The Art of Staying Calm Under Pressure
People say I’m a calm person, so they ask me how I deal with stress. Actually, I have only a couple of mental philosophies and some specific actions: this is my entire stress management plan! But first of all, what do we mean by stress?
Stress is a part of being human
Everyone gets stressed. Stress is a stimulus that drives you to take action. In fact, we need a certain amount of stress to help us grow and develop.
When you perform the action the stimulus is demanding of you, the stress signal turns off. A “good” level of stress, with on-off cycles of stimulus, is business as usual.
But many times we feel more stress than what we are comfortable with.
When people say they are “stressed out”, it means they have not been able to convert the stimulus into productive actions that switch it off. This activates the body’s fight-or-flight system – desperate measures to make you take action! It’s why a persistent or escalating stimulus can be physically harmful.
So what about my stress management plan?
A) Mindset
1) Identify the locus of your control
In any stressful situation, you must identify which things are in your control, and which things are outside your control.
Take actions for the things in your control – see the Actions section below.
But for the things outside your control, you need to forget about them. Don’t let your anxieties about these things linger in your mind. There’s nothing you can do about them, and focusing on them is not productive. Delete them.
2) Know that not everything is equally important
In our modern world with so many things competing for our attention, it sometimes feels that everything is important. However, most things in life don’t matter that much. You must let them go.
However, for the things that do matter, you have to be prepared to fight for them. You can’t fight (and expect to win) every fight. So with every stimulus, ask yourself, is this something worth fighting for?
And if you want even more clarity, try re-read that last sentence, and replace “worth fighting for?” with “worth dying for?”
B) Actions
1) Externalise what’s in your head
When you’re stressed and things are whizzing around your mind uncontrollably, you should get things out of your mind and onto a piece of paper, or a whiteboard.
Make a “List of things that are worrying me right now”. And write everything down, from the biggest to the smallest.
This helps you understand the nature of the stimulus, and what actions are required. When you can see your enemy, you’ll be better able to deal with him.
2) Prioritise your actions
As your mind gets more stressed, it loses the bandwidth required to even do basic things like assigning priorities to new tasks. When everyone’s shouting at you, when every alarm is blaring, when every deadline is “yesterday”… it’s easy to feel that every problem or demand carries an equal priority.
You must take a moment to pause, and (re-)assign priorities.
There are many ways to prioritise – such as an Eisenhower matrix (urgent/important), or according to time – things to do in the next hour, or the next 8 hours, or the next day, or the next week, and so on.
You may even be able to cross off things that are no longer relevant.
3) Delegate or outsource
Often we don’t trust others to do a good job, and we know that delegating or outsourcing has a “stress cost” of its own. But see if there is something that is less important or less critical that can be delegated or outsourced safely.
4) Break the vicious cycle of group stress and panic
Stress and panic are highly contagious. While you may not be able to suppress your internal feeling of stress, you do have the choice of whether or not to demonstrate it externally. Don’t let the people around you see your stress.
This sets an example and the tone for the rest of the team. It gives others breathing space to think about solutions and actions, rather than exacerbating the problem.
(Interestingly, this may come more naturally for reserved introverts rather than expressive extroverts.)
5) Communicate expectations with stakeholders
A lot of our stress can come from unreasonable expectations of stakeholders. Consider escalating and communicating transparently with stakeholders. “A problem shared is a problem halved”, and they may even be able to support you with extra resources or more deadline extensions.
6) Close the shop at closing time
When you are working on a long-term project, even at the end of a good day’s work, there will always be the next thing you can work on. It can feel as though the work is never finished. The temptation is to carry on past your bedtime.
Have the discipline to set yourself a reasonable work target for the day, and when the time comes to stop, close the shop on time, and protect your rest time.
As you can see, none of this is rocket science. This checklist is a couple of mindset modifications and a set of actions – a simple set of rules that anyone can use, with a little practice. Stress management isn’t a mysterious zen-like state. It’s something everyone can master.
And that’s A Deeper Thought.
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