Ciao.
I want to talk about stress. Above all, I want to talk about the fact that we're wrong about why we're stressed. I’m sure it has little to do with being overworked, burnt out, chronically busy, or other innovative features of modern life.
Other ideas you’ll find below: let a cat remind you of your tasks; the fall of community managers; work as an emotional experience.
Enjoy.
Welcome to Masters of Babel. I am Avy. If you don’t remember who I am and what I do, there’s a footnote here just for you.1
Good for you for investing time in reading stimulating stuff. If you want to invite a friend to do the same, click below.
We’re used to thinking that stress is pressure. Too many things to do, people around us putting pressure on us, and so on.
Except it isn’t. Stress is uncertainty. When we have a lot to do but enough time to do all of it, we’re not stressed. Equally, when we have only one thing to do but don’t know whether we’ll manage it, we can be extremely stressed (think of a hard university exam, or an important presentation to the board).
Stress arrives when we’re not sure what will happen. We have little time and a lot to do, and we don’t know whether we’ll make it. And if we don’t, maybe someone will be angry with us, maybe we’ll lose money, respect or friends. Maybe: we don’t know yet, and that’s why our mind explores dramatic scenarios.
If stress is uncertainty, the solution isn’t to find a method for calming ourselves down. Maybe meditation, some esoteric drink, a quick jog or a hug from someone who loves us can be a good palliative. But if the cause of the stress is uncertainty, only two things can help: finding certainty, or learning to live with continuous uncertainty without falling into stress.
When we get lost in a new place, we immediately check Google Maps for where we are and where we need to go. We look for information. If our phone has no signal, we start asking people in the street how to get to our destination, or back to where we started. We look for certainty.
Wanting certainty means constantly looking for new information. We look for certainty because we feel we don’t know enough, or because we’ve discovered that what we thought we knew is wrong (the right route, in our example). We ask questions, we explore places, we look for new sources of information to feel more certain. Certain of what? That there will be no nasty surprises, so that we can reduce our sense of uncertainty, and with it our stress.
Sometimes there isn’t enough useful information. If your plane is shaking through heavy turbulence, asking around won’t tell you when you’ll be able to go back to sleep. The only thing you can do is live with the uncertainty without letting it push you into an existential crisis.
The second strategy, learning to live with uncertainty, is the harder one. It means switching off some key features of our culture. Not reacting when a problem comes up or when we fail, for example. Or building work plans knowing they’ll change, perhaps dramatically. We weren’t raised to live this way, at least not in Western countries. At school, at university, in our earlier jobs and in many families, “doing things properly” matters more than “try, and even if you fail you’ll have learned something”.
It’s a fundamental shift, one where we move from the illusion of complete control to accepting that we never had complete control.
The strategy I use to advance the shift is training myself to appreciate the doors that open when I lose control. When family reasons stop me from working long hours, I’m forced to concentrate on the highest priorities: a great chance to cull. When a client decides halfway through a consulting process that they want to change strategy, it’s a chance to build a deeper relationship with them.
Why pay attention to stress when we can pay attention to the opportunity?
Stress is uncertainty. It isn’t an easy realization, but it’s a necessary one. Nobody wants to live with perpetual stress by choice, because it isn’t a healthy choice. But knowing that the world around us is more and more chaotic, we need to look for better strategies to handle the uncertainty and stress that will sooner or later hit us.
Better to do it as someone who wants to learn and who knows how to recognize opportunities when they come.
The economics of being rejected and being surprised. Substack.
How to relearn failure as a mechanism for success. YouTube.
Build an internet that feeds you good information. Reason.
Peter Faleskini and me came to the conclusion that “you can do anything” is toxic advice. It’s just not realistic, especially for professionals in their second career.
We discussed what is realistic for people who want to change careers mid-life. Short and sweet podcast episode, and Peter is a sharp, no-BS host.
Work can be a meaningful, emotional experience. When did we get so cynical about that? Can we please course correct? Read more here.
“It’s more about missing that universal agreement that it’s really, really cool to devote yourself fully to your work. And to expect that from your colleagues in a way that makes you feel that “we’re all really, really, really in this together” kind of way.”
We had a good decade there, when every tech firm would hire a community manager.
Sometimes they meant “super-connector who can build deep relationships.” Sometimes they meant “receptionist.” Things are settling down now, and I think we’re circling back to community as something authentic and necessary in the human experience.
No, shutting down AI or any other tech because we are scared of the damage it’s doing is not a good solution.
“Every successful invention solves an existing problem, and creates new problems. Ships create shipwrecks, cheap food creates obesity.” (Kevin Kelly, Protopia)
You wouldn’t forget to do something a cute cat is reminding you of.
Minimi watches your work on your Mac and reminds you of the tasks you never get back to: answer that email, chime in on the Slack thread, send that report.
Also, their mascot is the sweetest cat. (YouTube made its name on cute kitten clips. Now AI makes the kittens. Why are sweet cats always first through technology’s new frontiers? Should we be amused or worried?)
Speak soon,
Avy
P.S. - I am mostly active on LinkedIn and Substack. The first one for work, the second one for my soul. Let’s connect!
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