The run up to the year-end can get pretty stressful. Shopping for Christmas, tasks and reporting deadlines have to be completed before the year is out.

Social media gets filled with posts about goals for the coming year instead of focusing on ending the current year on a high note.

Suddenly you are wondering where the days are going.

If you’re struggling to stay on top of your game, then read on for 3 easy ideas to avoid what I call the December melt-down.

Simple Tension Buster Exercise

I use this exercise whenever I feel stress building up. It helps to release muscle tension triggered as a stress response.

• Stand relaxed, arms hanging at sides and feet about one foot apart.

• Tilt head back and hold for five seconds

• Roll head forward and hold for five seconds.

• Curl chest and stomach forward as you bend at the waist; arms dangling for five seconds.

• Inhale slowly through mouth as you straighten up. Raise arms overhead; drop arms slowly to sides as you exhale slowly though your mouth.

Feeling you need support? Drop me a line at http://karmicallycoaching.com/connect. Let’s see how we can work together to get that stress under control.

The Social Law of Community Support

Social support is a well-recognized way for people to deal with stress.

It can take the form of informal groups.

For example, young mothers who meet up to share their problems and get support from other mothers. These group members are either also going through the experience or are a few steps ahead in dealing with newborns.

It can also be a more formal group of small business owners and study circles to name a few.

This is a powerful two-way method for receiving and giving social support.

Here are some ideas to increase social support for yourself and others:

Join a club or group with similar interests to your own.

Make a coffee or lunch date to do meet up with a friend or colleague who can motivate and support you and vice versa.

Speak kind words to family and friends—those we love most are often those we treat the worst.

Practice being a good listener. Strive to be “other centered”

Drop a line to someone you have not been in touch with and reconnect. Let them know they are not forgotten even if you have been out of touch.

Time Tackle Tips

When time is in short supply, stress seems to grow. Lately, I’ve been seeing a spurt of articles in newspapers about stress and stress management.

There are also lots of posts about productivity and time management. Focus seems to be the in word and it is indeed important.

Are you in a situation where you need to multi-task? Make sure you pick up my tips on how to do it effectively.

If time is becoming a stressful issue for you then check out my Time Management posts.

Pick up some additional tips from my book Eight tested Commandments for Time Management.

Now it’s your turn. Knowledge and experience become tenfold when shared.

Do you have any special tips for handling December melt-downs? 

PS. Instead of focusing on quick remedies, why not build your resilience to stress the whole year? That’s where Chakra Balancing helps. Watch the video below and decide if it’s something you want to try.

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Photo Credit : Pop-Art by Piotr Siedlecki

Written by Vatsala Shukla

FIFA World Cup often inspires us to think of more than just the football game.

This year the games are even better with new teams and amazing football, especially the hat tricks by Messi and Dembélé.

Back in 2022, I had a good giggle reading a tweet from a Tweep. He said he was staying away from LinkedIn until World Cup was over because of the deluge of leadership insight posts.

Good point.

How about football as an example for time management instead?

I’ve often notice that professionals whom I guide with their time management issues seem to be in perpetual in Red Queen mode or in sports parlance ‘offensive’ in their approach to task management.

Thanks to World Cup, I’m thinking about football and how the game time management strategy can be used off field too. I’m onto something!

Most major sports are meant to be played for a specific period of time with additional time added for Acts of God, penalties or even timeouts.

Competing teams adopt varying strategies to win – offensive and defensive

The best example I can think of is a game of football. A well-known time-oriented strategy involves using the tactic of “ball control”.

The team that maintains control over the ball not only uses its offense to score points but also ably assisted with the time on the clock uses it for its defense.

Studies have been done to determine whether the intent to use a ball-control strategy can actually help win the game.

One of those studies indicates that a properly designed time management strategy may be better. The team that understands the principles of optimal strategies stand a better chance of winning.

That got me thinking, does this hold true for optimal time management in our everyday lives?

Consider that you have 24 hours in a day to do all your activities, which we will call the game time. The activities that you do are those that are when you are in possession of the ball.

What activities do you do?

To get a healthy balance during the course of the day, there are 2 types of activities you need to do when you have possession of the ball: transforming and maintenance.

Transforming activities add value by moving you closer to your longer-term ambitions. They include learning new skills, learning and development.

When you engage in activities or tasks that enhance the quality of your life, you are undertaking transformation activities or task.

It isn’t just work. We are also talking about exercising, strengthening bonds with family and friends, going to theater or museum and even travelling to experience different cultures.

Yet there is another category of activities or tasks that are important and need to be fitted into your 24-hour day if you are going to have balance.

These are the maintenance tasks that help you to maintain value. They include the things you have to do to stay afloat: you have to sleep, eat, drive to work, open mail, pay bills, take the pet dog for a walk before it ruins your carpet and similar activities.

These are short-term needs you must meet to maintain your current way of life and are unavoidable.

How does one play this game?

The full offensive tactic would be to do all of it yourself regardless of whether you would be efficient or effective.  You may just win the game, but I can assure you that you will also lose to burnout.

The full defensive tactic would be to leave everything to fate and just go with the flow. This again guarantees failure to win the game and perhaps aggravate any existing lack of balance in your life and performance.

A better strategy would be to do a well-planned mixed of offensive and defensive tactics.

It means seeing the big picture and planning out how you would take care of the important fundamentals of your daily living. If there are tasks that can be delegated at work or outsourced, then seriously consider them.

Take an honest and hard look at what you really need to do proactively yourself and will enhance your transformation. Delegate that which might just be a learning activity for the person to whom you are delegating it to.

Consider charting out your time during the week for the key activities that really need to be done when you have the ball in your possession. Are there activities where you can allow the other player to take over?

You would be surprised at how you achieve a win-win situation without overwhelming yourself.

While you plan out your best time management strategy, why not take some help from the Eight Tested Commandments for Time Management? Check it out!

What about you? Do you play your game with panache or are you still clinging to the ball? 

Written By:  Vatsala Shukla

Updated June 2026.

Have I discovered a new method for effective Time Management?

Wrong!

It’s just that Covey’s Quadrants have been stated over and over again and from experience, I know that if I look at a thing too many times, I start missing details.

I started to think, how I could inspire myself, my clients and readers to get their time under control.

So, I went hunting in my Treasure Chest of tools and techniques. I found two old beauties that I use.

They are quite handy in the run up to Diwali when there is housecleaning, gift buying and a whole lot of other things start to appear Urgent and Important as Diwali approaches and Clarity goes out of the window.

In fact, this tool works whenever one feels there are too many tasks and overwhelm is setting in.

Before I share the two methods, I must clarify, there is no ‘Oughta Gotta Wanta’ Way to Effective Time Management.

It’s just a phrase my Dad used to say to tease me and my sister when we’d procrastinate, knowing full well that we had to do a task, be it homework or helping in the house.

Since everyone worth their salt has read Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in some form or the other, let us stick to the quadrant approach but look at it from another perspective.

Another Approach to Time Management with Ken Blanchard’s Quadrants

Ken Blanchard – the author of the popular book The One Minute Manager and The On-Time, On-Target Manager – also devised a quadrants approach:

Quadrant 1 – Have to Do, Want to Do

Quadrant 2 – Have to Do, Don’t Want to Do

Quadrant 3 – Don’t Have to Do, Want to Do

Quadrant 4 -Don’t Have to Do, Don’t Want to Do

As expected, most of us won’t have a problem with Quadrants 1 and 4.

When there is no conflict of interest, all is well.

The fun starts with Quadrants 2 and 3– boss tells us we have to work on the weekend to meet a deadline when we would rather go to the mall or supermarket and shop is a good example of Quadrant 2.

Now if the need to go shopping on a weekend is important enough, say you need to replace the hoover in the house or need to pick up the groceries, then explaining your situation to the boss might help to reach a compromise. You could come in after lunch and then stay till the work gets done.

You might save money because you know you have to go into work later. You’ll spend less time window shopping and picking up stuff you don’t need but it is on sale. I call it balance and collateral financial benefits.

For some reason, most of us are likely to be attracted to Quadrant 3, meaning things that do not have to be done but we get them done. Does that ring a bell?

The advice offered by Blanchard for managers, and which applies in any situation is to take up tasks in the order of Quadrant 2 and Quadrant 1 and spend little or no time on Quadrant 3 items (Wasted Time Tasks).

A good approach would be to first create a To Do List and thereafter plan accordingly. You might just find some things disappear from the list without even doing anything. Hurrah!

But what happens if clarity does fly out of the window. Or you KNOW you need to get different tasks done but cannot decide on the order?

I’ll tell you more about it in my next post but for the time being practice the Blanchard Quadrants method. See if it works better for you.

In the meantime, to spare anyone and everyone who may have time management concerns I have 2 suggestions. Both will break old archaic non-benefiting habits and replace them with ones that have value. There are solutions.

The first is my short but effective online course created as a 5 Step Method to win your Time Management Challenge. 

The second one is something from personal experience.

I’ve discovered eight self- tested commandments on time management . It works like a dream to develop long term prioritization and time management habits.

I’d posted these commandments a few years back on my Facebook Fan Page which many people found useful -or at least pressed the ‘Like’ Button

Now this is something you Oughta Gotta Wanta have!

Updated for relevance.

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