The Chaos Trap: How to Reclaim Control in a Busy Environment

"In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention." — Pico Iyer

How do you feel when you have nothing to do but enjoy your surroundings? Where nothing is urgent, and you can enjoy the moment you are in?

Never felt it? Maybe that’s a problem you need to fix. Today’s world makes us feel that everything must be done now, yet it doesn’t. If you were to slow down, step back from time to time to think, you’d get a lot more important things done and eliminate much of what is unnecessary.

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Script | 396

Hello, and welcome to episode 396 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Slow down. There, I’ve said it.

If there were one distinguishing characteristic of those who control how they spend their time and when, it would be that they are slow.

Not in a negative way, more in an intentional way. They meet their deadlines, are never late for appointments and have clearly had time to read through the meeting preparation notes.

Even in one of the most stressful occupations, that of being a special forces soldier, they are trained to slow down. The US Navy SEALs have the expression “slow is smooth. Smooth is fast”, and I know from talking with former members of the UK Special Forces that a large part of their training is focused on slowing down and being deliberate with their actions.

Of course, the problem here is that when you’re faced with twelve urgent Teams messages, you have five missed calls from an important customer, and your next appointment is about to start, the last thing your instincts will tell you to do is to slow down.

Yet it is precisely in those situations that slowing down and being intentional about what you do next is what you do.

Slowing down calms your over-anxious mind, and when your mind is calm, you make better, more rational decisions.

And slowing down is what this week’s question is all about. So, to kick us off, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Hanna. Hanna asks, Hi Carl, I work in a very busy Pharmaceutical company, and from the moment I step through the door at work, it feels like chaos. My phone never seems to stop ringing, and my Teams feed looks like it’s alive. It’s always moving! The day’s a blur. What can I do to slow things down and regain some control?

Hi Hanna. Thank you for your question.

One of the things I’ve learned is that we do have control over the speed of the day. I know often it feels like we don’t, but we do.

The reason is that we always have choices, even when it often feels like we don’t.

You can choose to answer your phone or let it run to voicemail. You can choose to answer those urgent Teams messages immediately or not, and you can choose to go to the staff rest area and make yourself a nice cup of tea.

Unfortunately, it’s natural for us to head straight into the storm of those phone calls and messages. And when we do that, we start conditioning ourselves to do it consistently.

Yet maybe the best thing you can do is pause, make that cup of tea, and strategically plan your approach.

This is often what I call the tactical retreat. Step back, pause, and look at what’s currently on your plate and your most important tasks for the day.

However, you will only be able to do that if you can move from being a firefighter to becoming a fire prevention officer.

Firefighters charge straight into every issue with only one intention: putting the fire out. Fire prevention officers: pause, look at the bigger picture, and seek ways to prevent the fires from starting in the first place.

In all companies, you need both types of people. You’re not going to prevent every crisis or urgent issue. Yet many can be prevented.

I gave one example in last week’s episode.

If you have ten equally urgent messages to reply to, you’re going to have to choose which one to respond to first.

If you don’t have a process or a strategy for handling that situation, you will panic. Panicking slows you down because the act of panicking creates a lot of activity, yet nothing happens to deal with the messages.

The strategy I suggested was to use the first-in-first-out approach. Deal with the oldest first. This way, even if the last message you received is from your angry boss, at least you won’t have to deal with eight angry customers as well.

And let’s be honest, if you were to give yourself fifteen minutes to deal with these messages, nobody would be waiting more than fifteen minutes for your response.

There is one trick you can use every day that will help you slow things down. That is to protect the first thirty minutes of the day to get a handle on the day.

Hopefully, you won’t have a crisis every day, but those first thirty minutes give you a chance to review your Teams messages, emails, and your plan for the day. You can also speak with your colleagues to see what’s happening and deal with anything urgent that popped up at the start of the day.

More often than not, you won’t need the full thirty minutes, but you have it protected, and on the days you don’t need it, you can make yourself that lovely cup of tea.

Another trick is to give yourself a proper screen break between work sessions.

Now, this will depend on the kind of work you do. If you were a graphic designer, an accountant or a journalist, a lot of your work would be spent sitting in front of a computer screen.

If you were to stop after ninety minutes, get up, and walk somewhere for ten minutes without a screen, that screen break would give you time to stop and think.

That thinking might be what element you can add or remove from the design you are creating, or where to place a particular paragraph in the article you are currently writing.

Getting away from your screen allows your brain to relax. It’s when your brain is relaxed that you make better, more rational decisions.

Yet, when we are under deadline pressure, stepping away for ten minutes is often the last thing we feel we should do.

When you return, allow yourself 20 minutes to address any messages that may have come in while you were locked away doing focused work.

Sometimes I find it helpful to look at the messages before I take the ten-minute break. That way, I can think about the responses while I’m relaxed.

If you’ve found yourself reacting without thinking all the time, and from the moment you wake up, it feels like you’re go-go-go, that may be a sign you need to retrain your brain to slow down.

The best way to do this is to set aside 30 to 45 minutes each morning. This time must be focused on you. Not your partner or kids. It’s time dedicated to yourself.

You could write a journal or develop a slow, deliberate morning coffee ritual. Perhaps you could add some light stretching or go out for a morning walk.

As long as it’s focused on you and the things you enjoy doing, you’ll find that this morning routine helps to rewire your brain to slow down.

Now for an unusual one.

Avoid unnecessary conveniences.

Part of the Reason we all feel rushed today is the speed at which things can be done. We can order home-delivered food, have our laundry picked up and delivered clean and ironed, order our weekly supermarket shop online, and have it delivered straight to our door later that day or the next.

Convenient, yes. Good for us, no.

I recently saw a video about why people in the UK began gaining weight alarmingly from around the late 1970s onwards.

Yes, there was a shift in our diet. In 1979, Marks and Spencer introduced their first ready meal. It was their famous chicken Kiev, and it sparked a revolution in how families cooked.

The M&S chicken Kiev was introduced at around the same time microwave ovens began taking off, and suddenly people were eating ready-made meals.

No more “real” cooking. Boiling vegetables, cooking meat, it was pre-packaged and additive-riddled food that could be cooked in less than ten minutes.

Then there were more and more convenient ways to travel. People stopped walking to the shops. People working in offices would walk the two metres to their car in the morning, drive to their office, park in the underground carpark, and walk the five metres to the lift (elevator) to arrive at their office, having walked no more than ten metres.

Then to spend the rest of the day sitting behind a desk.

All in the name of convenience.

Yet, this convenience is causing us to speed up.

Walking is one of the best ways for us to slow down. It’s one reason why studies show owning a dog can reduce stress and improve health. Dogs need walking. For me, walking Louis is one of my favourite times of the day. I get to think without a screen, get some fresh air and relax.

And given that Louis will stop and investigate every tree and lamp post, it’s a slow walk.

And the final tip is to plan your day before you finish the day.

In other words, give yourself ten to fifteen minutes before you close out the day to review your appointments for tomorrow, curate your task list for the day based on how much time you have between meetings, and allow for the unknowns—there are some.

Then pick your two must-do tasks, make sure they are highlighted and stop.

You cannot do everything in one day, but doing a little often moves things forward, and soon things you thought would take hours are almost complete.

Yet, in my experience, the most significant cause of our feeling that we have no control over our day or time is the way many people are chained to a screen.

The current statistics indicate that over 7 hours a day are spent in front of a screen (and that does not include TVs).

The problem here is that messages, emails, news alerts and much more are a constant stream. The more time you spend looking at your screen, the more anxiety you feel that you are falling behind with everything. When this happens, you are no longer in control; instead, your devices are controlling you.

Yet if you were to go out for a twenty-minute walk after lunch, or do your own grocery shopping each week, you would find yourself slowing down naturally.

Add that to perhaps reading a real book in the evening and spending 30 to 40 minutes in the morning doing yoga, meditation, or journaling. You’ll find that much of the speed anxiety many of you feel will start to disappear.

As for walking into your workplace and getting caught up in the rush of things, take a deep breath, make sure you know what your two most important items of work for that day are, and between sessions of work, get up, move around, make yourself some tea or coffee and think about what one thing you need to do next.

I hope that helps, Hanna. Thank you for your question, and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.