https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/healthandwellbeing/arid-41758514.html
Workplace Wellbeing: How to take a positive approach to to-do lists
If you’re finding the combination of work pressures, social obligations, and festive planning overwhelming, our experts have a number of strategies to help you cope.
IRISH EXAMINER FRI, 12 DEC, 2025
SHARON NÍ CHONCHÚIR
WITH just under two weeks left until Christmas, the length of your still-to-do list may be causing you stress. The combination of work pressures, social obligations and the logistics of festive planning can make this time of year a hectic one. Two experts in positive psychology share strategies to help you cope.
“Many of us experience a buildup of stress at work in the pre-Christmas period, says Margaret Forde, a chartered counselling and organisational psychologist (positivepsychology.ie).“Retail staff have to deal with endless queues of shoppers. Office workers have to meet end-of-year deadlines. It can be overwhelming.”
Rather than succumbing to panic, Forde believes it can help to keep a reverse to-do list, where you write what you have accomplished in the day, and tick it off. This draws your attention to what you’ve already accomplished.
“It’s based on positive reinforcement, which has been proven to be an effective learning tool and performance encourager,” she says. “It’s why we give kids gold stars at school. Every time you write down a completed task or give yourself a little tick of achievement, a neurotransmitter called dopamine — which plays a role in the brain’s reward system — is released and further bolsters your motivation.”
DOING TASKS ONE AT A TIME
But what about those moments when list-making simply isn’t enough? When stress levels are so high that the very thought of our to-do list makes us panic?
In those moments, Forde recommends thinking of Lego. “Did you use to feel overwhelmed when faced with a Lego set to make as a child,” she asks. “It’s unlikely you did because you simply set about making it brick by brick. Take that same approach with your work by consciously slowing your mind and focusing on the task at hand. Deal with one task after another without allowing all the other tasks on your to-do list to race through your mind. Do it brick by brick.”
She believes that practices such as guided meditations and mindfulness training help develop our ability to focus by teaching us “how to be in the present moment rather than panicking over an anticipated future”.
Meditation and mindfulness can also make us more aware of how we talk to ourselves. Such self-talk is vital to our wellbeing, according to Forde.
“WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR HEAD INFLUENCES OUR BODY
“We may be only imagining ourselves buckling under our workload or messing up professionally, but our brain interprets such horrors as reality. It then drives us into fight or flight mode, elevating stress and making it more difficult to focus on work.”
To counter this, Forde encourages us to “become aware of the movie we’re showing ourselves in our heads, to decide to switch the channel and then select a more positive movie”.
Van Nieuwerburgh’s top tip for countering stress involves “being kind to ourselves across all time dimensions”. This is simpler than it sounds. In the present, it means taking on a reasonable workload and allowing ourselves adequate breaks.
Nor should we forget to be kind to our past selves. Instead of berating ourselves for mistakes, van Nieuwerburgh urges us to be compassionate and to try to understand why we made them, so we can avoid them in the future.
He also suggests reaching out to colleagues: “If we’re stressed out about getting everything done, our colleagues are likely to be stressed out too.
“They will appreciate us checking in on them and doing so will remind us that we’re not the only ones feeling the pressure.
“Knowing we’re all in the same boat can reduce feelings of overwhelm and make us feel part of something greater, which in turn can bolster our motivation to keep going.”
TIPS TO COMBAT STRESS
In the 12 days between now and Christmas Day, many of us will feel highly stressed at times. Forde suggests “instant chemistry changers” to bring us out of fight-or-flight mode.
One is grounding. It involves sitting in a chair and planting your feet firmly on the ground before naming five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
There’s scientific proof that this works. A 2014 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US found that mindfulness-based stress reduction programmes in general and ground techniques in particular could ease anxiety symptoms by helping people detach from negative emotions.
Slow breathing is another. “Really focusing on your inhalation and making an elongated sigh as you slowly breathe out for five minutes resets the nervous system,” says Forde.
Five minutes of intense exercise, like jumping jacks, rapid squats, or running up and down the stairs, will have the same effect on your body and mind. So will plunging your hands into ice-cold water, placing frozen peas on your forehead or taking a cold shower. “The cold jolts us out of overwhelmed states,”says Forde.
Her final tip is to “phone a friend”. “Chatting to someone about something unrelated to work, such as a fun evening out you had together, will get you out of that stress loop and allow you to return to work with renewed energy and perspective.”
Abridged from article by SHARON NÍ CHONCHÚIR
Full article https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/healthandwellbeing/arid-41758514.html