How to thrive in high-stress environments when being short on time

The best way to deal with stress isn’t to avoid it. Unless you live in a monastery, that’s impossible anyway.

A much better way is working with your autonomic nervous system. This system governs all of your sensations, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and actions. It does that through two subsystems, which resemble a throttle and a brake.

The throttle is located in the so-called “sympathetic nervous system”, or alertness system. When activated, this system makes us alert – or stressed when it is highly active. That’s also known as the "fight-or-flight" (or stress) response. 

The brake is located in the “parasympathetic nervous system”, or calmness system. When activated, this system makes us calm – or sleepy when it is highly active. That’s also known as the "rest-and-digest" (or calmness) response.

Together, the two systems underpin our levels of mental energy around the clock. The scientific term for mental energy, by the way, is “autonomic arousal”. It thus runs along a continuum (from high to low) governed by our alertness and calmness system:

As it turns out, we're somewhere on that “arousal continuum” as long as we are alive.

On the far-left side, there's panic. Autonomic arousal is exceptionally high: The alertness system is very active, while the calmness system is inactive. On the far-right side, there's coma. Autonomic arousal is very low: The alertness system is largely inactive, while the calmness system is highly active.

We want to avoid these extreme states for obvious reasons. However, in between them, there are states that – for better or worse – we go through on most days. 

For most waking activities, the sweet spot is in the middle. That’s where our alertness system and calmness system are in balance: Our level of autonomic arousal is moderately high, and we’re both alert and calm.

Stress is another position on that continuum, and “acute stress” — visiting that state regularly throughout our days, that is — is perfectly fine.

In our body, acute tress improves wound healing and immune function. In our brain, it speeds up cognitive processing and primes our system for faster, better, and sharper cognition. Acute stress, for example, leads to a doubling in concentration performance, according to one study.

When we’re stressed out continuously, however, problems start to arise. That’s when acute stress turns into chronic stress.

Chronic stress not only feels terrible, but is also actually bad for us, both physically and mentally. Research shows that chronic stress leads to high blood pressure, ravages our immune system and increases the risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Also, it can result in mental exhaustion and eventually burnout, which is a growing problem. The WHO defines it as "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed".

That definition points to the key to dealing with stress: Not letting acute stress turn into chronic stress — by managing it well.

Over the last weeks, I’ve introduced different techniques for pulling that off in different circumstances. These fall into two broad categories.

The first category (see practices 1 and 2 below) is about decreasing stress in real-time – by proactively using our brain’s brake to calm ourselves down. The second category (see practices 3 and 4 below) is about increasing our “stress threshold" – by deliberately using our brain’s throttle to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Taken together, these practices allow you to move down and up the arousal continuum at will – whenever your mental energy is not where you want it to be, that is. When you’re too alert (read: stressed), the first and second practice will help you lower your arousal towards being both alert and calm during the day. When you want to improve your resilience or are too drowsy, the third and fourth practice will help you increase your alertness accordingly.

Below you can find an overview of these practices. As in my earlier wrap-up posts, I limit these tips to the essentials. You can follow the links to the respective posts in the headings to delve deeper into the specifics.

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1) When overwhelmed, get into "panoramic vision" or "optic flow" for a minute or two
When we’re stressed, our pupils dilate, our field of vision narrows, and we see things in sharper relief, while everything else becomes blurry – like in portrait mode on a smartphone. That’s called “focal vision”.

By shifting ourselves into “panoramic vision” or “optic flow”, we can trigger the inverse by activating our parasympathetic nervous system (read: calm) and thus destress in real-time. Here are two highly effective ways to pull that off, depending on how much time you have.

If you don’t have much time, stare at something 20 feet away for at least 20 to 60 seconds. If you have a bit more time, take a walk around the block (or the office) for a minute or two. Both of these practices will reliably produce “panoramic vision”.

2) How to decrease stress in seconds (even during meetings or calls)
Besides vision, the second way to activate our calmness response in real-time is our breathing. Similar to shifting ourselves to “panoramic vision”, changing the ratio of our inhale to exhale kickstarts our parasympathetic nervous system and activates our calmness response.

Here's how, depending on the circumstances you find yourself in: If you're sufficiently private, do 1-3 “physiological sighs”. Doing one is simple: Inhale as deeply as possible through the nose for a count of two, add a second deep inhale on top of the first one through the nose for a count of one, and exhale as fully as possible through the mouth for a count of six.

If you're with others, go for simple exhale-emphasized breathing: Inhale through the nose until a count of four before exhaling through the mouth until a count of eight – and repeat this cycle at least four or five times, for a total of 48 to 60 seconds. With some practice, you'll be able to do it without anyone else noticing, even during meetings or calls.

3) Raise your stress threshold by cyclic hyperventilation (aka Wim Hof breathing)
While exhale-emphasized breathing triggers your calmness system, inhale-emphasized breathing does the exact opposite: It strongly activates your alertness system so that you can learn to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Here’s how: Inhale deeply through the nose, and then exhale by passively letting the air "fall out from the mouth". Do 30 breaths (in and out) in this manner. After that, exhale all your air through the mouth – and then calmly wait with your lungs empty for 15 seconds. Once you've completed that full cycle, go for two additional ones – for a total of three. 

You can not only use this practice to raise your stress threshold. Since it makes you more alert, it’s also great for waking you up – when you're having trouble getting going in the morning, say, or whenever you're more sleepy than you would want to be during the day.

4) Use cold exposure in the morning to improve resilience
By self-inducing and forcing yourself to embrace the stress of cold, you quickly learn to remain calmer when real-life stressors hit. If you want to try it for yourself, it’s safety first: Start warm and turn the water to cold at the end of your shower to avoid cold shock.

According to Prof. Andrew Huberman, the key is to aim for a temperature that evokes the following thought: "This is really cold, and I want to get out, but I can safely stay in." The colder the water, the shorter the duration of cold exposure necessary.

Go for 1-5 minutes per session, and limit it to 2-4 sessions per week – for a total of up to 11 minutes. Also, get into the cold early instead of late in the day to make the rebound increase in thermogenesis (i.e., the effect of waking you up) work for instead of against you.

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Until next week,
Christian