How to get over performance stress

Something interesting happened once I became a manager — I got a chance to talk to a lot of new hires, both at my firm and outside. I discovered that project execution and performance stress is a very common problem that most people deal with. The symptoms are typical — We feel stressed through the execution of most projects, especially more during the initial phases when there are a lot of unknowns. We feel that others would have done the same work much faster than us. We are unable to disconnect from work even after going back home despite spending ten or more hours at work. Successful completion of a project only provides relief, not joy, Before we know, the next project starts and the cycle of stress starts with it. Jobs today pay very well, but what is the point of it, if we have to spend most of our time feeling anxious?

void execute_project(project p) {

You have been assigned a new project at work. You don’t fully know how to go about it — there are a lot of unknowns. Quite possibly, you will have to figure out and learn new things, explore and research options, make decisions and convince stakeholders. There is a deadline. There is always a deadline.

You start on the project. A few days go by but you do not have much to show in terms of progress. Status update meeting is coming up. You are scared of being judged. Had this project been assigned to someone else, they would have made much faster progress, you think. You spend ten hours at office working on the project. On the way back home, you feel exhausted, yet dissatisfied. At home, you slap together a quick dinner, turn on the TV and try to flick through the channels. But you are unable to enjoy the show. Work is hogging your mind space. Giving up, you pick up the project once again until you fall asleep tired. This keeps going for weeks. You are unable to really enjoy that dinner you had with friends over the weekend. You were not really there 100% when your cousin called.

More weeks go by and slowly things start taking shape. You have some idea of how to go about the project. The deadline has already been moved a couple of times as unknowns became knowns. The pressure is still there but you keep marching forward through your stress and anxiety, working long hours, tired, stressed, but working none-the-less.

Finally, the project completes. You submit the final piece of work. You update the stakeholders. After several months, you finally take a sigh of relief. You go out and celebrate. You call your mother and tell her how much you miss her and love her. Life is good. Your job is not all that bad. You are OK.

} // End of execute_project

You go back to work the next day and are assigned a new project.

while (true) {

execute_project(new_project)

} // End of while(true)

I suffered from chronic work related stress and anxiety for the first seven years of my career. I continued to remain stressed through all my promotions and growth. If anything, promotions only made things worse since I set an even higher bar for myself with every step up the ladder.

For the first six years of this stress, I wrote code. I thought that maybe I am in the wrong job and that is the reason for my stress. Several years later, once I started mentoring new hires, I realised that several of them feel the same way. They think that they are stressed because they chose the wrong profession. I know several people who made drastic career shifts for this reason. Later in my career, when I became a new manager, I felt the same stress for management tasks and projects that I used to feel during coding projects. My emotions through the project lifecycle were exactly the same. I realised that its not the specifics of the project that are causing stress. It is all about my inner emotional state.

Something interesting happened once I became a manager — I got a chance to talk to a lot of new hires, both at my firm and outside. I discovered that work related stress is very common problem most people deal with. The symptoms are typical — We feel stressed through the execution of most projects, especially more during the initial phases when there are a lot of unknowns. We feel that others would have done the same work much faster than us. We are unable to disconnect from work even after going back home despite spending ten or more hours at work. Successful completion of a project only provides relief, not joy. Before we know, the next project starts and the cycle of stress starts with it. Jobs today pay very well, but what is the point of it, if we have to spend most of our time feeling anxious?

I have been a manager for several years now. I have mentored a lot of new hires. I will share a few secrets with you based on this experience. I wish I had known these secrets sooner in my career so that I did not have to suffer from so much stress and anxiety over so many years.

When I became a new manager, I read in the training material that to be a good manager, you do not need to be the best at everything. Effective managers surrounds themselves with talented people who complement their own skills. Why should only managers not be the best? Everyone should be allowed to not be the best. Everyone should surround themselves with talented people who complement their own skills. Rather than seeing talented people and feeling inadequate in comparison, we need to look at them as resources we can leverage. Why not appreciate whatever you can do well and seek help for things you do not do well? If we ask for help, won’t we be judged? Trust me, people whose judgement matters won’t judge you for it.

At work, and in life in general, you never really have to prove yourself to anyone by doing it all on your own. Taking help from others does not make you inadequate. It is the smart thing to do. Stakeholders care about getting stuff done. They don’t care who did it. Regardless of how you got the work done, if you get it done, you will be known as the person who gets shit done.

Let me share another little secret with you. If your organisation assigned you a job, they did so because you are the best person they could find to do that job. If someone else did what you were assigned, who will do that other person’s job? Thus, for better or for worse, you and your organisation are stuck with each other. If it takes you longer than the next person to complete your project, you and your organisation, both have no choice but to accept that reality. You are the best they can do. There is something beautiful hidden in that last sentence — You are the best.

Here is another little secret — Your performance at work is almost never judged on the order of days or weeks. Good managers and good organisations judge individuals over a much longer time horizon. In most cases, you are your own worst judge and critic. No one else is judging you as much as you are judging yourself, because others are busy fighting their own demons.

I think that the real reason for our stress is not the nature of the work. It is the nature of the environment. If you are in a team where you know the people well and where you feel appreciated and trusted by your stakeholders, you will feel less stressed. For example, people typically feel greater levels of stress in a new job or when their manager changes. Lack of familiarity of the domain is only part of the reason. Bigger reason is lack of familiarity with people. Thus, if you are the anxious kind, it is important that once you have built a network of trust, spend some time leveraging that network. Do not keep changing jobs very frequently.

It helps to accept stress and anxiety as a part of life. If we stop resisting it and instead think of it as a driver which gets us to work hard and get things done, we will not see it as an absolute evil. If you embrace and accept stress, over time, you will also starting allowing yourself to park it at the end of the day and pick it up again the next day allowing for a down time. Know that almost everyone feels stressed at work from time to time, whether they show it or not.

Finally, you have to pay your dues. There is no substitute for experience. Once you have dealt with certain kind of unknowns, failures or difficult situations, similar kind of unknowns, failures and situations will not stress you as much in future. So, if you are struggling with stress — stay put. Things will get better over time.