Ask HN: How can I increase my stress tolerance? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can I increase my stress tolerance?

13 pointscauliflower9912 comments

I experienced burnout after a hectic quarter around Nov/Dec 2020. I was scrum master / team lead at the time, but heavily involved in all parts of the team process - attend meetings, project manage, give status updates, coding...in the end it was too much.

I want to deep dive into team management and leadership, however I don't want to experience burn out again (even though I am certainly not over last year's events just yet).

Can stress tolerance be practices as a skill? Is there a way I can increase my stress tolerance? Or maybe I need to practice caring less when something goes wrong!

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There's three kinds of willpower: will, won't, and want. (K. McGonigal, 2012)

It's hard to see which one you need in this situation, but they all have to be trained.

Will is the ability to do something, e.g. getting a shower or exercising daily. You train it by doing uncomfortable things like exercise.

Won't is stopping something, e.g. not yelling at the annoying coworker and not drinking alcohol after a rough day. A simple exercise would be leaving a candy bar at your desk.

Both can be practiced with meditation. Will by initiating the session, won't by focusing.

Also in the book Peak Performance (Stulberg, Magness), it's said that the main difference between the elite and non-elite is that the elites shrug off pain faster. Everyone feels the same level of pain, but the elites don't let it stop them. Meditation is good for that too. You acknowledge that it's pissing you off, but also that the right response is to keep going, instead of reacting immediately to the pain.

This is a great comment, thanks.

Growth = Stress + Rest [1]

To maximize performance it is necessary to take breaks to give your brain time to process information. By stepping on the gas 24/7 you are guaranteed to burn out.

Schedule breaks and take them. You're not doing yourself any favours by pushing yourself beyond your limits.

Like others here have said, don't neglect your health. Take time to eat healthy, workout, and sleep. Sleep is the ultimate nootropic.

[1] Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness

Exercise helps, especially high intensity activities. Lowers both your stress levels and makes you more resilient when stress comes along. There's a reason why many driven individuals are also athletes.

Too bad that group sports aren't allowed yet, that also helps manage stress by increasing one's experience in handling situations with other people. Sportsmanship and all that.

Something I ignored for a long time was relaxation and adequate sleep. I also have a tendency to obsessively deep-dive into rumination and rationalisation about my career path, which was keeping me up nights. I would come to conclusions off the back of this process, but they wouldn't withstand the test of time, or real-world application, creating yet more ideation as a result.

Recently I spent some time with a combo of these techniques: books over phone use, spending time with my partner over being alone, and adequate sleep over staying up late. These things resulted in a feeling of being refreshed, and the quality of my insights and conclusions during the day increased markedly. Probably because I had tapped into an increased level of perspective as a result of these habits.

In short: consider how some basic health practices could improve your baseline for being resilient towards the challenges you face during the day, and don't make the mistake of dismissing them out of hand like I used to :)

Everyone has limits. Maybe you've just learned yours. You can work at the limit and you'll probably slowly grow (unless you're already very experienced, then this doesn't apply), which will allow you to take on more due to increased experience. If you go beyond your current limit, you're likely to burn yourself again.

There are an assortment of different tips or practices I've found useful over the years but it's hard to beat exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy.

I'm embarrassed to say that for cultural reasons I've never been quite able to actually go talk with a therapist but at one point I started hearing about some companies keeping performance coaches on staff and realizing that was actually something I was neglecting career wise and life wise.

I'm no expert on the topic or anything. The little bit I know is from a book called Feeling Great written by Dr. David Burns. It's written half as a self help sort of guide aimed at people trying to use the techniques and half as guidance for practitioners on how the techniques actually work.

Sport psychology may help https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/aug/21/how-to-... Perhaps more fruit and vegetables? https://neurosciencenews.com/fruit-veg-stress-18430/ Alter your playlist? https://www.anxiety.org/music-therapy-stress-reducing-playli...

Work smarter, not harder.

Understand and acknowledge your limits, and give up on efforts when you realize they aren’t working. Only don’t give up on uncompromisable stuff. If you want to accomplish something, find another way, or ask yourself why.

Think, "I'm doing the best I can, if it isn't good enough they can sack me".

Ps. If what you say above is true, they won't sack you.

I like this approach, if possible it’s also a great idea to carve out a half hour or hour a day to work on something non work related that demands your undivided attention (a game, book, music, sport, hobby). It can be remarkably helpful to clear your mind of all your other issues for even just a little while.

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