Stress makes people stupid. Stress stops people thinking. Stressed people fall back on their habits and their instincts, while most of their brain is preoccupied with getting them through whatever situation they’re in.
We can’t do anything about instinct, but we can, with time and effort, alter our habits (Peter Flaschner just wrote a post on this). One very important habit is eating well. If you like to nibble stuff when you’re stressed, try and make it a packet of nuts rather than a chocolate bar. Make sure there’s some low-effort food around for when you can’t face cooking; tinned soup and sliced bread in the freezer can save your bacon.
Peter’s not the only one doing the business retrospective thing; James Archer has an excellent article up on Strange Brand about his first year running Forty Media, the web design company he founded, and Cameron Moll reflects on 180 days as a freelancer.
Possibly incoming, after my exhausting and insanely busy term finishes: new music and book reviews, some thoughts on the future of graphic design for the web, and a few new directions for my writing here. Watch this space!
By the by, I think I’ve fixed comment display for Internet Explorer; if you have any problems, with any browser, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to resolve them.
6 comments
December 14th, 2005 at 2:05 pm
Thame
To tell you the truth, I like stress. People kept telling me that I should drop my credit hours next semester, but I don’t really want to.
I’ll be getting a new job next semester that requires 15 hours/week minimum, I will also be taking 19 credit hours divided among 5 courses. However, regardless of how much I have on my plate, I always seem to have the same schedule and work the same amount. I think I become more efficient with stress. Maybe I’ll have a semester soon where I’ll realize that it’s too much, but for now, I’m good.
December 14th, 2005 at 3:44 pm
ionfish
Lucky you!
Personally, I feel deeply ambivalent about things like deadlines, heavy course loads and the like. On the one hand, I take a psychological battering whenever things pile up like that on me. On the other, it’s the only time I get anything done!
The general tone of posts here lately seems very much to have been about coping mechanisms; I’ve tried to generalise it to some extent, but in reality it’s all about me–I can be emphatic about the efficacy of some of these techniques, because they’re what’s dragged me (to some extent; I’m not there yet!) from the mire of depression and failure.
The zealotry of a convert, I suppose, although I still have doubts about the more obsessive-compulsive aspects of all that GTD stuff 43 Folders and its ilk are always going on about, simply because I doubt that someone finding it hard to get things done is actually capable of organising things on that level.
December 14th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
Moe
Comments are totally working in Opera.
December 14th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
Thame
I just read my comment and realize that I came of as kind of an ass. What I was trying to say is that being busy and having deadlines keeps me focused, and I like that.
December 14th, 2005 at 7:01 pm
ionfish
Can’t disagree with that; here’s how I put it in a recent interview.
December 16th, 2005 at 12:48 am
Glen C.
It’s actually funny. I just got through 2 huge tests today. I was really stressed, but managed to take on that cool confidence that is so essential. I hate that stress. The stress itself makes you even more stressed as you feel like there’s an impending doom just around the corner.
Anyway, when you’re stressed (have a lot of work), you (meaning I) tend to do the job for the sake of doing it. I put no effort or quality into it. This is why I am an advocate of getting things done as early as possible. Even though I never do it…