How I stay calm, by people with very stressful jobs

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/01/how-stay-calm-by-people-stressful-jobs

by yiedyie • 12 years ago

126 46 12 years ago

visakanv2• 12 years ago

TL;DR:

Football manager: Be careful about your information diet. Stop bringing everything home. And... alcohol? =\

Headteacher: Policy of being calm and non-confrontational. (But how?) Runs, which is therapeutic. Spends 5 minutes reflecting every day.

Concilator (?): Represent the best side of both sides of the conflict. Seek common ground. If there's anger in the room, it's not me: "people are angry because they're not in control. I'm in control." Also, gardening.

Diver: 1 month work, 2 months off. Watches Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. Swims and surfs on his time off.

TV Guest Booker: Be organized, treat it like a game. Always another show tomorrow, don't get too precious about it.

A&E consultant: Yikes, his life is the toughest. Have people around you who can share the burden. Focus on what you love, rather than the burden. Changed hospital to something that's a 12 minute walk away, allowing him to play with his son more. Cites it as hugely beneficial.

Einstalbert• 12 years ago

Ah yes, the Diver philosophy. Let me get right on that. Anyone else want to work a fourth of the year?

joezydeco2• 12 years ago

"A CDC report in 1998 estimated that the occupational fatality rate for commercial divers was forty times the national average for all workers, at an annual rate of 180 deaths per 100,000 employed divers."

Yeah, I'll keep the desk job, thanks.

colanderman• 12 years ago

I'd love to. I'd have so much time for personal projects and otherwise enjoying the life I'm working for.

PhasmaFelis• 12 years ago

It sounds great until you get to the part where the 1 month of work is spent living in a 2.5x7m box with 11 other dudes. I'm pretty sure that's smaller than my living room.

read• 12 years ago

What popped out for me was different:

- A cool trick by the headteacher is to be available: to be at the school gate at the start and end of every day.

- Wisdom by the conciliator: stress is created when people aren't in control.

- Diver: reads; and being tired helps restore calm.

- TV guest booker: people have their own demons, which have a habit of appearing when they're faced with going on live TV. And then... experience teaches you that taking a philosophical approach is best.

- If you were to read only one story, don't miss the A&E consultant's: I'm having conversations with people that they will probably never have with any other human being, and that's a great privilege.

There's also a striking parallel in something he said: the stress in A&E is about me not having control. So I think it's important to have a hobby where you do have complete control. If programming is a hobby where you do have complete control, what does it say about the people it attracts?

Sparkky• 12 years ago

As a hobby you have complete control, as a professional in a large team, you have very little control.

I think that more mirrors why so many people who program professionally get so much satisfaction by hobby projects or taking time off to work on their own project.

JshWright4• 12 years ago

There's also a striking parallel in something he said: the stress in A&E is about me not having control. So I think it's important to have a hobby where you do have complete control. If programming is a hobby where you do have complete control, what does it say about the people it attracts?

I'm a firefighter/paramedic. He's exactly right that the most stress you'll ever feel is taking care of a critically ill or injured person and feeling like you're "behind" the call.

I'm also a full time developer (and part-time sysadmin). The two disciplines have a lot more in common than you might think. Debugging is debugging, it's just that the stakes are a bit higher in the back of the rig.

Financial reality means I get paid to use vim and save lives for free (well, less than free, I paid ~$6k in tuition to get my paramedic certification). I love my day job (I work for Silent Circle with some of the coolest and smartest people I've ever met), but I do hope that someday I get to flip which skill I get paid for full-time.

hyp0• 12 years ago

stress is created when people aren't in control.

I think the "Serenity Prayer" is spot on, even though it reads like a 3-part joke with a punchline (paraphrased):

  Don't try to change what you can't change
  Try to change what you can change
  Learn which is which

Because if you get them mixed up, it's either frustrating or immobilizing. Of course, you often can't know til you try, the very process of learning. Learning isn't intrinsically stressful... it's when you insist that things should be how you expect them to be that has that peculiarly frustrating quality. It's closing your eyes to reality - delusional.

Suggestion: if you find yourself saying things like "Why isn't this working!?", "What's wrong with this thing!?", take the rhetorical question literally... because there is something you don't know. Focus on finding out what it is (i.e. seeing reality), and that peculiar stress will disappear.

gaius• 12 years ago

Saturation diver: risk of death

A&E doctor: risk of someone else's death

TV booker: risk of a guest not showing up

Doesn't really compare, does it?

route66• 12 years ago

Not from an outside view I would say. But when we are talking about the subjective perception of stress, it might as well be that the stress as perceived by the diver or the A&E consultant is not proportionally higher.

visakanv2• 12 years ago

Yeah, it's morbid-funny to take the TV booker's advice and apply it to the diver and doctor. "Don't get too precious about it."

walshemj3• 12 years ago

Doctors and other medical professionals are known for having a morbid sense of humor - for example some of the humor in MASH.

ZirconCode• 12 years ago

http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/06/13/minor-stressful-even...

"mildly stressful situations can affect our perceptions in the same way as life-threatening ones"

The article is a bit foggy, but I think it gets the point across.

nnq• 12 years ago

It does compare. People have a MIN and a MAX level of stress, and unfortunately they usually calibrate these to the most stressful situation they usually encounter: the TV booker will feel the same level of stress when a guest is not showing up that the diver feels when he knows something went wrong and he's probably going to die.

The key is realizing that unfortunately this is your natural tendency, to set you MAX to the most stressful situation you usually encounter and to work against this natural tendency: just image how much worse things could actually be, think that you or your loved one or your children could die or be severely mutilated and incapacitated for life today in a mundane car accident that will not even reach the news. Go even further next: meditate a bit on how big the world is and how many horrible things are in that could really hurt you and the ones you love, and then go even further, think about how big and dangerous the universe is and how small and powerless you are and how many cosmical catastrophes could negate our civilization's entire existence. This will make you feel worse, but it will help you calibrate your MAX to a more appropriate level and help you a enjoy a stress-free life.

Next time you feel stressed to death, try googling some accidents stats, some deaths from cancers stats and maybe some violent crime stats (if you're in the USA). Then meditate a bit on the scale of things: ( this might help: http://htwins.net/scale2/ ), and trust me, it will really do you good!

...unfortunately the article misses this advice entirely.

spacehome• 12 years ago

Maybe that's true to a certain extent, but I have to think fear of death is on a whole 'nother level.

summerdown2• 12 years ago

This is excellent advice, and quite ancient, too. I first read of the approach in a guide to Stoic Philosophy, and have been attempting it ever since, with good results :)

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/01953...

Bulkington• 12 years ago

From the wikipedia entry on The Myth of Sisyphus:

Does the realization of the absurd require suicide? Camus answers: "No. It requires revolt." He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus

PakG1• 12 years ago

This is really interesting. It helps me understand how I process my own stress. I know I'm actually stressed when my mind shuts down and is unable to process information and make good decisions (i.e. I start panicking). I've experienced this in many different scenarios, from the time I was volunteering in high school for a big school performance event, the first time I was working a cash register and tried to return the correct change to a person, first big tech foul-up that majorly impacted a client, and various crisis-level incidents managing tech at the 2010 Olympics.

As I've gone through life and experienced more and more difficult things, I've realized that stress very relative. But when I was experiencing those things at the time for the first time, they were very stressful. When I look back at my high school self trying to find an extra chair for a ticket holder at that performance event, I find it absurd that I panicked so much. Same for when I was trying to calculate the correct amount of change in my head for a retail customer. Ludicrous. But I can't deny the stress I felt back then.

But as my experiences with stress became bigger, I realized something that changed the way I thought about things. I was still alive, things were still happening. So what if the Mexican consulate lost all of their visa records and applications because I did some shoddy sysadmin work? Well, yeah, a very big number of people were impacted. But I lived through it. I was shellacked, but I lived through it. Olympic crisis incidents? I experienced several during both training scenarios and the real thing. I was shellacked, but I lived through it. And current startup stuff? Well, nothing huge yet, but perhaps that's only because I haven't reached a level of success where I am exposed to that type of risk yet.

The point is that every time I experienced something bigger and survived, I realized that actually life goes on, and because I can survive, I am quite capable of handling whatever life throws at me. With that perspective, basically I have learned to have perspective. Realize that whatever I may be experiencing right now, no matter how difficult and stressful it may be, there will be a tomorrow. Even if I am reduced to absolutely nothing and lose everything, I still would be alive and would be able to start again.

And that perspective suddenly makes it easy to deal with all the crappy stressful stuff that may come by. At the end of the day, they're all just small things that don't kill me. I hope that if I ever experience something truly terrible, like a fight with terminal cancer, I can keep the same perspective. Whatever, I am still alive, and I can go on.

wpietri• 12 years ago

This insight ha also helped me a lot in dealing with upset kids. Very often, whatever bad think they are experiencing is literally and actually one of the worst things they have ever experienced. Whereas for me, I may well have already experienced my personal worst thing ever.

Telling them there's worse to come doesn't help, especially in the moment. So instead, I try to use my much higher MAX to remain calm and to project calm.

firebones• 12 years ago

Reminds me of the story of the doctor with terminal cancer who is building his own coffin.

> It’s pretty much impossible to feel anger at someone for driving too slowly in front of you in traffic when you’ve just come from sanding your own coffin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/ashes-to-as...

JshWright4• 12 years ago

The key is realizing that unfortunately this is your natural tendency, to set you MAX to the most stressful situation you usually encounter and to work against this natural tendency: just image how much worse things could actually be

I have, perhaps unwittingly, done just that, and I've found it to be extremely helpful in my professional life. I'm a full time developer, and volunteer paramedic. This has seriously recalibrated my definition of an 'emergency' (if there's an emergency at work, it means the servers are _literally_ on fire).

agumonkey• 12 years ago

I disagree. There are relative psychological scales, and then there are physical ones.

Anything critical under water (in the sky, ...) is life threatening, it doesn't trigger the same things in me (and I believe in anybody) at all.

A life changing event that will make you and the people you care about fall hard is one thing, death is another.

commander_ahab• 12 years ago

A stock broker may feel as much anxiety from a poor trade as an astronaut may feel about a slightly anomalous course correction.

The brain adapts to different risk levels, but that doesn't mean that the fear experienced can be objectively ranked.

papaf• 12 years ago

A short 7 minute documentary that shows saturation diving:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcSduoKj6KU

joelanman• 12 years ago

completely fascinating - another one here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3BWSMrgi3I

nickthemagicman• 12 years ago

It looks a lot like being an astronaut, except instead of PhDs from MIT running the show, you have Bob from South Philly whose favorite food is a cheeseburger with donuts for a bun.

JshWright4• 12 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Bob has an easier time making the right call without second-guessing himself when things go sideways.

In the case of activities like saturation diving (or in my case, firefighting), experience matters a hell of a lot more than all the PhDs in the world. After hundreds of dives (be it in smoke or water) you've seen just about everything that can go wrong, and you're in a much better position to break the chain of events leading up to a disaster.

chris_wot• 12 years ago

I would not be drinking to de-stress, as per the football manager.

walshemj3• 12 years ago

Yes but this is the UK where having a pint at lunch doesn't mean your a full fledged alcoholic.

I remember a course at be where the course leader also did the "dealing with staff with serious problems course" he commented it was the ones with a couple of vodka bottle hidden at work when you know they had a real problem.

icantthinkofone• 12 years ago

I own some fast food restaurants and, for a short time, managed them directly, hands-on. During rushes, especially when shorthanded, you feel you are being crushed by disappointed customers filing in the door, and there's nothing you can do to make things better at that moment. When I realized that, I also found my answer. I can't make things better so I will only concentrate on what is in front of me and do the best I can; and the rush will end soon.

Everything I do, I do with personal pride, so when things go bad, it hits home. I also realized that most things aren't running as bad as you think they are cause you know how things are supposed to work but your customer only sees the result of your efforts.

When doing rote things under pressure, it helps to hum random notes.

coherentpony• 12 years ago

I have been known to find the answer in the bottom of a pint pot.

Spoken like a true Englishman.

GigabyteCoin• 12 years ago

When I began reading about the football coach Chris Wilder who is almost dead-last in his league and totally calm about it... I immediately thought of Bob Knight.

Best known as the head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team from 1971-2000. He retired as the winningest NCAA Division I mens coach of all time. The NCAA Div I mens basketball league is arguably one of the most difficult to maneuver and most diverse sports leagues in the entire world. He was certainly not known for being "calm" [0].

All I'm saying is that "being calm has it's place".

Perhaps Chris Wilder could be wildly successful on the football pitch if he left his calm demeanor at the door?

[0] http://youtu.be/7Qxu5cvW-ds?t=1m20s

DaleHarries• 12 years ago

This is a very moot article. I would like to see how a CEO who wakes at 4am, goes to bed at 11pm copes with the stress of life.

rquantz2• 12 years ago

By deteriorating physically, mentally, and socially.

becauseGoogle• 12 years ago

The diver is the only one with any claim to honest stress, among these particular examples.

Catastrophic decompression is not to be trifled with.

How I stay calm, by people with very stressful jobs

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