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..."

Best line in the article...

[Agent Green]

"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.

Re:Best line in the article...

[dknight]

If I had mod points, I'd mod this up.

I find that at my current job, I'm bored and feel like I'm pretty much wasting my time (dont get me wrong, I'm grateful to be employed, but I dont enjoy my job anymore). I've noticed that this has led to a sudden decline in my unused sick days and vacation time, and certainly does have me regularly updating my resume and keeping my eyes open.

Re:Best line in the article...

[goober1473]

I'm with you on that one, just taken my last 2 days holiday as an ex-employer called me with some interesting work (nice to get the extra cash too).

Been stuck on a project as one of 4 unix admins and seen as the most experienced, which means people don't ask me to do anything trivial or even slightly non-unix. After a 2 week vacation the sum total of my working day I got back was to login and type:

cd /data
du -sk *

when asked what was taking all the space in the DB2 data directory... Sadly that's been the highlight for the last three weeks now. Looking forward to the new (not mine) client, new system need install and training.

I am polishing my CV and struggling to get out of bed in the mornings as I really don't se the point.

Re:Best line in the article...

[thunderpeel]

I agree whole heartedly. Any company that I have worked with in the past, that I KNOW was on the way out or in a far too long stagnant state, I took all my sickdays and vacation days to look for more work.
As for health problems - it is friday and my head hurts.

Re:Best line in the article...

[gcaseye6677]

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. Companies would be well advised to keep this in mind, as unhappy workers are nearly always less productive and absent more often, even when they don't want to be.

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.

Re:Best line in the article...

[marko123]

I wonder whether it can also be the other way around. That people who are always sick tend to end up negative and pessimistic? I know I would be.

Re:Best line in the article...

[`Sean]

"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."

Yup. I've noticed this a lot, especially with previous contract gigs I had where I was surrounded by younger more inexperienced guys. And this article really hits home since I just put in a 100+ hour work week [inertramblings.com]. Now, if you don't mind, I'll go crawl under my desk and die. :)

Re:Best line in the article...

[StalinsNotDead]

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.

and read, post, moderate, metamoderate, and generally interact more on slashdot.

You want to get FIRED?

[solios]

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.

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. :P

Am I a Workaholic? Yes. Just not for the day job. :P

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:You want to get FIRED?

[FCAdcock]

::Waves hand:: This is not the job you are looking for.

Not necessarily...

[jotaeleemeese]

"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.

Re:I thrive by drinking, snorting, and denying: +1

[mcmonkey]

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me - Hunter S. Thompson

Re:Best line in the article...

[seafoodforklift]

Some people can do that. It's a function of one's biological clock, I guess. I think Margaret Thatcher ran the UK on three hours of sleep a night - which explains a lot.

First read that as.......

[thewldisntenuff]

Do You Thrive on Crack?

-thewldisntenuff

Re:First read that as.......

[savagedome]

To quote Dennis Leary "I will never do a drug named after part of my ass".

Amen.

Only in America

[unformed]

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

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

Re:I guess I'm in the middle

[JohnnyKlunk]

Definately. This is the key to good management. Most people respond to some pressure - too much and you just piss them off. Some people put too much pressure on themselves and you need to help them take some off to get the best out of them
I like pressure. If there's no pressure, it's not a challenge. If it's not a challenge there's no joy in doing a good job

As someone that needs to manage techs daily this is probably the skill I'd like to be a master of - giving each my staff the right pressure for them to perform at their best.
Oh, and I wish my manager would become a master of this!

Re:I guess I'm in the middle

[macrom]

You know, the pressure is much easier to handle when you take Xanax and Lexapro together. Oxycontin works well, too, as does Hydrocodone. If your doctor won't prescribe any of these, just make a few posts with a legitimate e-mail address on Usenet and you'll have several offers for acquiring these handy "pressure pills" delivered to your inbox within days.

Re:I guess I'm in the middle

[PriceIke]

I think you can get anyone to do anything provided they know they're appreciated at the end of it. I usually get paid, so that's appreciation enough!

The first sentence is very true. The second one, well, I guess that is true if and only if your pay is appropriate to your job's risks/required skill level/experience.

Me, I don't know how much my work really matters at the end of the day. But the fact that my bosses go out of their way to tell (and show) me that they appreciate the job I do, plus admiring remarks from colleagues who also do what I do (Web designer/Webmaster), make it worthwhile to me to get my ass out of bed in the morning.

I think one of the most fundamental needs of the human animal is to be appreciated.

I love stress

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I love stress

[halivar]

Steve, I saw you through my blinds typing this comment. Steve, I pay you $6.50 an hour to work, not post on Slashdot.

Get back to work. You've still got that 4:30 deadline to meet.

PS: I'm out of the office for the rest of the day to go golfing with your wife.

It's simple

[teamhasnoi]

I thrive on crack under pressure.

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

[ameoba]

But you can still manage to get posts on Slashdot within the first 5min of a story being posted...

Re:Thrive

[lukewarmfusion]

In college, I wavered between procrastination and being insanely ahead of schedule.

I find that my life is better when I beat my deadlines way ahead of time. I'd write papers as soon as they were assigned... I was taking a self-directed course where I was teaching myself some new (to me) programming languages. It was Spring semester, and in the first week I finished my entire semester's worth of work.

Which meant that I spent a lot of time studing how fast I could beat NES Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1... with varying levels of intoxication.

Seriously, though - in the working world, I find that the more ahead of schedule, the more work my bosses will pile on me. The faster I perform, the less they will quote next time. Which boils down to the better I am, the less I am paid. So now I just work slow and take my sweet ass time or get it done fast and lie about how long it's taking.

Oh, and I'm starting my own company so I won't have to put up with this shit anymore.

Re:Thrive

[MaineCoon]

Seriously, though - in the working world, I find that the more ahead of schedule, the more work my bosses will pile on me. The faster I perform, the less they will quote next time.

I'm like that at my job too. A supervisor actually advised me to be careful and even pad things out if need be, so that others dont start relying on me finishing ahead of schedule and start overloading me with work.

It can be a very precarious balancing act especially if you are working on a promotion.

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

[ignavus]

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).

So you agree with Karl Marx that employment is all about the extraction of surplus value from the working class?

Now imagine that a whole group of people "go out on their own" together - i.e. form a co-operative (it is the only way a group of people can be self-employed together).

Presto - you now understand the whole point of the socialist idea of revoluti

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.

Re:Thrive

[dykofone]

I'm glad you were moderated "Interesting" rather than "Funny," and I suppose it's because other people might see a similar trait in themselves. I've long noticed that I do my best work when the deadline is almost immediatly before me and I believe it explains why some people do so well in test situations.

In college, if I sat down to do homework a week before it was due, I would get bored and then frustrated with it as I was easily distracted. I would go into a test thinking I didn't understand the mater

Re:Thrive

[ArbitraryConstant]

There's a fine line between "laziness" and "efficiency". Only when you feel the flame clasping at your toes do you work to your full potential, finishing a project that might otherwise have taken weeks in one frenzied all nighter.

I learned this in university, I perfected it at work. I am laughing on the inside every time I get a good performance review, and I always pray they won't notice the SSH tunnel to my proxy server at home.

Under pressure...

[halivar]

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.)

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...

Re:I check slashdot compulsively under pressure

[hoggoth]

> check slashdot compulsively

Damn! I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I'm sitting here clicking *reload* *reload**reload**reload**reload* hoping for a good article, while a little voice in the back of my head screams "WHAT THE FSCK ARE YOU DOING? YOUR BEHIND ON YOUR DEADLINE!".

It's gotten so bad I even read all the legal details on SCOs latest shenanigans...

When I'm under preassure

[russint]

Crack seems to help a lot

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.

Re:Similar

[tekunokurato]

I definitely agree. I am the same way--if I'm bored I get lazy and sleep and feel like I haven't accomplished anything. But if I find a variety of interesting things which I can spend an hour each on per night (note the short attention span), I feel healthy and energetic, and I know how much I've accomplished. It never worked like this for me when I was in school because of the hours of studying that was necessary. But now while I can work on all different stuff, it's perfect.

Re:Similar

[ElForesto]

Actually, I've heard from a few people lugging around psychology degrees that those of us with ADD/ADHD actually do very well in stressful positions such as being EMTs. Go figure.

Re:Similar

[Nurseman]

There is childhood, and adulthood ADD symptoms. Most good providers want to see significant symptoms in both childhood and adulthood. Here [amenclinic.com] is a little self test (I have no connection to them, I found them by google). Most good shrinks will interview you, and then someone who knows you well, to get a better picture. Be careful before you hop onto the Ritalin Express. Therapy, behavior modification and things like yoga often help ease some of the symptoms assocaited with ADD. Good Luck

As well as 'stress'

[Amiga Lover]

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.

There's the reverse as well

[mveloso]

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?

Re:There's the reverse as well

[mekkab]

Lesse, I've got big Software Design Document changes to distribute on Monday, and I've missed the deadline for having an underling put those changes into Framemaker (which I've never used before but I'm sure it isn't that hard...) and its Friday afternoon and I'm browsing Slashdot.

Does that mean I don't work unless there is stress and impending doom? Or am I just a drama-queen?!

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.

Re:There's the reverse as well

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

I've found that it is slacking that causes boredom and gets me feeling stressed.

Hear, hear! Slacking causes more stress than anything. And here I am posting on Slashdot.

Re:There's the reverse as well

[Evil Pete]

Yeah buddy, know about that. Some time back I went to work at a company located near a good beach, laid back. No pressure. I was miserable and didn't know why. Then got hit by a project that poured it on ... happy again. I thought I wanted to be a beach bum doing a low stress job, but the reality was the reverse ... I like lots of pressure, it seems because it is the only thing that pushes me beyond my limits. From past projects where it seems I was the only one who enjoyed the experience I would say that i

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.

Re:Maybe something to do with ADD?

[Nurseman]

I have ADD and I definitely do much better under pressure.

One of the primary symptoms of ADD is being easily distracted. When you are under the gun, all that energy is focused on the goal. It is when you are less focused on a goal, that he mind tends to wander all over, and reload /. every 5 minutes. :-)

Re:Maybe something to do with ADD?

[ArsonSmith]

Wow, I always thought I had some kind of ADD. my mind wanders a quite abit and I do have a problem of doing work really hard then suddenly stop, refresh slashdot, look through the head lines, load up some interesting ones, read some comments, maybe post, then get a drink, take a leak, then come back and pick up on work right where I left off.

But I also can have very intense concentration on things a lot of people can't seem to do. Painting D&D figurines, building furnature, programming, trying out ev

Re:Maybe something to do with ADD?

[OhHellWithIt]

I just finished reading a book about ADD, and that's the first thing that came to my mind. The book also said ADD occurs in about 1/20 of the population, so that would only account for a small number of the "survivors". But I'm also wondering if a greater proportion of the population has some degree of the symptoms of ADD. A lot of what I read about in the book seemed normal to me, but I didn't even score as borderline in the included evaluation questions.

When I am under severe pressure

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I make diamonds

(geology joke, carry on)

Re:When I am under severe pressure

[Hobadee]

Comon man, haven't you taken physics? Pressure = heat. Thats why hell is exothermic [pinetree.net]!

Oh yea, and to get the diamonds you would have to stick coal up your arse. That's pretty nasty dude.

I implode under pressure.

[Kenja]

Much more then 14.7 pounds per square inch and I go squelch.

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?

Yup.

[temojen]

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.

Re:Differing kinds of pressure.

[Dr. Evil]

Situations aren't stressful when you're completely out of control or your task and responsability is clearly defined. For something to be really stressful, you have to be missing part of the picture.

When you insert a bunch of unknowns, like oh... The main database server is unreachable, the CEO is unreachable, and you can't even start to work on the problem until the guys on-site respond... It's 12:00pm, you're low on sleep, and you have to meet with the customer at 7:00am... which they're on the other side of the country and not responding! Nothing to do but sleep... yep. Sleep well.

...or maybe someone cut the fiber to this block, we gotta move from one colo to the next in 17 hours, and the police have taped off the area as a murder scene... it could open up in the next three minutes or next 30 hours, it's anyone's guess.... it's a shame the I.T. was out of your hands and you can't reach the customer database to notify everyone or provide a status update before they call.

Here's one... your car breaks down on a highway with no shoulders in the middle of the night, your electrical system fails, you've got no flares, and your handicapped mother is in the car... I hope nobody's doing 130MPH when you step out onto the ashphalt.

Re:Differing kinds of pressure.

[pizza_milkshake]

i also have ADD and i have trouble stayi

Seperate work-life and home-life.

[garcia]

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.

Crack or thrive?

[Whatthehellever]

I don't know... I see a high pressure situation and make myself scarce. Let some other sucker handle it.

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:stress != pressure

[Shotgun]

Stress is simply pressure that you can't control.

Boss on your back about implementing that new dialog box? You whip one out in an hour, run up a flight of stairs and jump like Rocky.

Boss on your back to test that new dialog box while simultaneously taking the hardware from you and giving it to Joe Dipshit who sits on it for several days? You stew for several days as the stress rises and the deadline looms.

The pressure is the same, but the second case misses the control factor.

That's me

[tekunokurato]

Wow, this article is the first article I've ever read that confirms that people like me exist. Everyone always tells me I'm utterly insane because I work 70-90 hours a week banking and sleep 4-4.5 hours a night, and I love it. I've always been of the opinion that you take things as they come and deal with what you can. You also need to accept that you are responsible for most of what occurs in your life, both the successes and the failures, rather than shift responsibility anywhere else.

If at the end of th

Depends on the source of the stress...

[el-spectre]

Myself, it depends on WHAT is bothering me. A tough programming task or difficult system recovery don't generally bother me that much... it's intellectually challenging. I just put on my headphones, crank the metal and go.

If, on the other hand, someone chooses to stand over me, or demand status updates every 15 minutes... I'm fairly likely to just say 'Either fix it yourself or leave me the fuck alone for a while'.

My old boss (crappy company, great immediate supervisor) would leave me alone when a system

Do I thrive or crack under pressure?

[spellraiser]

Let's see now ...

Yes

I mean, no!

Yes!

No!

Yes .. no ... yesno ... yes!

...

No!

GHAAAAAAAAAAAA!



Lameness filter is lame ... Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 3.8).

Definitely thrive

[themoodykid]

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

It is a learned behavior

[Tangurena]

Whether you thrive or wither is a function of what you learned to love as a youngster. Just like why some people enjoy high risk sports (hmm, BASE jumping comes to mind), they are addicted to the chemicals their body produces under stress.

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.

Stress at work - the solution.

[Skiron]

FUCK RIGHT OFF, I AM BUSY!

Put it on the helpdesk please.

They don't. Problem solved :)

Depends on the type of Stress...

[Mateito]

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.

I love pressure...

[lothar97]

and I'm also an optimist. I guess that means I won't thrive as a lawyer.

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.

Pessimist's perfect job: sysadmin!

[bee]

They left out the perfect pessimist's job: sysadmin!

Types of stress

[phorm]

Well, for me it's always depended on the type of stress/pressure. An important piece of software that needs to work, a deadline, coding or decoding some obscure language idiosyncrasies - no problem.

Having somebody walk up to me and immediately grill me on something (say a blonde hair on my shoulder)... temporary freeze-up.

As far as life goes though, I've tended to be a "prepare for the worst, hope for the best" type of guy. I expect that things probably won't go my way, and prepare the following:

a) Ho

great lawyers

[rigau]

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.

Re:great lawyers

[Anita Coney]

I totally agree. I'm at attorney and in my dealings with other attorneys I couldn't help but wonder why some make millions and while other barely survive.

It certainly wasn't the education, intelligence, or looks. The one factor that all highly successful attorneys have is that they are optimists. In other words, they know they are going to win and won't let anything change that opinion.

They're almost like compulsive gamblers, except the odds are not against them.

Exterior stressors

[MagPulse]

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.

Re:Exterior stressors

[sweetleaf]

That's certainly one way of looking at it. The poor uberworker (of which you, no doubt, include yourself), is surrounded by his coworkers, the eternal slackers.

Perhaps they're not motivated. Or perhaps your manager is naive and is using a bit too much stick and not enough carrot. You'd be amazed what some positive, encouraging management can achieve.

Or, to paraphrase Office Space, "if you motivate a man with the threat of getting fired, he'll only work hard enough to keep from losing his job."

A little sugar goes a long way. And REAL sugar, not saccharine. Anyone can tell the difference.

I must dispute one claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Among other tidbits, pessimists make great lawyers...

I wanted to be a lawyer, but I didn't think it wouldn't work out.

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 [afn.org] 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.

I've seen parts of this mentioned ...

[magefile]

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).

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.

Do Pessimists make Better Programmers?

[14erCleaner]

"If you're drawing up a contract, the ability to see every foreseeable danger is something that goes along with pessimism, but it's also what makes a good lawyer," Dr. Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

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.

Re:Do Pessimists make Better Programmers?

[tool462]

I've had to fix an awful lot of bugs in programs written by optimists.

Thanks :). I swear I'll start testing my code one of these days.

Re:Do Pessimists make Better Programmers?

[sean23007]

Optimists make the best hackers. "What can I make this do?" And then they do it.

Stress is a natural part of life

[tglx]

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

I disagree...

[TheHonestTruth]

other tidbits, pessimists make great lawyers...

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

Gasp! Corporate Media Glorifies Velvet Sweatshop!

[Cryofan]

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?

Re:Gasp! Corporate Media Glorifies Velvet Sweatsho

[Cryofan]

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 ...they flourish ...functioning in overdrive..resilient... hardy, "


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?

Re:Gasp! Corporate Media Glorifies Velvet Sweatsho

[rookkey]

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

Re:Gasp! Corporate Media Glorifies Velvet Sweatsho

[evilviper]

Working less seems nice, but is it viable?

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.

No. I am comparing USA to Europe

[Cryofan]

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?

Missing third option

[standsolid]

I strive under pressure when I'm on crack. Which is daily.

Passion about what you do is the key

[ortholattice]

I can work my butt off, day and night, week after week, on an open source project that excites me. I love to show it off and have the world admire it. I thrive on it. I feel like I'm producing something useful that will live on after me and that I'll be remembered for. Yes, it's a big ego trip, so what. Even though I may be bleary eyed for lack of sleep, I will feel very little stress but instead will have a deep sense of satisfaction. I'll go to bed gloating over my accomplishments, thinking of new things to try, and can hardly wait to wake up in few hours to continue. The excitement can be incredible.

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 [slashdot.org] 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."

Tend to thrive...

[Isldeur]

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...

Nobody here gets it...

[evilviper]

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.

It's a troll, but...

[temojen]

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.

Re:Get some PRIORITIES!

[themoodykid]

Well, that's a vote for "Cracks under pressure."

Re:Wrong choice

[damned_in_davis]

crack is just coke under pressure.

Re:Hmmm, as for me...

[Tackhead]

> I've always considered myself the kind who just... cracks, pressure or no. Kinda sucks when it just "goes off" while I'm watching TV or something.

That sounds like it would suck. Of course, I wouldn't know, because I'VE NEVER EXPERIENCED ANYTHING LIKE THAT, YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD! :)

Re:Wait for this to be misinterpreted.

[jjoyce]

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".