What is stress and how to get rid of it?

Have you ever worked on a high pressure, high burning, life sucking project? Constant stress is making you insane? Anxiety is all over your days, nights, meals and weekends? You can just not stop thinking about work?

If this experience sounds familiar, you are not alone. Stress has increased 50% globally since the dawn of the Covid pandemic. I have worked on a few such projects. As I started having self awareness of the emotions I was going through, I decided to act on it.

The techniques explained in this post do not bring about immediate change. They are dense and take time to get used to. I dealt with it in two fronts; technical and emotional.

Technical front is about doing certain things in a certain way to handle the situation better. These are proven methods that have been used by numerous people.

Emotional front is about handling your emotions and relationship with the situation. This is often underrated, and yet it can be more potent than the technical know-how.

Technical front

Technically I broke down the problem into 2 things - stress and time. Both are actually interlinked. So I started looking for ways to manage time and manage stress.

Time management

Prioritization

The foundation of managing time is knowing priorities. My brother suggested Eisenhower’s Principal to understand a task’s priority based on it’s urgency and importance.

Urgency - How quickly do you need to finish the task?

Importance - What impact does this task create to your/team’s eventual goal?

I created a Trello board, that tracked tasks based on these parameters.

Note: Trello is an awesome tool to make organized lists.

When you categorize tasks like this, it is easy for your brain to naturally pick up what’s right for the moment. You might still need to prioritize between tasks of the same quadrant, but that would be simpler, now that you have fewer tasks there.

Identifying dependencies and blockers

I work on the front end so I get dependent on other teams before even beginning my work. For example, I need the designs and API contracts. When I’m about to begin a certain task, or possibly even before that, I go through the entire task and identify if I will be blocked by something. Identifying blockers early means you have more time to resolve them.

If you have teams working in different timezones like I did, it is even more important to do this as early as possible, since the turnaround time is usually longer.

Planning ahead of time

Having a mental structure of how your day is going to pan out will make you comfortable thoughout the day. My day would usually go like this:

Start work at 9AM, read emails and updates, prioritise work (on the Trello board), if needed collaborate with the on-shore team to identify and resolve dependencies until 12PM, help juniors with their problems, do my coding tasks, go for lunch, get back and complete tasks. Attend meetings in late afternoon, finish the tasks at hand by 6PM.

This was a high burning project and I often went beyond my end of day timeline. But as I got better at time management, the occurrences considerably reduced.

You want to adhere to this structured day, but you should also be comfortable to make improvised changes. Being very rigid about this structure can be more detrimental than helpful.

While you have a nice day planned out for you, the trick is to not think about it too much. If you are reading emails and prioritising, just do that. If you think about the next task, you will be stressed about it. This will steal the calm from you. Anxiety cannot be felt for the present moment, so live the present as much as possible.

Stress management

Stress usually has a negative connotation to it.

But, what if I told you otherwise? While stress can have negative impact on your physical and mental health, if you manage it you can use it as a trigger to push your boundaries and achieve more than you usually would. Keep it unmanaged, and it can control you.

You can go in the following phases to deal with stress -

• Identify stress reactions

  When any person is stressed, they react or behave in a particular way to deal with it. For me personally, I tend to overeat and ignore my physical health. This is completely individualized. Some people stop eating. Some people keep checking their social media profiles. Some procrastinate. Identifying these reactions is the first step to managing stress. Being aware of these reactions itself reduces stress.

• Stress suppressors

  There are a few proven things that are known to suppress the stress you are feeling. Practice as many as you can to minise stress and feel better. Personally for me I started feeling better in 3 days of practice.

  When you are working

  1. Time management
  2. Take short breaks after every few hours
  3. Get shit done

  When you are not working

  1. Writing a gratefulness list
  2. Exercise - Can be as simple as running, walking, shuffling
  3. Watch a funny or inspirational movie
  4. Go on a holiday
  5. Meditate
  6. Play a physical sport
  
  

  The When you are working list is straigtforward, the more you do it, the better results you will get. The When you are not working list is subjective but not exhaustive, do whatever takes your mind off work. Some of them may not be always feasible, and it’s okay to not do them. I made it a point to do something that can be done everyday, for example, exercise.

Emotional front

Acceptance

Accept that it is a tough time. Accept that you will need to make some sacrifices for this. Accept that work life balance is going to be hard for a while. When you truly accept the whole reality, you will be much more relaxed.

Trust the process

When you’ve addressed all the technical aspects of this, you’ve made a system for yourself, just trust this process and be at ease with what you are doing. Processes yield results in the long run, they are tiny changes in your day to day life that bring about huge changes when compounded over time.

The Silver lining

Times are tough, and when this ends, you are going to be a tough person. Difficult times actually teach you a lot about yourself and life. So be at your best and kick ass!

Believe

A big reason why you are in this difficult situation, is because you are capable of handling it. This is not a feel-special about-yourself thing. You are here because you cleared every level before to reach here. You are here because your peers and superiors saw the potential in you and chose you. Don’t forget this reason. Believe in yourself.

The people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Rob Siltanen

Be patient, there will be light.