You are exhausted. When you get home, you drop your work bag and realize you forgot to send an e-mail to your supervisor about an upcoming project. You grit your teeth as you run to pick up your laptop. 

The clock says 8:00 p.m. and you feel like you haven’t had a minute to yourself since this morning. As you think about your day, you realize, you haven’t!

It is your company’s busy season so the last few days have been packed with meetings and an upcoming, with a Friday project deadline. You send the e-mail, make a two-minute noodle for dinner, and sit back down at your computer. You plan to get a few more things done on the project before leaving for work tomorrow morning. As you work, you receive text messages from your boss who is wanting to know some updates on the project. You answer the texts and think about checking Facebook but decide against it as you just have too much to do.

You have a status update meeting first thing in the morning and you want to be able to show considerable progress on the project. At 10:30 p.m., you shut your computer, go to bed, and have a hard time falling asleep because you are thinking about everything you need to finish this week.

Does this sound like someone you know? Many people today are struggling with the ability to manage time with so much work to do and personal/ family lives to manage. Technology has certainly made working longer hours easier, as we are always in touch with the office. What we can tend to forget is the importance of managing our stress levels so we can function more effectively.

In this situation, having no free time during the day may work for a few days but isn’t a healthy long-term solution.

If you have often found yourself feeling this way, it’s high time you paused; took a deep breath and look at managing your time and stress.

In the rush to meet your deadlines – you may end up ‘dead’ at the end of the line.