Stress + Rest = High Impact Social Sector Work

The formula: stress + rest = high performance works for athletes, scientists and warriors. Why should Social Sector workers not adopt this approach? Learning this system can help us design cycles of deep focus and stress, and mitigate these with recovery periods that then allow us to focus again later with deeper attention and effort. We can use this approach to do better work, retain our focus over time, and enjoy life more outside of the job. This is a human performance lens for Social Sector performance. 

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Bad Stress
Stress has gotten a bad name in our field. Stress means something is going wrong, or the people on your team are annoying you. Tony Robbins calls stress the high performer’s way of expressing fear. We are afraid of something so we call it stressful. Calling stress by its true name has helped me understand my feelings when they arise, and work through the fear. Confronting, fixing, or just acknowledging and moving on works the best for me. 

In the past I would feel the stress and move away from it. The feeling would fester, lead to bad behaviour and also cause physical chest pain. Sometimes this cycle would continue for years. Now that I know that stress is fear, I can notice and alleviate the physical impact of this human emotion. We can identify the fear and mitigate, discount or leave it be. 

Bad stress (fear) will always find us because the human mind has evolved to notice and react to life threatening situations. We survived and evolved as a species by hyperattenuation to things that could kill us, like attacks from animals or hostile groups of people. The modern human turns those highly evolved fear detectors toward situations like public speaking, the desire for acceptance by a peer group, or reaction to our work on social media.  These modern scenarios trigger a survival response when we perceive threat. Knowing this hard-wired biology is at play, we can notice the reaction and move on with our work and life. 

Good Stress
Good stress is the cumulative physical, mental and emotional load that you put on your body and mind in pursuit of a worthy cause. My work in international disaster response gives plenty of opportunities for good stress. How can we know what is happening in a situation quickly enough to help us make decisions about what to do? How can we know if the aid we are providing is helping people in a complex situation like a war or hurricane? 

The feeling of good stress happens for me when I push up against the outer edges of my ability and find that I don’t know the right decision or path to take. That mystery is intoxicating. I remember thirsting after that ambiguity and challenge when finishing University, wanting to meet the paradoxes of life in a disaster zone. I wanted to seek out and test myself with difficult professional scenarios. 

Adding good stress to our lives makes things spicy and worth living. Adding good stress is the first part of the progression process. 

Rest
No matter the nature of the stress, we need to recover from this heavy load through rest. I used to see sleep as a weakness that took me away from pleasure or work. Now I see it as an essential part of pleasure and work. Without the recovery, peak effort is impossible. 

During the recovery period, your body and mind rebuild from the stressful episode. After you’ve just gone for a run or lifted heavy weights, your body repairs the micro damage to the tissues. If you’ve just pushed hard on analysis or writing, your mind will decompress during recovery, and make creative connections that will help your work to improve. 

Higher performance
The right mix of stress followed by a recovery period will make you stronger when you come back to your physical or mental focus. These stress/rest/perform cycles will also help you to continue to support your Social Sector mission over the long term. Life has a finite end, but a smart design for the time that we have, can help us make the best use of these passing moments. The performance equation helps you stitch them together into a life of Social Sector impact, and connected meaning outside of work. 

The cost of avoiding essential rest is clear. We may produce good results at first but the results will not last. Our intensity will wane and our ability to focus will diminish. Early in my career, I went through several cycles of refusing to rest and soon reached a burnout stage.. It was a real condition that limited my work and ability to impact the world in my chosen career. 


Designing your stress + rest = performance system
Here are three practical examples of how to use the performance equation in your social sector life:

Work
Stress: Schedule periods of deep concentration and focus. This may be uncomfortable, but know that a period of rest is coming and push through. Start with smaller ‘focus blocks’ of time;en minutes of deep focus at a time is a good start. Then slowly increase this amount of time until you reach 60 minutes. 

Rest: Take a short period of rest after each deep focus session, and a longer period of recovery at one point in the day. Look at your schedule and build in longer recovery periods. Can you take at least one day fully off from work over the weekend? Can you schedule long weekends periodically throughout the year? Can you carve out space to unplug for a week at a time or longer, at least one time per year to to reset your mind and body?  The short and long periods of recovery are not a luxury. They are an essential part of your actual work. Without them you may do more, and potentially high quality work in the short term, but will be unlikely to sustain that as you evolve as a professional and person over time. 

Performance: We feel our performance increase through the consistent and methodical periods of stress and rest. We are able to increase our periods of deep concentration to create better work. When we switch off, we will be more present with our hobbies, family and friends because we have the tranquility of knowing that we just delivered our best work using the performance formula. 

Parenting
Stress: As an introvert, the constant interaction of parenting depletes my energy. I love my kids and willingly take on the role of parent in my life. But I know that it is hard for me to interact and do the work at the constant level that kids need. Instead of feeling bad about this challenge or thinking that I’m not cut out for being a parent, I build in recovery and try to perform my best as a parent over time. For me, this means making an effort to have those interactions and be there with and for the kids during those hours. It means avoiding my phone and other distractions and playing that game outside, or reading that book (rather than zoning out on my phone while they try to kill each other). 

Rest: If we are taking on that interactive mindset and spending the hours with the kids when we have that chance, we can then schedule  time away from kids to recharge our batteries. This happens on a daily basis after they go to sleep, and it happens when we schedule time away from the normal routine through work or personal travel, to live life as an individual. 

Performance: When we come back we’ll be  better parents. We will know that we have given it our best and completely focused shot, no matter the outcome. We also know that we will get the time that we need to recenter and recharge, even if we completely deplete our energy through intense parenting interactions. 

Athletics
Stress: When we use our bodies for athletics, or even simply moving regularly by walking or riding a bike, we use stress to break down our bodies, to challenge ourselves and push our limits. For me, athletic stress comes from Triathlon and the occasional kayak/surf/paddleboard session. But it can be as simple as walking for a few minutes a day. 

Rest: We build in rest periods to let the body recover from that effort. During this rest period, tissues rebuild, muscles strengthen and the body improves in reaction to stress. 

Performance: With proper sequencing of stress and rest, our athletic performance improves. Even if we don’t measurably improve, we will still retain mobility and reduce the likelihood of injury. 

Making it work for you
Our best performance comes from doing hard things, then resting and coming back again stronger and refreshed. This applies equally to our work on social issues through our organizations, to the way we move our bodies, and to the time we spend as parents or in a family structure. Performance fundamentals of stress/recovery can put us into a present state of enjoyment where we are at our best with our families, our teams and ourselves. 

Happy Trails!

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