How to Make Stress Your Friend and Get Things Done On Time
Every time I have a project, I aim to start it early, work on it slowly and get it done with days to spare. Start a little slow, get some done in the first week, a little more in the second, and then wrap it up in the third — a couple of days before the deadline. This way, everything gets done with no stress. But do you know what, the funniest thing always happens. The first week comes and goes, and I haven’t quite done stuff. Then, sure enough, the second week comes and goes, and I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about it, but I haven’t actually done any of it. The next thing I know, there are only four days left to finish it, and I still haven’t started.
If you’re one of the lucky handful of people on planet earth who can follow their plan and get stuff done without procrastinating, please stop reading here. You can go on with the rest of your day, content knowing that you’ll never have to suffer like the rest of us. However, if you’re like me, continue reading, and I’ll explain how I use stress to my advantage to get things done.
Tim Urban, self-proclaimed ‘master procrastinator’ and writer of the Wait But Why blog, explains the neuroanatomy of a Procrastinator.
Tim says we all have a Rational Decision Maker who lives in our brains. The Rational Decision Maker is the responsible one who thinks long-term; it is the one we want to make decisions for us. Unfortunately, for Procrastinators, our Rational Decision Maker has a pet, the Instant Gratification Monkey.
When we have a three-week deadline, our Rational Decision Maker says, “We have plenty of time; let’s get started now so that we finish and avoid any stress”. That sounds good, doesn’t it? So, why don’t I listen to it? The Instant Gratification Monkey is why. This rascal is very persuasive and always manages to persuade the Rational Decision Maker to steer the ship off course in pursuit of a distraction.
Suddenly, I’ve spent 2.5 weeks procrastinating — I only have four days until the deadline. Given this situation, how does a procrastinator manage to finish anything?
Luckily for me, there is one thing that scares the Instant Gratification Monkey — The Panic Monster. The Panic Monster sleeps most of the time and wakes up when a scary consequence is looming, such as a deadline that is too close. At first sight of The Panic Monster, the usually unshakable Instant Gratification Monkey makes a run for it, leaving the Rational Decision Maker to anxiously get the ship back on track and complete the project before the deadline.
Phew. I accomplished the project on time. No worries … Well, some worries. Who likes stress? I sure don’t … But, can I use stress to my advantage?
You’ve probably heard the advice that we should avoid stress because it’s not good for us. I bet you didn’t know that advice is wrong — well, sort of.
A study from the University of Wisconsin, School of Medicine and Public Health tracked 30,000 adults in the USA for eight years. The researchers found that people who had higher stress in the previous year had a 43% increased risk of dying. But, they also found that this was only the case if you believed stress was harmful. People who didn’t think that stress was harmful had the lowest risk of dying, even less than those with relatively little stress. People die from believing stress is bad for them, not from stress itself.
Health psychologist, Dr Kelly McGonigal, urges us to change how we think about stress. She says that changing your mental framing of stress changes your body’s physiological response. What if we tell ourselves that this is our body preparing to perform? If we reframe the signs of stress — heart pounding, breathing faster, breaking out into a sweat — to something helpful, it reduces our stress and we can perform better.
A sign of chronic stress is constricted blood vessels. A study from Harvard University shows that people who view stress as helpful have a healthier cardiovascular profile. Even when they experience stress, their blood vessels don’t constrict. This looks a lot like the physiological state that we call excitement. Those who view stress positively are excited to perform, not stressed. Over a lifetime, this change of perspective can make a world of difference.
According to Dr Kelly McGonigal, we shouldn’t aim to get rid of stress. We should try to get better at stress. She wants us to tell ourselves, “this is my body helping me rise to this challenge”.
In 1955 Cyril Parkinson wrote about something similar in The Economist. He stated that work would expand to fill the time allocated for its completion — this is commonly called Parkinson’s Law. A modern example is as follows. Imagine you have three weeks to complete a project; this project should take about a day or two. Because you have so much time, you organise a meeting to plan your approach. This meeting highlights something interesting, so you spend some time investigating this avenue, bringing something else to light, which you also spend time exploring. All of this adds more and more requirements to the task that should have only taken a day or two. After these diversions, you’re still no closer to finishing the project. Eventually, what should have taken a day or two takes whole three weeks. This sounds all too familiar.
Ideally, you want to be in a state of eustress — a positive form of stress that has a beneficial effect on health, motivation, performance, and emotional well-being. Eustress is the healthy pressure and peak performance sections of the Stress Performance Curve.
Here’s how I use stress to my advantage and get things done on time.
Let's assume I have a project that will take three days to complete and I have three weeks lead time. I always look at the project straight away. But I know that if I start immediately, The Instant Gratification Monkey will overpower the Rational Decision Maker with a thousand and one distractions, and I won’t be very productive — so I don’t start immediately. I give myself a couple of weeks to think about how I will do it — without the guilt. I don’t guilt myself for procrastinating; I view it as helpful and productive. It’s incredible how much I always plan in the back of my mind during these couple of weeks.
With five days to go, I finally sit down and start the project. At this point, The Panic Monster has begun stirring from its slumber, and the Instant Gratification Monkey is weary. I’m starting to feel a little stressed, but I know that stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This is the point where I have the most clarity and the least distractions. The Instant Gratification Monkey isn’t running rampant in my mind, and I haven’t left it until the very last day, so I’m not stricken with stress either.
With 2.5 weeks of planning and five days of executing, the project gets done in no time. It might not be as good as it could have been if I stuck to the original plan and spent the whole three weeks on it — but I know I wouldn’t have done that anyway. Finished is better than perfect. And, this approach sure is better than stressing and feeling guilty the whole time.
When you view your stress response as helpful, it gives you the biology of courage.
