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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..."
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"When people start feeling that what they're doing is not meaningful, then they take more sick days, begin looking for another job, and complain of health problems."
This should be required reading for all managers.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Do You Thrive on Crack?
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
I do well under a little pressure, but if the pressure is unreasonable I will refuse to accept it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Pressure doesn't bother me, in fact I thrive on it.
My district manager just left my office after telling me that a huge project due for completion in January 2006 has been pushed forward. It's now due at 4:30 today. "No biggee," I said "is there anything else you WANT YOU MOTHERFUCKER?!"
Everyone handles stress differently. Tonight, long after the project fails, I'll go to my district manager's house and burn it down. Then I'll urinate on his smouldering crisp remains while screaming "HOW'S THIS FOR A FUCKING 4:30 DEADLINE, COCKSUCKER?!"
Most people would really crack at this stage. Not me. Tommorrow I'll come into work with a chainsaw. The first to get it will be the bleach blonde fat bitch at reception who always pronunces my name wrong. Then will be the district manager. He's only there through nepotism. Hopefully he will not have heard about how his uncle's charred, urine-soaked remains were found that morning. I expect to remove his spleen through his anus with my 18" McCulloch WoodMeister2000.
This is the point where the men are separated from the boys.
After a relaxing cup of coffee in the blood splattered cafeteria I'll quietly go the front grass of the building and stomp earthworms in my bare feet while awaiting the police. Little do they know that I'll have sticks of dynamite under my light jacket ready to go at the press of a thumb.
I'll show them.
det burg was here
I thrive on crack under pressure.
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
I'm under the impression I would compress. Might be messy, though.
Seriously, if you don't give me a deadline of tomorrow, it doesn't get done. Period. (Why am I employed? I don't get it.)
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...
Crack seems to help a lot
^^
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.
is perceived stress. ever come across a difficult coding problem that needs to be implemented asap, but you've become lost in it, perhaps for 2 days straight and come out the other end going "wow" at yourself?
Some people are like that when dealing with people, dealing with law, public speaking, managing teams, groups, or entire corporations. It's just not 'stress' in the way that many would imagine the stress of a responsibility for many people or millions of dollars.
I've noticed that people (including myself) who enjoy working under massive amounts of pressure don't work really well when there is no pressure at all. Go figure, huh?
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.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
I make diamonds
(geology joke, carry on)
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
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?
--- I do not moderate.
Chronic stress has been linked to an array of illnesses, including heart disease and depression. But people who cope successfully, studies have found, punch in at work with normal levels of stress hormones that climb during the day and drop sharply at night. Their coworkers who complain of being too stressed have consistently higher levels of hormones that rarely dip very far, trapping them in a constant state of anxiety.
That means being able to "decompress" or forget about work after you leave. When I leave work my thoughts about it remain there. It's easy to do when you lead a completely seperate home-life than work-life.
Personally the way I do it is to not maintain any post-work social contact w/my co-workers. This keeps job talk to a minimum when I am out and about. It keeps workplace drama to a minimum because no one knows what I do when I leave (this might not be a problem where other people work but in an institution full of females I do notice a lot of petty bitching going on).
I don't work my hobby. I have several hobbies that I take part in that aren't work related at all. It gives me something to further seperate my life from work.
I really do feel for people that can't let go of their problems once they leave the job. Might want to try something different to get out of that rut. No one wants to die thinking about how much they hate their job.
I don't know... I see a high pressure situation and make myself scarce. Let some other sucker handle it.
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
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.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Understanding whether people "thrive or crack under pressure" is relevant. All of the things the troll is complaining about are VERY stress inducing. If we could learn to not crack, or to deal with stress in ways other than lashing out against those we percieve as "enemies", maybe we and our "enemies" would both live in less fear. Less fear all around leads to less violence, which leads to less fear, which leads to less violence...
Hopefully it also would allow us all the levelheadedness to adress our disagreements constructively.
crack is just coke under pressure.
"why you tattoring fan sucked doo belly - i have to go buy something to strike you with... excuse me."
If there's no pressure, it's difficult to get started on something. Sometimes I'll just artificially create pressure by limiting resources to my tasks (perhaps unconsciously) so then I get it done better. I find when I'm under pressure, decisions are easier to make because you HAVE to decide something. You take all the information you have, mix it up in your head, and then choose one as best as you can, because you HAVE TO. Without pressure, it's hard to be motivated to decide anything.
But that's just me.
My experience with pressure and pressure-holics, is that they make more mistakes when they are working under a deadline than when they have planned things out. Since many of them believe that they cannot perform well unless they are under some pressure, they either (subconciously) blow it off until the deadline or they sabotage themselves until there is some pressure.
In addition, many of these people cannot distinguish between important and urgent. If you have read First Things First, or The 7 habits of highly successful people then you have seen the 2x2 matrix showing the difference between important and urgent. Draw a box, then divide it in half vertically and half horizontally. Label the left column urgent and the right column not urgent. Lable the top row Important, and the bottom row not important. The pressure-holics cannot see the top right, nor the lower left corners. To them, anything in the left column, belongs in the top left corner. Anything that is in the right column belongs in the bottom right square. A phone call is urgent. If it is a customer, or boss, then it is important (upper left), if it is someone selling carpet cleaning, it is not important (lower left). Doing your taxes is important, but it is not urgent until early April. As important things "ripen" they become more urgent.
The worst bosses are the ones who cannot see the difference between important and urgent. The TPS report might be due on Friday, but if you are working on it on Monday, then you are screwing off, and they will dump some imaginary crisis on you, to stop you from doing what (to them) is goofing off. Or, they will arbitrarily move up deadlines because you aren't sweating enough. You cannot make plans or schedules when these sort of people are around, as they will deliberately mess things up for you.
I thrive under the pressure of using my skills and experience against the clock or to do something I've never done before. The pressure caused by a challenge is great. Yeah.. I get shitty for the last 12 hours before a big deadline, but that's pretty normal.
I crack under the pressure caused by stupid managers, antiquated processes, by being told to do something then having the resources pulled (and I don't mean restricted, I mean obliterated), having my "expert opinion" overrode by some dickwad who really doesn't have a clue how to do things, then being lumped with the blame when it doesn't work.
Maybe some people thrive on the latter. It just makes me more sympathetic for the postal workers.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
I am an underemployed lawyer, and silly me thought it was the terrible hiring market for lawyers. I guess the other underemployed lawyers I know are also too optimistic as well.
On a side note, there is indication that some lawyer functions might be off-shored in the near future, so I've got that to be optimistic about as well. Nothing like have Gurpreet in India writing your legal briefs.
Well, that's a vote for "Cracks under pressure."
pessimists dont make great lawyers. it is the other way around. I am in law school and let me tell you that the legal professions is one depressing undertaking. My law school does surveys about job satisfaction and the longer the person has been working ina firm the less satisfied he is with the work and the more he feels like he cant get out of it. So the longer a lawyer works the more experience gets and the depresion he faces.
People who need stress put on them are the reason managers create unrealistic deadlines and tell employees they're not good enough. Put another way, these people are not self-motivating. They can't maintain a steady pace of work on their own. Their work ethic is too weak.
The article blurs the difference between what people do under occasional, warranted stress like a death in the family and continual artificial stress. People who need the latter kind need to re-evaluate themselves, people who can cope with the former are simply healthy.
Among other tidbits, pessimists make great lawyers...
I wanted to be a lawyer, but I didn't think it wouldn't work out.
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.
would cocaine not be strong enough.
Only in America, would someone need to make a drug that makes your head explode as soon as you smoke it. -- Dennis Leary
Thug with a baseball bat trying to kill you? Crush his throat. Firetruck 20 feet away going 70km/h? floor it. Lying in the street with broken bones? Get out of traffic, do (minimal) self first-aid, and make sure someone's called an ambulance.
Most of the real emergency things that have happened to me, I was too busy dealing with the situation to notice stress. What gets to me is the things that I can't do anything about.
I spend a good chunk of several weeks of the year sitting on my ass doing not much of anything at work, which would suck ass if I didn't have linux to learn.
:P
:P
Underutilized employees are in all likelihood unnecesssary- which means they're a waste of money, right?
Fortunately, the variety of things I do adds up nicely- they'd need three different people to replace just me, so I'm cheaper. And I'm not the only one with occasional VAST GULFS of slack time. And I don't get training or any kind of tuition incentives. So I use that time to learn stuff, since it's the only way I'll be able to leverage myself out of this place.
Am I a Workaholic? Yes. Just not for the day job.
But never the whole thing. I don't crack easily, but I do occasionally crack; if I'm not extremely busy, I get bored and get slightly depressed.
Under stress, I am very productive until my breaking point. Once I hit my breaking point, I crack for a short period of time (a few hours to a day or two), then I'm only slightly less productive than I am at my peak. I actually do my best (and fastest) work when I'm just short of this point. Suprisingly, I'm also quite happy there, but once I go over the breaking point, even once I've pulled myself together, I'm miserable, and my productivity stays at that "slightly less than peak" level until I'm calm and relaxed (i.e., have had a decent amount of time to recover - usually a weekend; as much as a week if it was prolonged stress).
If you leave it to the last minute, it will only take a minute to do!
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
How true. I'm reminded of what Johnny Carson said one time in an interview when asked (something like) how was he able to get an entire one-hour show together in just a day, each and every day, when some hour-long shows that only air once a week weren't as good. His reply was that he had always found if he had a day to get ready for a show then that's what it took, and if he had a week to get ready for a show then that's how long it took -- in other words, it takes as long as it takes. Unfortunately, bosses usually don't appreciate receiving that maxim as an answer...go figure.
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
I think this kind of thing is also useful for many kinds of computer programming, especially in high-reliability areas like operating systems and compilers. I've had to fix an awful lot of bugs in programs written by optimists.
Have you read my blog lately?
I thrive when I have responsability and when I have to do important things during short periods of time. What I can not stand is when there are many things that have to be done during a longer period of time, and where there is no fixed time schedule for doing them. What stresses me up then is that I have several things in the back of my mind that I feel that I need to do. In such situations in the past, I have usually slacked off as a way of calming myself down .. but besides from being a bad side effects (nothing done), the intended effect has often been missing.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Stress is a biochemical reaction of the body on exceptional situations, like threats, danger and excitement. The oldest part of the brain (reptilian brain) sends messengers which make it possible to deal with those situations. These exceptional situations are often called stress. But the messengers can also contain endorphines which let us feel good with the so called stress.
In fact stress is a very clever builtin algorithm to ensure survival.
We are even not aware of many situations which are handled by the stress algorithms in the human brain, like accident avoidance and life saving. If you ask people who rescued someone else under totaly weird circumstances why they have done this and why they did not think about the danger, then most of them will have no answer because the survival mechanisms of the brain take control over the rational waging of feasabilities. This can also be observed on job related challenges where the either technical challenges or the competition against a coworker or a competing company pushes people over their limits. Most people set those limits very low due to unawareness of the own abilities and everything exceeding those self set limits is called stress. The stress complaint is hip in our modern society. Our ancestors would laugh heartly about those complaints.
On the other hand there are people with limited capacity of dealing with those challenges. This is often caused by personal deficits, but those deficits are not seldom a result of education in a sheltered environment where all sources of natural and healthy stress were hold off from the kids and young adults. If they are confronted later with the reality of challenges they are predestinated to fail.
tglx - I personally need challenges to be productive
"Some of it is genetic, some of it is how you were raised, and some it is just your personality," Dr. Bruce McEwen.
and what, pray tell, is your personality? i would guess it's something that is shaped predominantely by two factors: genetics and how you were raised.
I, at the other end of the spectrum, have a tendency to explode if the pressure gets too low.
Regardless of the validity of this statement, I find the opposite to be true. In my law school classes, it is the optimists who seem to be the better lawyers.
Many cases can be looked at as losers. "You did what? Crud, we're sunk" is not the lawyer I want to hire. "You did what? Hmmm, well maybe we could stretch the reasoning on this case and apply it to yours. Or maybe this decision from a neighboring jurisdiction, tough no decisive, may be persuasive." That's the lawyer I want. Everything can be looked at from different angles and being pessimistic is the worst thing you can do.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
What a surprise. Who would have thought that the mouthpiece of the corporate world would turn out an article like this that essentially glorifies the Velvet Sweatshop that America have become. The article here subtly hints that if you do not thrive under pressure, and accept the sweatshop environment, well, then there must be something just a bit wrong with you.
People, when are you going to open your eyes and see the grave looming in front of you a sparse few decades ahead?
When are you going to take a look at the workplace environment and rules and social safety net that many European countries have created, thus ensuring that their citizens are somewhat shielded from overwork and sweatshop environments?
PLease consider the perspective taken by this article. Could it have been written another way? Why was it written with the particular perspective it took?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I strive under pressure when I'm on crack. Which is daily.
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
On the other hand when I have to work extended hours on a closed source project for hire, I practically have to flog myself into submission to get it done. I have to force myself to get up in the morning. It eats away at my soul that I'm wasting my creativity on something for which I'll receive no (public) credit, no copyright interest and which will forever be hidden away from the world. I'll do a good job because I'm that kind of person, but I know deep down I'm basically doing it for the money, and the stress level can be very, very high.
Of course that is just me. Other people do of course find fulfillment working on closed source projects. Perhaps the recognition from their immediate peers is sufficient. But whatever, the bottom line is that if you're truly passionate about what you're doing you'll never get stressed out.
From an earlier post by me: "...as an employee of said [government] contractor, who wouldn't have any copyright interest in whatever I produce anyway, I think I might be more motivated to produce better work if I knew it would ultimately be subject to public scrutiny and benefit the public good. Compare that to dedicating your life to writing code that will be secreted away in some closed-source product with no acknowledgment whatsoever to you other than a paycheck that lets you survive. The thought of such a dismal and pointless existence is kind of depressing."
That sounds like it would suck. Of course, I wouldn't know, because I'VE NEVER EXPERIENCED ANYTHING LIKE THAT, YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD! :)
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me - Hunter S. Thompson
I clearly stated that I was comparing America to Europe. Yet you ignored that, and compared America to Indonesia, a third world country. I find it very telling that you chose that comparison. So I guess as long as we are better off than the 3rd world, then everything is hunkydory?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Let's take a look at some of the language used in this article, in order to see what connotations are associated with people who thrive on a stressful environment (i.e., a sweatshop, as opposed to those who do not thrive. Tell me what message this article gives us.
Here are some selected excerpts from the article:
"juggling multiple projects and running on four hours of sleep is business as usual."
So that is the Brave New Workplacein America. But that is not the workplace in France, and many other countries in Europe, where 35 hours per week is the mandated maximum work week, and where everyone gets 4 to 6 weeks of time off.
"But for Mr. Jones, the stress is worth it, if only because every now and then he can gaze at the Manhattan skyline and spot a product of his labor: the soaring profile of the Chatham apartment building on East 65th Street,"
Teaching us to accept our place in the sweatshop. Slavery is Freedom, dontcha know, and sweatshop workplaces are heaven.
"Mr. Jones belongs to a rare breed of worker"
Oooh. I wanna be a "rare breed", too. How about you?!
Let's take a look at some of the words used to describe our stress-loving heroes:
"they grapple
Wow! If only I could just be like them!
"People who are high in hardiness enjoy ongoing changes and difficulties,"
OK, Slashdotters, did you get the memo on our Brave New Sweatshop Economy. No, it is not a Velvet Sweatshop that we are headed for, it is just "changes and difficulties". Now get back to work!
But what about the rest of us non-heroic types? How does this article describe us?
"Their coworkers who complain of being too stressed have consistently higher levels of hormones that rarely dip very far, trapping them in a constant state of anxiety.
Oh. OK. We are "complainers" trapped in our anxiety. Gotcha!
"Some people will say 'No, I don't like a lot of stress,' but they find themselves in one stressful job after another, so there must be something that's pulling them.""
Hmm, or maybe, just maybe, it is because our government has sold us out to the corporations and the wealthy, thus creating a sweatshop environment where nearly EVERY job is becoming more and more stressful. Naw, that couldn't be it. Could it?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
An interesting thing I've been thinking about recently, actually. I'm a pediatrics resident and recently did a month in the pediatric ICU at my hospital. We can be on call for 33-36 hours and I've noticed that, no matter how tired you get, when things start getting nasty you get very very focused. Never really nervous, but focused. I thought that was interesting in a way. Just a thought. Mistakes are made when things aren't going to hell. That's when it's hard to focus for so long...
The article points out that pessimists make good lawyers because they are always on the lookout for loopholes int the contracts they write.
Seems like that also makes for a good coder - you always have to be on the lookout for security vulnerabilities, threading issues, etc.
Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
I find that at my current job, I'm bored and feel like I'm pretty much wasting my time
Which explains why you're, uh, we're both posting to /.? And why everyone else is reading it?
Personally, I'm more a fan of "Back Door Sluts 9" than I am a fan of "Cracks Under Pressure" . . . but then, maybe that's just me . . .
On one side we have those who want the United States to adopt the social-based work structures of western Europe. Maximum hours-per-week limits, six weeks of vacation per year (plus holidays, plus sick days), and guaranteed year-long maternity leave is what humanity should strive for.
On the other hand, we have pundits crying that outsourcing our jobs to eastern Asia is a natural result of how lazy Americans have become. To its proponents, outsourcing is capitalism at its finest. As long as someone else is willing to work more/harder for the same amount of money, the invisible hand prefers those who work more.
If we favor a social-based approach, we welcome downtime and life away from work at the cost of making cheap-labor markets look more enticing. If we favor outsourcing, it looks like we lose domestic jobs unless we work harder. Therefore, outsourcing convinces Americans to work harder to avoid losing every thing to others.
So, which side are we to favor? Working less seems nice, but is it viable?
I'd like to hear what these people's spouses and kids think of their "resilience". They'd probably use a different word, probably one like "selfishness".
Yes. It will require legislation, but so will anything else.
With outsourcing, you're job can go to someone who can live on pennies per-day. Do you possibly think you can make that up by working harder? Unless you've been completely useless up to this point, there's no way you can work an order of magnitude harder... So working harder isn't even a real option.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's incredibly obvious that nobody here knows anyone who works well under pressure.
You can call this article a piece of corporate propoganda if you like, I don't disagree completely, but you can't disregard the facts it points out. There are people like that, and I happen to be one of them. What's annoying is that everyone here has their own strange BS ideas.
I'm not a procrastinator. I don't need to have pressure put on me to work at all. I'm not someone who just forgets about my work when I go home either... I can keep thinking of a problem I am having at work, and not be stressed-out about it at all.
I don't have any solid answers as to why I can handle stress well. I think it may be more active than anything else. Once in a while, stress will get to me, and I'll start making mistakes. All I have to do is recognize that, think to myself that feeling the pressure isn't going to help, and just relax for a few seconds. That's all it takes, even when the stress is overwhelming... Recognize that your instinct to feel bad isn't necessary, and isn't useful, and you can handle anything.
It's really about nerves. Even before big performances, I don't show any signs of being nervous. Again, in the most extreme of situations, I'll start to show just the very smallest signs, but I can just focus and all the pressure goes away.
It may be linked to work ethic. I also happen to be the kind of person who will work at full-speed, even when getting very tired, practially until I fall over... Then, when everything is done, I go home, and just kick-back for a few minutes, and I'm ready to go again. Even when I'm very hungry, I don't get distracted, and I don't slow down.
Not trying to say what a wonderful person I am, just that there certainly are people who handle stress well, and the misconceptions in this discussion are immense.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"Underutilized employees are in all likelihood unnecesssary- which means they're a waste of money, right?"
In many situations the systems run by themselves most of the time, so employees want an SA that knows the system and is available at the drop of hat in case there is a problem that requires immedite attention.
It seems like such a guy is doing nothing, but the peace of mind he provides to a business relying on technology more than justifies for his salary and apparent idleness.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.