Welcome to Part Four of our Guide to Managing Time (managing a 60-hour workweek) mini-series! Please read our previous sections:

Part One – Creating a consistent schedule.

Part Two – Working with others.

Part Three – Tools to help.

Managing your health with a busy lifestyle

No matter what, you have to always take good care of yourself. If you can’t take care of you health properly, the people that you look after will suffer, and your work will also suffer. You won’t be as happy. Your quality of life will deteriorate. That’s why health is so important to maintain even when things get busy and stressful.

I visited my doctor this week to discuss my blood test results and it turns out that everything is normal – so it really is stress from my busy lifestyle that’s been wreaking all kinds of havoc on my mind and body. Mr. Nice Doctor recommended I go on a holiday for at least two weeks at some point in the near future, which isn’t likely to happen for at least several months if even then, but he also referred me to a psychologist. His concern is that hormones and mental health can be drastically affected by stress, and apparently when stress hits people to this extent and they have anxiety and such, their risk for developing low-grade depression is higher. Mr. Nice Doctor wants to prevent that from happening. Hence, the psychologist.

So, regularly seeing a psychologist, therapist or other counselor is an excellent way to help maintain good mental health when you are overworked. Here are some other things you can do as well:

– Set aside time each week to make yourself a meal plan and go grocery shopping. Nutrition often goes out the window for most people when life gets busy, and that’s the worst thing that can happen. What you need to do is take a bit of time to prepare healthy meals for yourself so that you’ll be fueling yourself properly every day. Sundays might be the best day to do this if you don’t work on the weekends.

– Go to the gym on your break. Any form of exercise, even walking, can be a fabulous way to keep the body fit and also to act as therapy for the mind when you’ve hit a slump midway through the day. By building exercise into your day on your break, you won’t have to worry about how the extra fitness is going to affect your workload, if that’s a concern. Using exercise as a social activity or doing yoga in your living room between loads of laundry are also otherwise to incorporate exercise neatly into the rest of your day.

– Take a multivitamin or other supplement. Stress is hard on the body, and sometimes that means that your body can’t absorb nutrients as well, so you need higher concentrations of nutrients. Besides that, stress also weakens the immune system and you are likely not eating quite as well since you might not have time to prepare the healthiest meals. In that case, a supplement can be very beneficial. Just make sure it’s a reputable company and that it contains quality ingredients and that you don’t overdose on them.

– Remember you can say “no.” You don’t need to take on the world. Piling on more work is going to make you go crazy. Make boundaries for yourself – how many hours are you willing to work? What’s the minimum amount of money you’ll accept to do a job? What time in the evening is your cut-off for stopping working? Pick and choose to save yourself a lot of stress and so that the other people involved can find someone else better capable of taking on the job.

What do you do to manage your health when you’re busy? Share in the comments section below!