Even before the pandemic hit, stress had always been a problem for many people. The pandemic exacerbated it for some. Many people had to try to figure out how to do their jobs or live their lives differently than they had ever thought about before. Compounding that is the reality that the effects of this are not going away any time soon. Families, I think, got hit the hardest. People had to quit their jobs in order to be home for their kids when they normally would have been at school. Parents are multitasking work from home and teaching their kids online schooling. Some parents have made the transition to life as we know it in the midst of a pandemic smoothly, while others are struggling. Sometimes stress is something that can be avoided if we only had the right tools at our disposal. Allow me share with you one tool that may shrink stress in your home.
I read a book many years ago called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. In fact, it is so old that I have the cassette tape audio version of the book in my office. One habit Covey talks about in his book is called "Put First Things First." In that chapter he talks about drawing a horizontal line and a vertical line that intersect in the middle on a piece of paper, creating four quadrants. Above the left column readers are to write "urgent." Above the right column readers are to write "not urgent." Then to the left of the top row write "important." Finally, "not important" is to be written to the left of the bottom row.
The next step Covey urges his readers to do is to write out tasks in each quadrant based on how urgent and important they are. For instance in the top left quadrant the tasks that are to be written down are both urgent and important. The tasks to be written in the bottom right quadrant are both not urgent and not important and so on and so forth.
Simply writing things down usually reduces stress in my life. I get overwhelmed thinking I have so much to do. But when I write it down I see that sometimes I don't have as much to do as I thought in the first place. On top of that, organizing tasks helps me to see what really must be done right away and what can wait. Usually the things that can wait are the things that come naturally to me or that I enjoy doing. If that's the case, they will get done eventually because I will more naturally gravitate toward them.
If you find yourself stressed out and anxious right now (or if a teenager in your home is), I encourage you first of all to pray (Philippians 4:6,7). Then, try this exercise (or teach it to your stressed out teen to try) for a few weeks to see if it helps you to organize what is urgent and important and then do it. I think you will find that when you write out your tasks they become smaller than your mind made them out to be all along. I am not saying that you won't be stressed, you very well may just have a way of managing it better. And you'll learn to do the important things before the time wasters, making you a better parent.
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