The treadmill of stress

Thanks to Suzanna Makkos for sharing her GTD story:
In 2009 I had a baby. Three months after she was born I got a pretty big promotion at work. No problem, right? I can do both. Wrong. My life completely exploded out of control. I was seeing a therapist weekly to try to manage my anxiety and feeling of loss of control. I would say, “I am running on a treadmill full speed and people are throwing balls at me and I’m only catching 10 percent.” He would nod and try to give me solutions but nothing was working.

When my daughter was four, I went to a spa for the weekend in the worst emotional state of my life. I randomly picked up a magazine and read an article about managing email by someone named David Allen. It made a lot of sense and I started to feel better. I bought the book and spent a vacation day going through the backlog and doing an install. The treadmill immediately slowed. First I was jogging, then walking, and then it stopped. I still make mistakes and drop balls but at a MUCH lower rate. I am so thankful to David and everyone at the David Allen Company!

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2 Comments

  1. Preventatists have no problem with stress. By using Preventatism, the potential for improvement in the standards of health is significantly large, for it is reasonable to imagine, for instance, halving the incidence of stress-related depression and cancer. The cost of this prevention would be a small fraction of the cost of treatment of these stress-related disorders, and would be available to whole populations rather than an elite that can afford to pay for increasingly sophisticated medical intervention.
    Preventatism has been in use for over four decades and has shown itself to be a good defence mechanism to defend against the results of stress.

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