I read this book at a time I was looking for tools to help manage stress. It does a great job of breaking down pressure into different types and providing tangible methods for managing both acute pressure, as well as chronic pressure. It's as applicable to my personal life as my professional life. The book is more than just self-help on how to approach stress, but also touches on motivation and finding meaning in whatever you do.
On pressure
Think about what challenges have you faced that: Impair performance, drain physical energy, emotionally exhaust you, cause you anxiety, take away the fun, or keep you rushing. These are moments of peak pressure.
Pressure = Importance × Volume × Uncertainty
Our nervous system is made up of two groups: central, which is the brain and spine, and peripheral which are the nerves. Within the peripheral group there are somatic which are voluntary actions, and autonomic which are involuntary. The Autonomic system can be broken down into two separate subtypes: sympathetic which is for stress activation, and parasympathetic, which returns our body from stress to normalcy.
EEG Brain waves exist in four types:
- Delta: Sleep, dreamless sleep
- Theta: Light sleep, daydreaming
- Alpha: Meditative state, free form thought
On mindset and meaning
Put space between trigger and response. Notice what you are feeling, thinking, and experiencing physically before you move to action. Expand that space. First start with what you think / feel, then observe how you want to be, then decide on what you want to do. Never jump from the first step to the third step.
Do not become your anger or stress. We are not our thoughts, feelings, or bodies. These are parts of the self. They don’t define what we are capable of.
Ways to think about the self to get distance: As a conductor, or as an impartial observer. Mindfulness and active awareness can mean the difference between noticing you angry and being angry.
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
On importance, meaning and happiness
“Is there anything you would like to do, experience, accept or change, if you were not afraid of the stress it might bring into your life?” Meaning and happiness aren’t the same thing. Connecting with meaning is vital to the long haul. How happy we are during the experience and after are two different things.
We can derive North Star meaning through:
- Growth: Seeing ourselves improve, grow - is this pressure helping me grow. How people think about their daily work has a huge effect on the motivation to get things done. The most powerful thing is progress in meaningful work
- Contribution: Will enduring this pressure help others? No matter how many times I endure this, will it result in some benefit to others?
- Connection: What we experience with others together
Clearing a line of sight to meaning:
North Star: The meaning that motivates and guides us
Vision: A clear and compelling mental image of the future — what will it look like in six months if I’ve risen to the challenge?
Goals: What do I need to accomplish, learn, acquire, to let go of, to achieve my vision
Daily decisions: Small moments that determine if you are moving toward your goals or away.
Staying energized in the long term requires accepting that the future is unknown and having faith that everything will work out ok in the end.
| Business Mindsets | Innovation Mindsets |
|---|---|
| It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to held to them 98% of the time | Value the right question |
| Improve efficiency | Encourage Exploration |
| Use data and logic to inspire confidence | Use prototypes and stories to inspire confidence |
| Learn, create, assess | Create, assess, learn |
| Plan and predict results | Embrace surprise and delight |
| Increase compliance | Ask why and why not |
| Value accuracy | Value lessons from failure |
| Eliminate Downside Risk | Create Opportunity |
In the book, “Courage Under Fire” by Jim Stockade, he highlights three key ways to find strength:
- Ruthlessly separate what you can control from what you can’t
- Find social support
- Have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your reality, while never lose faith that it will work out in the end
Things will generally work out — but what “it will work out” means can vary greatly. The future is unknowable, and how it may work out may be different from how you expect, but by devoting yourself to the cause, working tirelessly to control the things you can it will work out in the end.
What might that look like for things to work out?
- I learned something new that was incredibly useful later on
- I gained better insight into my own motivations and behaviours
- I discovered an inner strength that I did not fully appreciate
- I built confidence in my abilities
- I built stronger connections with people around me
- I was forced to recognize the path that I was on wasn’t truly what I wanted.
Goals for navigating pressure:
- To perform to my potential
- To grow in ways that matter to me
- To emerge without regret
Elastic mindset: the ability to let certain things go when necessary, and to avoid adding another layer from your own expectations and guilt on top of an already busy, and productive life.
“It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time”
On Sleep, Eating, and Movement
When you can’t fall asleep - make yourself realize that you’ll be alright even if you don’t get more sleep, because it’s true. You can cope.
The 100 challenge
Hold a vivid image of a chalkboard in a room. Write 100 on the chalkboard—hold the image in your head. Erase the numbers, and really feel the process of doing so. Write the number 99. Repeat until you fall asleep.
Breathing hack to help sleep
As you breathe in, think the word “out” and count to 5. As you breathe out, think the word “in” and count to 8.
On eating and movement
Combine carbs and protein together to eliminate energy spikes and troughs, such as oatmeal, yogurt and nuts, tuna and crackers, or vegetables and hummus. Move regularly, and your body and mind will thank you.
On support
The right type of social support during times of pressure is important. Learn how to build a support network that really works for your.
Emotions
Emotions are contagious, when someone expresses their anxiety, and worry, we experience it too — and are unable to do anything about it. This is the crucial difference between stress and pressure — pressure is something we can action.
Distractions
Some support will raise the stakes of something we already know matters. Redirecting focus away from action, and towards the outcome counteracts the vital skill of determining what’s not at stake.
Recommendations for support networks
1. Keep it tight: When it comes to support networks, size matters. 2. Recruit from “inside the arena” — Fellow combatants are more helpful than spectators. 3. Set the terms of engagement proactively —tell your supporters exactly what you need from them; don’t just “take what you can get”
Find your top five people
Those that are "in the arena" with you. That are not prone to the pity party. That are able to allow their emotional wake to take a back seat to your needs. And who can consistently focus on what you need to do, and not what's at stake.
“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training”
On peak pressure moments
Has a defined start and end. For example: preparing a presentation. Made up of two phases: anticipation and performance. Managing anticipation is managing pressure.
Importance
- See what’s not at stake: Round out your perspective so that you aren’t solely focused on what’s in play.
- Avoid the anxiety spiral:
- Push for data: What evidence do I have to to support this is at stake?
- Pretend you are advising a friend
- Give yourself the benefit of the doubt.
- Work to deflate ego-driven stakes: Don’t layer on ego-driven stakes that are about how we will be perceived or how we will percieve ourselves.
- Guage what is truly urgent: Eisenhower - I have two kinds of problems: urgent + important. Ask, what’s the worst that can happen if I force action, or if I delay? Sometimes urgency is a feeling but not reality
Uncertainty
- Identify your serve: Isolate one thing you have complete control over
- Build routines: Routinize what you can around as many possibilities as possible, creating a sense of certainty and predictability — redirecting focus from outcomes to behaviours
- Focus on breathing: Establish a breathing rhythm will immediately impact physiology, but also exert control and see progress.
- Change your perspective: When all is outside your control, you can choose to see what you are learning, why the situation matters, and how others you aspire to might handle this adversity.
Volume
- Separate foreground and background: Identify what areas of your life to put in foreground to focus on, and which to regulate to the background.
- Embrace structural simplification: Get away from distractions (find your version of a Wi-Fi free flight).
- Establish absolutes: Clay Christensen’s maxim: It’s easier to stick to your principles 100% of the time than 98% of the time.
“What do you want to be in the foreground? Make time for it? What do you want to be in the background? De-prioritize it.”
On the long haul
Periods of prolonged stress, such as: chronic illness, training for olympics, etc. May not start off with stress, but builds until you realize you aren’t sleeping right.
Importance
- Link pressure to contribution: A clear of how carrying your load will contribute to a higher order goal, bettering the world or others.
- Link pressure to growth: Connect with how this pressure is strengthening you.
- Clear a line of sight from your North Star to your daily decisions: Fight to ensure that you can see alignment all the way from meaning down through your vision to goals, and daily decisions.
Uncertainty
- Grooving in mindsets of dogged exploration: Don’t be afraid of exhaustive approach, keep going — it may not work the first, second, or even 26th time.
- Play fortunately unfortunately: Consciously remind yourself that life is a game of ups and downs. We can’t know how something will play out until later.
- Expand your view of victory: An ability to never lose faith that you will prevail is vital. What it means to prevail may need redefining. That’s ok.
Volume
- Getting seven hours of sleep: Keep good sleep habits
- Keep blood sugar levels constant: Keep it stable, in a predictable range.
- Make time for movement: Exercise moderates how activated we get under pressure and stabilizes mood.
Everything in this book comes down to being about the fundamental human ability to consciously direct attentional control. Consciously and deliberately direct the spotlight of our attention to focus on the thoughts, beliefs, and habits that support us rather than undermine us.
The Pressure Canvas
- Connect with importance
What’s at stake? Why does this matter to you? - Prepare for activation
How is your body going to feel under pressure? How will you mange the discomfort?? - Build Certainty
What is your average? What can you count on? What is your serve? What can you directly control in the moment? - Hold Importance in Perspective
What not at stake? What won’t change regardless of the outcome? How is this helping you grow? - Build a plan
What 2-3 things will you say or do in the moment?
“It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who’s face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end of the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who their know victor nor defeat”