What’s the biggest thing on your mind right now? What could you do in the next five minutes to get it off your mind?

Our brains are incredible things, but they do have their downside. Evolution created a brain with a primary goal to keep us alive. It does this by constantly analysing threats around us and bringing anything untoward to our attention.

Now, this was an impressive feature thousands of years ago. After all, if we were not constantly alert to dangers, we would likely become the dish of the day for some predator.

Today, most of those threats no longer exist, yet our brains are still searching and analysing the dangers around us. However, as there are very few predators around in our everyday working environment, it decides that an upset customer or an angry boss is a threat and then initiates the same response it would have if we encountered a hungry predator.

Angry customers or bosses, doing a presentation or running very close to a project deadline are not life-threatening, and they should be put into perspective.

To accomplish that, we engage our slower subconscious brains. This part of our brain is the “intelligent” brain. It’s where your knowledge and life experience combine and deliver unique solutions to everyday problems. This includes handling upset customers, angry bosses and rapidly approaching deadlines.

It’s the subconscious brain where you will find solutions to the biggest thing on your mind right now. Your faster, conscious mind will cause you to feel anxious, threatened and stressed. Panic sets in, which will not help you get a wayward project back on track, and it certainly won’t calm an angry boss or reassure an upset customer.

So, how do you engage your subconscious brain?

Engaging your subconscious brain is as simple as asking questions. Questions such as:

• What’s the issue here?

• What would be a good outcome?

• What’s the very next thing I could do to get things back under control?

The worst thing you could do is to ask negative questions such as “why me?”, “Who caused this?”. The answers to these types of questions will not solve the problem and will guarantee things continue to spiral. Not the result you want.

Often you will find the answers won’t come quickly. It could take a day or two. But you won’t get any answers if you don’t go through the process of asking these questions.

Identifying the problem and stating the outcome you want is a good start. That will give your brain a reference point. You need to trust that it will do its job and bubble up solutions.

In my experience, all problems have solutions. Typically, we just need to tap into some resources. Resources come from multiple different places:

• Asking someone

• Podcasts, YouTube videos, blog posts

• Books

• Courses

• Your experience

Let’s go back to the thing that’s on your mind right now. What’s the problem? Why is it bothering you? What would have to happen for you to stop worrying about it?

There’s a great start. Those three questions externalise the problem and start the process of resolving it.

The next step is to ask what you can do to achieve the desired outcome.

Some of those could be making a phone call or sending an email/message. Other problems such as poor health, bad personal finances or relationship issues will require setting up some long-term processes. But, if you don’t start today and at the very least make a commitment to act, the problem will not go away, and you will continue to feel stressed and anxious.

Where does time management come in?

Whenever action is required, it will require a time commitment. Making a phone call or sending an email may only need twenty to thirty minutes. Bigger issues such as health and finances may require more time. Getting healthy is not something you can do in five minutes. You will need to change your lifestyle and find time for exercise. Likewise, resolving issues with your relationships will take up time (and to maintain those relationships, more time)

How important are these things to you? Is your health worth thirty minutes a day? Does your family deserve two or three hours of your daily time?

When you allocate your time in the right places, you quickly find many of the everyday occurrences that cause you stress and anxiety disappear. They won’t disappear if you ignore them and let them fester in your head.

So, externalise your worries. Commit to doing something to resolve whatever they are and allocate time to achieve the desired outcomes.

Thank you for reading my stories! 😊

If you would like to receive all the productivity and time management content I create each week in one convenient email; you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter here

You can also learn more about what I do here on my website

Finally, don’t forget to say hello on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook