5 ways to deal with energy consuming micro stress

Exhausted. Wear and tear. Weakening. Burnout. These are common words that people use to describe how they feel in their professional and personal lives. And it's only going to get worse. A 2021 study by the Institute for Enterprise Productivity (i4CP) shows that "burnout is a major driver of relief in the form of new jobs, promotion opportunities, higher salaries, and most importantly, ongoing flexibility." A staggering 67% of respondents in large organizations (employing more than 1,000 people) believe that burnout is the most important driver of potential brain drain in their organizations.

It may be easy to blame the speed and amount of work to blame, but our research shows that the real culprits are often more insidious. It's not so much the workload that's increasing, it's the collaboration we need to do our jobs proliferating. This has created a new form of stress, which we documented in our recent book, The Microstress Effect: How Small Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems – and How to Deal with It. "Micro-stress" is the result of the constant accumulation of small, unnoticed stresses in our daily interactions with people in our lives, which are so ephemeral that we barely notice them. Individually, these micro-pressures may seem manageable, but they add up to huge losses.

In our research, we identified 14 types of micro-stress** and grouped them into three distinct categories: micro-stress that depletes your ability to do your job (e.g., a surge in responsibility), micro-stress that depletes your emotional reserves (e.g., managing others), and micro-stress that challenges your identity (e.g., pressure to pursue goals that are out of sync with personal values).

Our research initially focused on 300 high-performing employees in multinational organizations, but over the past year, we have also evaluated a global sample of more than 11,000 individuals to learn more about the most common microstresses**. With this research, we've found it abundantly clear that microstress isn't just because there's a particularly bad manager or being part of a high-pressure workplace culture.

And the problem is getting worse. All of the technological advancements and shifts in organizations becoming more agile and less hierarchical have created more micro-stresses that threaten not only your productivity, but also your overall well-being. What makes things even more challenging is that microstress can equally come from people in our personal lives as well as people in our professional lives. But our research shows that if you can identify a range of stresses, you can take corrective action that can make a significant difference in your life.

Through our follow-up research, it became clear to us that microstress affects all of us, both at work and at home. But some suffer more than others. Our study shows a statistically significant relationship between education, class level, age, and all forms of microstress. At work, this makes sense: when we move up in an organization, we are faced with interactions that trigger micro-stress—for example, inconsistencies with colleagues, responsibility for managing team performance, and adversarial conversations. But it's also worth noting that we found that these individuals also faced more pressure in their personal lives, as they had heightened expectations of their provider roles, negative interactions with family and friends, and challenges to being "good" children. or siblings who help a family member.

Women, in particular, are more stressed in 13 of the 14 types of microstress. (The exception is that men say their network outages are more stressful.) There are particularly significant disparities among women in the amount and diversity of consumable or negative interactions with family and friends, adversarial conversations, and the need for collaboration. Minority respondents also experienced greater pressure in some areas: pressure to pursue goals that were out of sync with personal values, political manipulation, and uncertainty about the reliability of others.

Notably, exhausting or negative interactions with family or friends were chosen as the first microstressor almost three times as often as the next two most commonly chosen microstressors (the need for adversarial dialogue and collaboration was diverse and numerous). As one participant in a follow-up learning experiment at a large retail organization shared with us:

"I love my eldest daughter in a way you can't describe. She is a central source of joy and meaning in my life. But I'm also worried about her. She has a low threshold for stress and is often blamed or annoyed by what is happening with her husband, son, and socially. Thankfully, she did talk to me about what she was going through at the time. I tried my best to help, however, it left me with residual worries. There is no doubt that I will transfer this pressure to work. I sometimes get upset or lack engagement because I'm worried about her and what she's going through. ”

What are we going to do next? Many of us choose to endure micro-stress because we can't simply give up on the most important relationship in our lives. The key is to understand that it's not necessarily the relationships that need to change, but the interactions we have.

People need to consciously manage their daily interactions to develop a habit of addressing micro-stresses over time. To test how to successfully build this capability, we partnered with multiple Fortune 100 organizations, each inviting 20 high-performing employees (gender balanced) for a six-week experiment to reduce their micro-stress.

At the beginning of the first week, we ask people to choose a single micro-stress that they will focus on over the next week and share a written coping plan with us. People often choose issues such as changing interactions with siblings in caring for an elderly parent, engaging with a leader who is quickly changing expectations, resolving issues that don't align with the goals of colleagues in a cross-functional team, or counseling team members about how their stress spreads unnecessarily to others. We work with others within their organization who are also involved in the experiment as a peer support for any challenge. Then on Friday, we asked them to email the steps they took and the results. Our job this week is to provide support and ideas on how to deal with the source of micro-stress when something goes wrong or has a problem. (If you'd like to try this experiment for yourself, our free app "Microstress Effect" can help.) ）

Initially, people were nervous about taking action. The tone of their first email on Monday was always one of anxiety about fighting back. By Friday, however, the feedback emails we received were almost all positive, and the world wasn't tilting — people had taken steps to reduce the micro-stresses that come with interactions in their lives, for example, talking to siblings about their situation, feeling guilty about caring for their parents, or pointing out to leaders how their shift in expectations is affecting others.

However, as the second week began, our participants reported the same level of fear they experienced at the beginning of the first week. People are again trying to find a willingness to change the interactions triggered by micro-stress, and often feel like they can't fight back, or that sticking to the status quo is a less painful avenue. Once again, we give encouragement, support and encouragement. By Friday, they thought the week was another win.

Little by little, we can see the transformation begin – for some, in the third week, and for almost all, in the fourth week. The tone in their emails becomes confident. People are starting to think about how to eliminate the microstress of the early days and add positive interactions in their lives. We can see the evolution of their ability to spot micro-stress, have the courage to take action, and have difficult conversations. Importantly, it brings a sense of control to these people's lives. As one participant who is concerned about the micro-stress of the "surge in responsibility" shared with us:

"I take the initiative to set expectations and identify the roles of others, rather than letting ambiguity creep in and try to come back to me. I realized that I was taking on more responsibility than I could achieve when it came to activities and deliverables, rather than holding people accountable. As time went on, I found myself overwhelmed by all the extra work. Seeing this and kindly redirecting people in a way that builds capacity for them has had an amazing impact on the amount of work and stress I'm experiencing right now. In hindsight, it's hard to believe I didn't see this sooner. Just get lost in the rhythm of it all. ”

One of the key insights from our experiment was that participants had to slowly increase their willingness and ability to observe and address micro-stresses in their lives. You can't solve all problems everywhere at the same time. But based on our research and multiple iterations of this six-week experiment, we've identified five key steps you can use to start managing microstress.

Even small shifts can have a positive impact on our well-being. So, for the first two weeks, commit each week to adjusting to a small, easy-to-resolve micro-stress to build confidence, a different mindset, and a sense of **. Don't focus your attention on the larger (more difficult, deeper) stressors that prevent you from acting on the pressures you can control. Here's how one participant addressed the microstress of a "lack of trust in the network":

"I think I'm more open and vulnerable to my work and issues. I asked for help twice about something (which is rare for me) and discussed my work assignment for the week with some team members. I would also definitely ask what they are doing and how it is going. Overall, I think it's going well. I was even able to have a conversation with my **p about what I was doing. I haven't come into his office to ask questions since I came here! He was very kind and helpful. ”

Here's how one participant worked to strengthen her resilience network in our experiment and described some of the things she's been doing:

Make time to play golf with the ladies at the club that I haven't spent time with.

Joined the [company] golf league with a colleague in the office – creating a more personal connection with him than just focusing on work-related topics.

Lean towards the charity where I sit on the board.

Benefit greatly from mentoring new lawyers.

Make time for close family (girls' weekends with mom and sister).

All of these activities are joyful and meaningful for this participant. But they are also deliberate choices, to genuinely engage with the relationships that create resilience for her in moments, big and small. For example, making a more personal connection with a colleague means that she is more willing to ask him to help her understand the politics at work. As it turns out, he shares her dark humor for tackling the challenges of her job. Both of these interactions create a resilience that she would not have without these connections.

Strengthening your resilience network can often help you take action against larger, more impactful micro-stressors. In our learning experiments, when people reach four weeks, they tend to feel more confident in shaping interactions and begin to see the effects of addressing microstresses in their lives. It makes them want to do bigger.

Here's how one participant addressed one of her chosen microstresses: "inconsistencies in roles and priorities between collaborators," which led to his daily, constant microstress:

One-on-one brainstorming with team members: How can we better define the roles, responsibilities, and priorities of the projects that the team is responsible for from a high level? How can we better define roles, responsibilities, and priorities in more detail for individual task projects? How do you introduce and implement the above in your team?

Collaborate with others who are also working on microstress experiments to brainstorm around the work and discuss progress setbacks.

Proactively schedule a kick-off meeting with your business partner to discuss expectations.

It is advisable to start putting together some reference guides and program documents – this will set expectations, not necessarily for each member of the group, but for the individual projects and tasks that we have. Whoever is working on the project at the time will be aligned with the defined end goal and output.

In our experiments, people almost universally tacitly took the search for toxic interactions as their main stress**. But in the middle of the experience, we saw a shift in the way they began to recognize stress**. It's not just the "bad guys" at work; For many of our participants (and in our studies), the most mentally exhausting microstress came from people they cared deeply about, and our participants expressed great anxiety about their own failures and letting others down. While this sometimes involves work, our respondents recounted many examples of being too concerned about the well-being of their family, significant others, and friends to the point of neglecting their own self-care – giving up sleep, recharging their own time batteries, or simply finding themselves bothered by other people's problems. When someone we care about is in trouble, we feel – and feel deeply – their anxiety, worry, and pain.

There are a few steps you can take to try to interact with the person you're constantly worried about in a more positive way. For example, you can coach independence. Teach your teammates to solve problems on their own instead of overly turning to you. And resist the urge to automatically provide guidance or help, even if it may seem more effective or make you feel good at the time.

You can also go back to the basics. Start with your anchor relationship (i.e., your partner): Make sure you talk regularly, make trade-offs together, and be clear about what outcomes are important for both of you. For example, one of our respondents had a quarterly "coordination" conversation with his wife to make sure they were on the same page about priorities and how to spend their time and energy.

Another participant began to address the "interaction with family and friends" question, spending more than 2 typical hours of chatting at their parents' house on Saturdays or Sundays5 hours (the exact time and date were not determined until the last minute) instead with the family 1Lunch for 5 hours. Friday afternoon mom (released early after work). They report that it is:

Successfully freed up more time for the weekend to have other priorities while still being able to stay in touch with mom.

Success is due to the fact that the plan is made in advance, so there is less pressure on the "unknown" (e.g., schedule impacts, conflicts, etc.).

Continue to spend time with yourself in a low-stress situation Alone – Dinner with friends who "actively interact" with drinks, ** meetings, a day off for the sole purpose of relaxing and seeing friends. After work, I continued to grab food with my colleagues, interact as a new group, walk with friends, chat and catch up, and spend an unplanned vacation at work to relax and meet friends.

Addressing this microstress doesn't mean you have to eliminate contact with people who are exhausting you – in many cases, they are relatives or colleagues you can't avoid. But you can shape interactions with them to limit microstress.

Even with concentration, it is impossible to eliminate all the micro-stresses in life. This is where an important conclusion of our study comes into play: one of the reasons some microstresses affect us is simply because we allow them to happen. We found that the happiest people were able to view some of the microstresses in their lives more effectively than the less happy people, in large part because they belonged to two or three groups – in addition to their careers and immediate families – and involved activities that included meaning to them. The dimensions of these activities and groups serve to help them recognize when details are the true purpose of details, essentially to insulate them from the onslaught of micro-stress. They help people rise above things they can't control.

We call this a "multidimensional" life. People are constantly looking for ways to connect with others outside of work and home, even in small moments, helping to reduce the effects of microstress. For example, some people are involved in past activities, which helps them join new groups. Others reconnected with those who had lost contact, following the advice of Mark Schultz and Robert Waldinger, the authors of The Good Life, by arranging seven eight-minute **s to reach out to them. The point is that these people make meaningful connections with others, even in small moments.

Here's how one participant worked to build a more multidimensional life:

I think it's very simple, find a place to volunteer. I've done a lot of volunteer work since I was a kid and I miss it. After moving out of my parents' house, I became busy with my daily social life and work, and volunteering took a back seat. Ideally, I'd be happy to work somewhere in my own community and help my neighbors around me. Doing some basic research on groups in my field would be an activity that would lead me in the right direction.

The good news is that it's possible. We have the power to shape what we do and what we do in our personal and professional lives. We've just given up a little bit of control. Up to now.