Four Daily Tools to Reduce Stress and Increase Creativity

Recent managers have asked me variants of the question “what is keeping you up at night?” It's an odd question that aims to get at your priorities, but does so by some back door that implies if you are not worrying at night, you are not engaged. Nothing keeps me up at night. That’s a conquest in itself, one that’s taken me a lifetime to achieve, and one they should be grateful for. Stressed should not be confused with productive.

A better question would have been “what problems are you passionate about solving now?” That is a very different question: one focuses on not dealing well with stress, the other gets to the root of the matter of what your priorities are. Anyone who knows me well knows I’ve been passionate about putting out great products and leading effective organizations.

I started on a journey toward dealing with stress in a healthy manner almost thirty years ago, following a health incident during a particularly stressful work period. I’ve recently spent some time thinking about what I’ve developed in my toolkit to help me fight this bad stress.? I boiled it down to a set of four practices that I practice daily. I already know you practice at least two of these: but the key is to do them with intentionality so that you gain the highest leverage.

Any manager worth his salt wants to be surrounded by leaders who can problem-solve without being overwhelmed, without passing stress down in the organization, and who can be productive over the long-term. You want your leaders to bring their best creativity and most passionate energy to the office every day.

What is Bad Stress?

It’s common to think all stress is bad, but really, if you want to achieve anything in your life, stress will be along for the ride. Learning how to deal with stress, then, without just removing it, is critical. Wellness and Life-Coach Allaya Cooks-Campbell, blogging on BetterUp, writes:

"Not all stressors are made equal. With good stress, we generally look forward to the outcome of the situation. Planning a wedding, getting a new job or promotion, or having a baby are common examples of eustress [ positive stress ]. Although these experiences involve a lot of work — and even cause some difficult feelings, as any bride or new parent will attest --? the benefit of the event is worth the challenge.

The positive feelings of expectation, excitement, and anticipation allow us to balance the disruption to our equilibrium with the anticipated benefits. In some cases, such as planning a vacation, the anticipation can actually be as enjoyable as the experience itself.

That's another important element of positive stress. Chronic stress and acute stress are both types of distress (in other words, negative stress). When you experience distress, you often don’t have any control over how long the stressor will last and no expected benefit as an outcome.?

In addition to being accompanied by a desirable outcome, good stress also generally fits within a specific time frame. In other words, you know that the stress won’t last forever. Kids grow up, you graduate from school, you unpack that last box, or you say “I do.” The sense of control that you have over the circumstances, as well as the finite time frame, makes it easier to deal with positive stress."

My Stress and Creativity toolkit

Like any athlete, if you are looking to reach peak performance at an endeavor, you must spend time in the metaphorical gym. In this gym, we don’t work on job-specific skills, but rather on the physical and mental conditioning that provide the underpinnings of reaching our potential.?

My toolkit is a set of small techniques and activities I turn to help me manage stress and boost performance. These are not activities that I do because I enjoy them - biking, theater, reading, viewing art, seeing friends and family, etc - though I believe incorporating joy into your life is critical to remain healthy, fulfilled, and energized.

Many of the techniques I discuss are things we do every day, but understanding how they fit into stress management and productivity are necessary if you want to do them “correctly” to really get their full benefit. Let me start with the most obvious thing we do everyday:

Sleeping

Shut up! I am reading this blog to tell me sleep is good?!??

No. You’re reading this blog to say you might not be getting all you need to fully benefit from sleep. A couple years ago, my friend and colleague turned me on to the Oura Sleep Ring. Essentially the ring uses sensors to tell you things you may not know about your sleep. For example, it helped me to understand that most of my deep sleep occurred early in the night, and that if I went to bed too late I’d miss deep sleep. I learned more about heart rate variance, about what impacts my resting heart rate, and more. But my deep sleep habits were the #1 learning, since this is the phase that restores energy, and together with REM sleep, helps you process information, fosters productivity and creativity.?

By tracking my sleep I have become aware of what impacts a good night sleep, and have been able to get more consistent results.?

I also come to trust that my sleeping brain is working hard. I will sometimes consciously try to not problem solve in the evening fully knowing my sleeping brain will produce something overnight. I am better off enjoying my evening in preparation for this more effective “sleeping work.”

Walking

Bloody hell! You’re telling me to walk?? You want me to sleep and walk my way to a career?

Well, no. I want you to get a education, master some skills, work your ass off, suffer through some unfulfilling jobs, then come back and ask yourself why your career is not where you want it to be. Then I want you to sleep and walk.

I walk to think, to solve problems. An article in Psychology Today quotes a Stanford research study that shows that short walks boost creativity and problem solving skills. As anyone who has worked with me will attest, I enjoy taking calls while walking. And I’ll walk alone to focus on a problem.?

Some of my walks are much longer than those recommended in the Stanford study, but there is one important point to keep in mind: walking for problem solving is best done when you are able to focus on the problem. In other words, you are not walking and shopping, or walking and listening to music or a podcast. You are just walking, maybe through nature but at least through an area devoid of as many distractions as possible. I walk through Manhattan. Wish me luck.

Meditating

Meditation holds a separate place than walking and sleeping in my toolkit. If walking is a better place to do some creative problem solving, and sleeping a better place to do some subconscious information processing and recharging, meditation is a better place to build awareness of some of the problems lurking beneath the surface. The Mayo Clinic lists a full range of benefits from self-awareness to stress management.

Most people who I talk to who don’t meditate in a traditional sense say that “running is my meditation”, or “playing the guitar is my meditation.” I understand? what they are trying to say;? these activities bring a calm to their mind that they don’t have the rest of the day. This is not meditation. Meditation is not peaceful for the mind, though it may bring you peace.

Instead, the point of meditation is to focus on something - a mantra, the breath, a body scan - and try to keep the focus there. When your mind wanders - which it will - just notice it, notice where it is going, and then gently return to the meditation. There is no way to win at meditation, only a way to lose - and that is by not doing it.?

I practice silent, guided, and mantra meditations, and find I get something different out of all three. My practice is simple, maybe 15 minutes 5 days a week, with a goal to do more than that.?

10-20 minutes per day are enough, though less is better than nothing, and is a good place to start.?

Compassion

Compassion is the fourth and last tool in my daily toolkit. This is not something you “do” like walking, sleeping, and meditating, but rather something that you must remember to practice when it is most hard to.

In this context, I am referring to compassion for colleagues and managers who are stressing you out. I find that at the root of most stressful situations are mismatches in priorities, or failing to see the humanity in the other person. I like to ask myself the following two questions when faced with stressful workplace relationships:

• What is motivating the other person to act in a certain way?
• Are the two of us aligned on priorities? I find this is the biggest source of treatable stress.

If meditation helps bring about self-awareness, compassion reminds us we are not the only ones in the room.

Compassion helps to change your vantage point to understand conflict. Being able to see a situation through others eyes is the root of compassion.?

But don’t get me wrong; compassion does not mean you have to accept intolerable behavior. But it just might lead to more frequent resolutions and less stress even when the conflict remains.

Beyond the Toolkit

This toolkit is not a catch-all. I believe you need to supplement these with other successful habits. Along the lines of the Core Four, I would add:

• I believe in regular breaks throughout the day. While I’ve heard breaking every 90 minutes for a five-minute walk is a good idea, I like longer resets, and usually head out for a cup of coffee twice a day. These not only provide some needed body movement, but also allow me to reset my mind, and, as I’ve mentioned above, problem solve while walking if needed.
• We’ve all been trained to take our vacation days as longer respites help us recharge. This is one area where I, like many Americans, don’t do well.?
• But what I have been more successful at doing is more frequent work travel to visit customers, conferences, or other parts of the organization. These trips all serve a specific agenda, but have the added benefit that the change of scenery and conversation challenges my reference point and helps build new relationships, both of which fosters creativity.
• When I am feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work I am juggling, I find it useful to create specific times on the calendar to tackle those tasks. This serves several purposes. The most important effect it has is to remove having that task on my mind. If I know I will be reviewing a proposal at a specific time next week, for example, that task no longer contributes to my cognitive load. In addition, it helps you prioritize tasks, delaying low priority tasks into the future (when, in fact, they may have become unnecessary), and it prevents your calendar from being filled up by other people’s priorities.?

And, of course, you may have your own techniques to stay creative and deal with stress. I’d love to hear more exercises that you use in your metaphorical gym in the comments below.

#meditation #stress #creativity #worklifebalance #productivity #careercoaching