Do You Thrive or Crack Under Pressure?

Flatline5150 writes "The New York Times has a good article on why some people thrive under stress while others crack under pressure. Among other tidbits, pessimists make great lawyers..."

Comments

I guess I'm in the middle

[Lord Kano]

I do well under a little pressure, but if the pressure is unreasonable I will refuse to accept it.

LK

Thrive

[Anonymous Coward]

I thrive on pressure. By choice. See, I have a little issue with this thing called procrastination. I always wait and end up doing a large amount of work at the last possible minute, it keeps me on the edge, neat :D

Re:Thrive

[lukewarmfusion]

Being a slave driver doesn't require being an idiot.

I work myself harder than any boss ever has... including 18 hour days for the last few weeks as I get my company's site up and new projects underway.

But that's a very good point... I guess I misrepresented the reason why I was going out on my own. Not to work less, but to work under my own terms (not the arbitrary ones set by my bosses) and to benefit from my work (not to make my bosses richer).

Re:Thrive

[lukewarmfusion]

Not entirely sure where you're going with that, but let me pose an utterly ridiculous claim with a fairly logical conclusion:

A person works hard, benefits from his own work. By employing others, he is passing those benefits to them as well. Let's assume they're great employees and he's a great boss. They work their tails off and make the company a ton of money. He works his tail off and makes the company a ton of money. Because of their dedication, he pays them extremely well (better than that job would normally pay, but their company is thriving as a result of their work). The harder everyone works, the more everyone makes.

Now I think this is where the general idea of capitalism and socialism would diverge for most people. Realist: In a capitalist society, the boss won't pay them that well. As a result, the employees simply won't work that hard. The boss considers them dispensable and treats them as such. They realize that they won't benefit from the extra work, so they work only as hard as they need to in order to avoid being fired (Office Space). In a socialist society, it's the exact same way - the "boss" gets away with more and the employees work the minimum.

The idealist in me sees that the two are nearly the same (for this discussion, ignore the need-based component of a typical socialist framework). The harder everyone works, the more everyone benefits. Again, this assumes that the participants are benevolent and honest. That everyone gives their best and that they are rewarded for it.

So back to my situation: I am willing to give my all, work insanely hard and dedicate myself to the success of the company. I have done so in the past, but with no reward or even the promise of one it becomes harder to dedicate myself to someone else's success. Simply put, I'm not in business to make someone else rich. If that's a by-product of my success, then so be it.

My bosses are not businesspeople. They hate the business aspect. Furthermore, they have no experience (or talent) for managing employees. My salary is an insult to my education, experience, and abilities. It's an insult to my contribution to the company. The way they treat me, my projects, and some of our clients is a danger to the future of the company. They're terrible bosses. They do a good job of emulating the PHB from Dilbert.

If I had to work for a company, I'd love to work for Google or Pixar. They seem to treat their employees well and appreciate (and reward) excellence.

I check slashdot compulsively under pressure

[sisukapalli1]

Honest, when my mind goes blank, and no reasonable outcome seems nearby... I get more easily swayed by distractions. Probably the dumbest thing to do...

Similar

[Nos.]

If I come home from work and don't occupy myself with something, I'll get tired and need a nap. If I find something to do for the evening (aside from watching TV) I'm active and energetic until about 1 am (I usually get up between 6:30am and 7:00am). After doing some reading, I've found there's a good chance I have ADHD to one degree or another. I'm awaiting a doctor's appointment to see if this is the case, not that it has a major impact on my life. I have suspicions that this thrive under stress and symptoms of ADHD are very related.

Maybe something to do with ADD?

[brxndxn]

I have ADD and I definitely do much better under pressure. If I don't load myself down with hours each semester, I get crappy grades. But, if I take way too many hours and never have enough time to possibly get all the homework done, I get better grades. I gotta have my time always allocated.. Otherwise I'm just completely unproductive.

For me, a little stress feels good. If I don't have anything to stress over, it feels like I'm not getting anything done.

Differing kinds of pressure.

[juuri]

Unlike some who link ADD to thriving on pressure that isn't the case for me. But situations that tend to be high stress for most, tend to calm me down.

Main database server has crashed and the CEO is on the line? No problem. Someone cut the fiber to this block? Eh. We gotta move from one colo to the next in 17 hours! Ok. Driving 130 MPH down long loney highways? Blah. Tornado heading this way? Another Earthquake?!@ Whatever, let's get prepared.

However while these kinds of things don't get to me I've found that emotional issues can stress me out quite quickly. Issues with my girlfriend, friends or family tend to make me all loopy and panicky, much the same way other's get with the scenarios above. I wonder if this is true for other people who strive on situational stress?

stress != pressure

[camusflage]

Stress and pressure, while similarly manifested, are distinctly different. Stress is "the bad stuff" you have to deal with while pressure is the positive. Worry over your job being outsourced is stress. Pressure is needing to make a deadline with a project to support a marketing effort, assuming the deadline is realistic. Stress is having to carry the weight of five coders not getting their job done. Pressure is being responsible for guiding the success of a project by mentoring those five coders.

For myself, I thrive on pressure, withstand stress, but even more importantly, know precisely what my limits are for both. One important point not made in the article (on brief perusal) is that while pressure is beneficial to some, even those who flourish with it have their limits. Eventually, even pressure becomes counter-productive.

Re:There's the reverse as well

[Basje]

I'm like that too, so I keep up the pressure: on top of my day job as a perl programmer, I'm in lawschool (getting my bachelor this year) and recently started learning Japanese. Besides that, I've got a whole load of hobbies. And yes, I'm married, so I do need to spend time with my family.

It's not as much stress that causes me to work hard, but pressure helps me to focus and keeps me from slacking. I've found that it is slacking that causes boredom and gets me feeling stressed. Keeping busy helps me to feel good, and the variation keeps me from getting bored. Go figure.

Depressed attorneys

[dahorowitz]

Linking job stress and mental health, its interesting to note that attorneys (typically a high strung bunch) experience the highest rate of depression among all professions in the United States (I quickly found an older news article on this issue via google, but I know that there are a couple of scientific studies which have also confirmed this).

Interestingly, it seems that it is the profession itself that causes the depression. In one study I read a few years back, when individuals were assessed the summer before law school, they showed rates of depression equivalent to the general population, but even after just the first year of law school, let alone once they graduated, rates of depression jumped to anywhere from 20-40 percent of the population studied.

Theory of Intentional Diversity

[G4from128k]

I've always thought that there might be an intentional diversity in the genetic components of human behavior, not unlike the hypervariablity found in the genetics underlying the immune system. Human society functions better in a nonstationary environment (= ice ages, floods, dry spells, changes in diet from whale blubber to potatoes) if the society is structurally non-homogeneous. Society needs risk takers and risk avoiders, optimists and pessimists, manic spenders and thrifty savers, lone achievers and gregarious team players. How else can we cope with the rich times, the poor times, the peace times, war times, the stay-at-home times, and the move-to-another-land-times.

Re:You want to get FIRED?

[FCAdcock]

I love that sort of job security. Where I work, I draft houses. I also run their network, servers, and plotters. I've worked with builders and painters, and interior decorators (my sister is our decorator) for years, so I know how to deal with all of them, and what they need to get their job done.

My official title: secretary's replacement while she's in class at the local college. Within a month of getting a part-time job there I was working full time at twice the pay, and only doing actual work maybe 3 days a week.

Sure, they could go back to a network admin contracted out for less than what I make. And they could hire a new drafter for less than what I make. But for what they would pay both of those people, and a secretary for the next few months 3 2 days a week; they could just give me a raise and spend less.

I love my job. Get paid to play with computers, and draw houses. hmm... why didn't I find this sooner?

Re:Best line in the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

In all seriousness, I think sickness can often times be as much mental as it is physical. People who are unhappy or frustrated are a lot more likely to feel physically ill. Most of the people I know who are very negative and pessimistic are always sick. And they do have very real symptoms of illness that ofter require medical treatment.

At the University of Iowa, Student Health's two top weeks for sinus infections (and several other varieties of illness) are:

• Finals in May
• Finals in December

This support the theory that too much stress (or too little sleep) can lead you to be physically ill.

I've also read that depressed people get sick much more frequently.

Can too little stress do so also? Or working hard over things that seem insignificant to you? I'd guess yes. Perhaps by leading to depression (they're surely related) or perhaps by themselves.