The weekend was a very different one for us. I finally bit the bullet and cleaned up my office, we had friends over for a BBQ, Toni spent time preparing for that and ultimately very little time was spent ‘working’.

To me that was fine – we both needed a break – last week had been rather brutal as far as work was concerned and this coming week is going to be quite hard too so basically taking it easy was important.

But about 7pm last night Toni was seeing things a little differently. She was lamenting that she had done no proof-reading over the weekend and now had a lot of catching up to do.

But was that the right way to look at the situation?

If you look at something in terms of ‘catching up’ you’re adding stress and adding stress does not improve any situation.

In Toni’s situation stress was only going to make matter worse. So instead of looking at the situation as ‘ catching up’ what she really needed to do was think it terms the proof reading as being just one more task to be completed on Monday.

When you look at a situation like that the stress levels are reduced, the pressure is off and it’s easier to reach your goals for the day instead of running around like a headless chicken trying to ‘catch up’.