Stress is GREAT for Us... Until it's Not

Once upon a time you started the role you're in now. 

My guess is you got after it right away, looking to add value and make things happen. 

Why? Because you actively cared about your results or about the stakeholders you wanted to impress. All fine and good early on as you had more than enough time to get your work done. You were locked in and engaged, and delivering incredible work. 

Somewhere along the way, you found yourself with more to do than you had time to do it, and it began to take a tole on you. Where once you were locked in and engaged, now you were overwhelmed, stressed out, just trying to keep up with the demands of your role. Over time, this began to take a tole on you: your results, your health and your relationships. 

How did you get there? How could you start so strong, only to end up overwhelmed? 

It's actually easy to explain, and you are not alone. 

Stress Serves Us... To a Point

In the early 1900s, researchers Robert Yerkes and John Dodson studied the relationship between stress and performance. Their findings, now known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law, revealed something incredibly counterintuitive: stress isn’t all bad. In fact, it can drive us to perform at our best, with focus and clarity and peace.

But like most things, too much stress can backfire.

We want to help you find the right amount of stress that puts you in the optimal gear to get the results you want without overwhelm.

Good Stress vs. Bad Stress

When you hear the word stress, you likely think of burnout, anxiety, or exhaustion. Things you don't have any interest in feeling. 

But stress isn’t always negative. Psychology distinguishes between two types:

• Eustress (good stress): The kind that pushes you forward. It’s why you showed up to work on time, why you prepare for big meetings, and why you care about your contribution.
• Distress (bad stress): The kind that overwhelms and paralyzes you, leading to frustration, anxiety, and exhaustion. Overtime it diminishes your results, impacts your health, and damages relationships. 

The key to peak performance is operating in the zone of eustress, where stress fuels action but doesn’t overload your system, pushing you into distress and overwhelm. 

How Stress Fuels Action

Think about this morning. Your alarm clock went off, and you knew you had to be at work in an hour. That slight increase in eustress pushed you into motion.

When you began the role you're in now, your care for the results or the stakeholders attached to your role created eustress that caused you to take positive action. 

Stress is a signal that you care. It pushes you to take action. The challenge is making sure you’re not overloading yourself to the point of diminishing returns.

The Peak of Performance

The Yerkes-Dodson study found that there is a sweet spot zone, where eustress gets you the optimal results you want, and does so without overwhelm. 

At the peak of this curve, you are in the optimal gear: engaged, focused, and performing at your best.

The challenge is without a healthy habits related to time, it's easy for you to fall off the curve, saying yes to too many things, and find yourself overwhelmed by the distress. 

And overwhelm is costing you much more than you realize.

The Hidden Cost of Overwhelm

I spent 10 years off this curve, living in a daily state of overwhelm. It impacted my health, it impacted my relationships, and it impacted the results I was getting. 

Impacting health and relationships makes sense to most people, but the impact on results is less obvious.

Why does overwhelm impact results? Because It changes the way you work:

When you're overloaded you:

• Rush to complete tasks as quickly as possible instead of thinking strategically, because you feel overwhelmed by all the other work you have to do
• Avoid creative problem-solving explorations because it feels like a luxury
• Stop delegating, thinking “It’s faster if I just do it myself”
• Fail to collaborate, because we don’t feel we have time to involve others

You don't work smarter, you simply shovel faster. 

This is the trap that most knowledge workers fall into. They don’t know how to get results without overloading themselves. They live in distress and overwhelm, believing it’s the only way to be productive.

Finding Your Highest Sustainable Pace 

So how do you stay at the top of the peak, and find your Highest Sustainable Pace, getting the results you want without overwhelm?

Let's start with what it's NOT: 

• It’s NOT about doing less.
• It’s NOT about finding more hours in the day.
• It’s NOT about quitting your job.

Instead, it’s about changing how you think about work and how you approach it tactically week over week. 

The Time Boss Weekly Framework teaches you exactly these things:

• Structure your workweek to stay in optimal gear and operate at your Highest Sustainable Pace
• Avoid falling into the trap of overwhelm-based productivity

Ready to dive in? Start with the Time Boss Weekly Framework Masterclass. It's a free 90 minute overview that will walk you step by step through the process. 

We believe you have what it takes to master your week to get the results you want without overwhelm: life-giving personal or financial freedom, career growth like you’ve never experienced, and contribution to the things you care deeply about.

Mastering your week is simple in nature, but hard to follow through in practice, and Time Boss is here to help. Stay connected to the blog, subscribe to the newsletter, grab a free Time Boss resource, or even jump in a “Master Your Week” course (offered quarterly).

Not sure where to start? Schedule a 25 minute meeting with a Time Boss coach. At a minimum, we’ll look at your calendar with you and see how we can get a quick win. What do you have to lose?