How I Manage Stress in High-Pressure Industries.
Finance is a high-pressure industry that requires late nights, tight deadlines, and a lot of hard conversations. I've worked in finance for several years now but before that, I worked as a cook. Even more so than finance, the culinary industry is extremely stressful.
Working in kitchens since the age of 15 helped me build skills and strategies that allow me to operate at a high level across high-pressure industries despite the stress load. These skills and strategies aren't innovative or some groundbreaking hack to give you more time but are strategies that have worked for me over the years and have been tested across industries and jobs. This is how I manage stress in high-pressure industries, these techniques have served me well and I encourage you to give them a try and see if they work for you too.
Mise en Place
The first principle for managing stress in high-pressure environments is called mise en Place which is a French culinary term for "putting in place" but is much bigger than simply putting things in their place. mise en place is a culture, a way of life, and a religion for chefs and cooks alike.
In its simplest form, mise en place requires everything to be in its place meaning that when it comes time for you to do the work you don't have to think about where things are. In a kitchen this would mean that your utensils are exactly where they should be, each ingredient is organized and in front of you and you don't need to think about where things are. In a kitchen, if everything's in place, you should be able to cook blindfolded and know exactly where things are. This efficiency allows cooks and chefs to finish hundreds of meals every night.
The first lesson from mise en place is that having a clean, tidy, and organized workspace helps you to get in and get the work done fast and efficiently. For those who work in an office, mise en place also means removing distractions from your workspace. removing distractions means you can stay focused on the task at hand. Removing distractions can involve keeping your phone away from your desk or putting your phone on silent.
Mise en place doesn't relate only to things being in their place, it also relates to motion. In a kitchen, you're always in motion and that motion carries you from the start of a dish to the end of a dish.
For those who don't work in kitchens, this means that the project that you're undertaking must have a clean, organized flow from the start of the project to the end of the project. Mise en place helps ensure that all dishes are completed and that your project doesn't stop halfway from start to finish but that you complete the project in its entirety.
To help create a smooth, clean process, envision the completed project before you start and then work your way back until you have each step that needs to be completed listed out. In a kitchen, this is called the recipe. Chefs work with the end plate in mind and then work backward to identify everything that needs to be completed.
As an example, I have a clean workstation and a procedure listed out for how I write these blogs, I know exactly the steps I need to take to get the idea, draft the blog, and then edit. I also have these systems for my day-to-day job, study as well as household obligations like cleaning and washing. It's organized in a clean workflow that operates the same way every time I do that activity. Know where the inputs are located for you to complete the project and use the motion of the process to carry the project through to completion.
Finally, mise en place also helps us get into a state of flow, having everything in its place for you to do your work means that you can more easily get into your state of flow where you don't get distracted and can just get into the work.
These are just a few examples of how I use the concept of mise en place in high-pressure work and how it's helped me for many years.
Separate Your Personal Value From Your Work Value
A lot of stress that people experience comes from the pressure of their work, but what causes that pressure?
Pressure is caused when we place value on something, most of the time the value of our reputations at work, and we're not 100% confident that we can keep it or there is a risk to what we value. In most cases, if we can't deliver on the work or all of the work then our reputation, the thing we value, may be at risk. In addition to this, we may suffer some consequences outside of just reputational damage if we don't complete what we intend to complete.
In my opinion, the major driver of pressure is the stress of reputational damage or consequences but there are loads of factors that feed into what we call pressure such as:
O Excessive Demands
O Lack of Control
O Lack of Support
O Poor Work Relationships
O Lack of Understanding
O Lack of Engagement
All of these factors can significantly increase the pressure you experience at work, now the question is, how can we reduce the impact of that pressure on our mental health?
Aside from reducing the key factor that is causing your stress such as excessive demands may be reduced by delegating or speaking to a manager about your workload, where we can't reduce the cause of the stress we have to separate our value of ourselves from the value of our work.
As an example, I had a client meeting where I had put months of work into a particular report and the client hated it. They spent the whole time complaining about formatting and that they didn't understand what I was trying to explain to them. This was pretty devastating for me, and quite frankly pissed me off because we gave them loads of time to add their input but they were too lazy until we presented the final copy.
I felt pretty down about this for a couple of days and kept rethinking the meeting, what I could have said, and what I could have done differently. This wasn't the first time something like this has happened, this has happened to me numerous times and across multiple industries. I would wager this has happened to all of us at some stage or another.
One key principle I learned from my time in kitchens was to separate the perceived value of myself from the perceived value of my work.
If I messed up an order, had a bad night, or just generally didn't do well at something, I took that as an attack on myself. I thought my value as a person and as a human being decreased. That couldn't be further from the truth.
The work I produced may have been bad, but that doesn't make me bad.
I, as a person, still had value outside and inside of my work. I could still go home, forgive myself for making mistakes, learn how I can improve, or set up a system to not make those mistakes again and come back the next day with more energy.
For the report I presented, I went home and realized that the work I do is not a reflection of my value as a person which helped me accept what happened. After that, I reflected on their comments and made changes to the report to suit their recommendations if I thought it added value to the work produced.
Once you can separate your value as a person from the value of the work you produced, criticism is a lot easier to take on and helps you take feedback more productively which leads to a better outcome of the project.
You Control the Inputs, Not the Outcome
Stoic philosophy says that we can't control what happens and that we can only control our input. By obsessing about the outcome we only drive ourselves mad to no benefit. Let's take another look at the report that was shut down in the presentation I gave.
I put a lot of weeks and months into the preparation of the data and recommendations that were included in that report. I prepared the report in a format that was the best I could do and overall I was super stoked with the report before the presentation.
That feeling, the feeling of being happy with the work we produce is what we should hold on to. It doesn't matter what the client thinks or what someone else thinks, if you know that you put everything you could into that report and created something you truly thought was good and valuable then that's perfect.
You've made something you like, you think is valuable or helpful for someone. How they react to it is on them.
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” — Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5
We cannot control the outcome of most situations but we can control our input. That's what you should focus on. The feeling of completing a project to a standard that you're happy with is what matters most.
In the case of my report, the response from the client or someone else may be negative. So how do we react to that?
Once again, look at what you CAN control. If it's not received positively, what can you change to make it better? What inputs can you have at this stage that will make the project better and be received better by the client?
If you can't control anything once it's presented then you can go to sleep knowing that you put in your all for the work. If you can control things at this stage, make the changes. Use the feedback you received positively and focus on elements you can control to make the product better.
Get Some Hobbies
Pressure comes from multiple factors as we've discussed but one of those is that the project MUST be completed. The project has to be completed by a certain date and it has to be submitted or presented at some stage.
This creates tension and builds more stress for you.
One way that we can cope with the stress we're feeling is to complete activities that don't have a deadline or need to be submitted. Hobbies that we can do with no pressure or deadline help relax our brain and train our brains to focus on enjoying the journey rather than stressing the deadline.
If you're wired anything like me, you struggle to leave tasks outstanding, you struggle to switch off, and if you start something, you obsess about completing it and maximizing any efficiencies possible to complete the task.
Engaging in hobbies that don't have a deadline and mindfully practicing pursuing something just for fun and for the journey helps our brains relax and de-stress from time to time.
So get some hobbies and don't stress about finishing them, just enjoy them.
