A CEO's strategies for dealing with stress

One of the least fun things about being a CEO at a company of almost any size is having to make sure you can make payroll for a small village, keep your team working in the right direction, and ensure your clients stay happy and continue to pay you. You need to make sure the sales come in, the product or service is of the right quality, delivery is timely and that fires are put out before the whole organization is up in flames. It's often stressful, and it's given me an opportunity to learn about how to handle that stress. In this post I'll share the strategies that work for me.

The problem with stress

Being stressed kicks off a series of learned and innate responses that are usually not useful, and sometimes downright detrimental. In my case, here are some of the things that happen:

• I feel an urgent need to make changes: We should definitely start a new line of business selling clown shoes. We need to do this now.
• I feel uncertain about any decision I make: I know I did all of the analysis yesterday, but what if I did it all wrong?
• I start questioning whether my values and previous decisions are correct: What if I need to take that VC money before it's too late?
• I can't focus on other pressing issues: I really can't focus on reading that contract right now.

Some of these responses are natural, some are learned from previous experiences, and some we have no idea where they come from. People have all sorts of other responses to stress, but the ones listed above make my job hard, and they are the ones I try to avoid. You probably have your own stress response pattern that makes your life difficult. The first strategy I take to avoid falling into these stress patterns is avoiding stress altogether.

Taking care of yourself

The best way to avoid the issues that stress causes you is to not get stressed in the first place. At face value that's not a very useful piece of advice, but we can expand on it to understand how to better avoid stress.

Part of learning to avoid stress is becoming familiar with the things that create it. The more you do a stressful job, the smaller the triggers of stress start to feel. An ER doctor on their first day will be in a constant state of stress. An ER doctor after a few years of work is an emergency room veteran that's seen it all and is rarely shocked. Experience will help you handle repeated or similar situations in better ways.

A second element to avoiding stress is avoiding being put in situations that create stress for you. We don't want to be hiding at home all day and avoiding contact with the outside world, but to the extent possible, just avoid the things that really rile you up. Avoid the drama unless you have to deal with it. If there is a particular part of the job that you can't handle, delegate it or ask for help. In my personal case, often times it's several stressors at once that set me off. I need to avoid getting emotionally overwhelmed. When I'm dealing with one tough issue, I will postpone dealing with other ones until I'm ready. If at all possible, pace out the stressors: deal with one issue this week, and another one next week.

Certain factors on top of the initial stressor will compound. Being tired, sick, in the middle of a breakup, or having a sick family member will all decrease your tolerance to stressors. If you find yourself in an emotionally vulnerable state, avoid additional stressors if you can.

The principle here is to take care of yourself and not to expose yourself to unnecessary stress. When that doesn't work, and you end up stressed (and you will), here are three strategies to help you diffuse it.

Diffusing stress

I've found several strategies that work for me once I get stressed and help me diffuse the immediate feelings. My objective is to get as quickly as possible back to my normal stress level so that I can move on with my life. Here are the three that I use the most:

Understanding where the stress came from

Stress is often triggered by a small thing and then snowballs through our memories and past experiences to become a big giant unstoppable ball of anxiety. You can see this often when you are in a new romantic relationship, and react poorly to a small piece of constructive criticism: this might be a subject you are sensitive to from past experiences. Small stressors that can trigger bigger ones should be understood. Whenever you find yourself stressed, take a good hard look at how you got here. What happened? What did someone say or do? how did that small thing make you stressed? Understanding that chain of events that triggered you often help you rationalize and understand the stress better and helps diffuse it.

Sometimes the problem was not with a small trigger knocking down the chain of dominoes, but rather a properly stressful event. What this trigger is really depends on who you are and your level of stress tolerance: your boss yelling at you, a client canceling a project, or the stock market failing, are all things that could set you off. It usually helps to understand why you got stressed (or at least guess the reasons behind it). Understanding that your boss might just be having a bad day, that the market is dropping because of election results, or that the project was canceled because of budget constraints also helps you rationalize the feelings and diffuse them.

Getting distracted

A second strategy that I like to follow is removing myself from the stressful situation temporarily. In my case, I enjoy doing something that keeps my mind busy and engaged: Brazilian jiujitsu, motorcycle rides, a walk in the park, or an evening with friends. I usually can't do something that requires too much concentration (like reading a book), but I find the best kinds of activities are the ones that involve both body and mind, completely engaging you, releasing endorphins, and helping you feel more relaxed once you are done. Taking your mind off the situation allows the emotions related to stress to start fading away, and will allow you to see reality more clearly, or at least more calmly.

Sizing up the problem

A third strategy I use is what I like to call "dimensioning the magnitude of the problem in the future", which is essentially figuring out how bad this is likely to be down the road. I read in a book somewhere that a good tactic is to think about how a problem will affect you in 5 years. Being yelled at today really doesn't matter in 5 years. Most problems are like that, 5 years down the road they don't matter. Sometimes the effects are small, or sometimes there are a number of good alternatives to help us get back on track. Understanding that a problem probably won't matter too much in the future also helps us diffuse stress.

I'd like to make a note about stress where the problem seems ominous and existential. Sometimes it feels like if we don't fix it now it will be the end of the world, our company, our relationship, or our life as we know it. While there are some truly existential problems, most of them are not, even if they feel that way. Some of us tend to fall into what therapists would call "catastrophism", which is basically assuming that the worst will always happen. Thinking about the problem in terms of statistics, or thinking about the actual likely outcome (as opposed to the worst possible outcome), often helps us realize that although we could in fact be struck down by lightning, it probably won't happen.

TLDR:

In case you scrolled down for the summary, here it is.

1. Try to avoid putting yourself in overwhelming situations. Pace out your stress exposure and manage the stressors.
2. Once you are stressed, notice if you are falling into a response pattern related to that stress. If so, try to diffuse it.
3. Start by thinking about what caused the stress, where it came from, and why. Understanding this can reduce the emotional load and diffuse the stress.
4. Distract yourself with other activities, this will let the feelings fade away. Go to the gun range, go on a hike or ride a motorcycle.
5. Think about the likely consequences of the situation. Not the worst potential consequences. Dimensioning the situation properly will help diffuse the stress.

Try to get back to your normal stress level, deal with the situation, and move forward. Hope this saves you several grand in therapy!