. 12, The Tao of Time, Hunt and Hait)
Conventional time management practices such as prioritizing and scheduling can often make big dents in disorganization and lack of clarity about objectives and priorities, both of which contribute to time pressure.
Our culture teaches that pressure is somehow built into deadlines themselves. There's something objectively 'real' about deadline pressure.
Did you have a deadline where you somehow changed the pressure? If so, this seems to indicate that the pressure really isn't built into the deadline.
Pressure somehow depends on the way we relate to the deadline. It depends on our perspective, on how much we're involved in what we're doing.
We have different verbs to indicate the degree to which we're involved in what we're doing. I might be 'holding back', which means I have something to do, but I'm resisting it. Perhaps I think about it, but then put it out of my mind. If I get a little more involved, I'll 'resign myself to' doing the job. Basically that seems to mean I'm not just putting it out of my mind any longer. With a bit more involvement, I 'get into' the job. A bit more, and I say 'I'm involved'. Involved means 'turned into'. A bit more, and I'm preoccupied, absorbed, or engrossed.
How does the feeling of pressure relate to your changing involvement? If you consider your past experiences, when you got more involved, what happened to the pressure?
The pressure we feel is directly proportional to how much we're resisting what we're trying to get done. "A watched pot never boils." Taking a position apart from what's happening affects the way time is experienced.
If pressure depends on our perspective, can this be broken down into different factors? The primary factor is our feeling of time passing (FTP), our feeling of time flowing. This results from resisting past experiences. Repressed feelings are transformed into our sense of time flowing. The other factor is situational feelings, feelings like fear or embarassment that we don't want to feel about the present situation. These add energy to the situation, they intensify the 'normal' pressure of our FTP.
Our typical deadline perspective is that we're in the present looking off toward the distant future where there's a deadline, and the deadline is relentlessly closing in on us. Every time we think about the deadline closing in on us, there's anxiety and pressure, because we 'realistically' might not have enough time to get the work done on time. But during peak work performance we're usually so absorbed in what we're doing that there's no awareness of time flowing.
Under a deadline there's usually dissatisfaction or a lack of fulfillment here in the present. It might feel like we're being squeezed or confined, overwhelmed, or there can be a sense of impending doom. But during peak work performance we feel invigorated, whole, and happy with the way things are going.
Under a deadline the work feels stressful and takes quite a bit of effort. But during peak work performance the work may be requiring mental or physical energy, but it doesn't feel very stressful. The work might even seem to be effortless in a sense, flowing with a momentum of its own.
Under a deadline it's as if the conveyer of time carries equal sized containers for our activities. Equal units of clock time seem to hold equal and limited potential for accomplishing things. Estimating how long it will take to finish the task is based on the perception of equal capacity/unit of time as well as how long it took to accomplish things in the past. Work capacity seems fixed. But during peak work performance, instead of fixed flow of conveyor with equal-sized containers, time seems very flexible and changeable, even unpredictable. There's a sense of everpresent opportunity and possibility: perhaps, for example, we'll get some insight on how the work process can be improved.
Feeling pressured, anxious, hurried, and overwhelmed are part of linear time perspectives, but never part of timeless views. So a question to ask is, "In a deadline scenario is there anything that keeps it from becoming a peak experience?"
Our feeling of time is totally a result of repressing or suppressing negative feeling or emotion that we don't want to feel and attend to.
Negativity seems to be part of a particular way of relating to something, a way in which we stand apart, as a detached and judging observer.
Our typical way of estimating time is based on the concept that each and every unit of clock time holds the same limited capacity for accomplishment.
Most of our lives seem to be spent trying to get to goals up ahead, in the future. We expect that we'll be happier later on, after we complete that project. But the quality of our experience--the natural fulfillment that is available no matter what we're doing--is depreciated by a habitual perspective of looking forward to things.
Pressure doesn't seem to be built into certain jobs; it seems to be added to neutral situations because of our attitude, perspective, or confusion about values and goals.
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