Every Day Battles: The Small Triggers that Make Work Hard
Move Fast and Break People #3
Scrolling through Twitter, I stumbled upon a thread that asked people to write three words to describe coping with anxiety and stress. One response has stuck with me months later.
“Every. Day. Battle.”
Stress and anxiety at work often feel like this for me.
But as I thought more about it, I struggled to come up with a reason why this line resonated with me so much.
I’ve been fortunate enough to work for interesting companies, have had supportive bosses and maintain great relationships with colleagues (current and former).
Hardly sound like a battle does it?
But when I started to unpack the types of situations at work that make me feel uncomfortable or unconfident, I realized that almost all of them were actually accumulations of small events that I’d let build up.
On their own, they seemed trivial or even a little silly.
But combined, woah!
It’s tempting to limit our view of mental health, especially at work, to the “major” events: getting fired, being yelled publicly at by your boss , awful stories of discrimination or harassment.
Undoubtedly significant, these traumatic events are (thankfully) rarer than the small battles we often face at work.
Especially in startups, where responsibility is often piled onto younger workers with little structure or guidance (coaching), these small triggers become the very issues that make us unhappy at work.
So what kinds of triggers to I mean? What is it about startups that creates these conditions.
I’d argue three factors contribute to the unique every day battles many startup employees face:
A Startups’ Social Network
Picture this: you’ve just posted an update on a project that a lot of people are excited about on Slack and you pinged @here. 😱
Your thought process might be some combination of the following:
Who’s replying in the thread? How many 🔥emoji reactions did I get? Uh Oh, the CEO spotted a typo.
Although it positions itself as a way of facilitating collaboration at work, I would argue that Slack often inflicts the same dopamine rushes you get when someone likes your post on Instagram.
In the world-according-to-Slack, employees come face to face with a myriad of passive aggressive (or outright aggressive) management styles, feedback, challenges and comments that can test your ability to let things go or respond to criticism.
While some companies manage this better than others, too often Slack creates a roller coaster of emotion, distraction, intimidation and validation.
My advice: turn off all the notifications (more on that below) unless you’re explicitly tagged, mute all but essential channels and understand how that 🤔emoji reaction might be interpreted next time you think about leaving it.
(Major assist to my colleague Rob who spoke to me about this today)
Who Owns What?
Despite countless job descriptions claiming “flat” structures and autonomous decision making, there are politics in startups (just like every company).
And indeed like most organizations, there is often a tense battle over resources, budget and priorities in small teams. Yet I have observed that in startups the question “Who owns what” is not always as obvious as it seems.
Where larger, more established companies have done a lot of the hard work of structuring themselves to answer many ownership questions by default, startups are building it on the fly.
People who join startups are typically ambitious high achievers who like to act. Startups are in a constant state of motion and the kinetic energy driving these organizations can be inspiring.
In this context the ownership and structural vacuum can often lead to a feeling that employees should try to own EVERYTHING remotely related to their job.
This means that at both a department and personal level, there is a constant temptation to bite off more than you can chew, all in the pursuit of having an impact.
This is a small battle that is very near to my heart and I am making a concerted effort to work on this knee-jerk reaction to want to “own things.”
The opposite is also true and a lack of clear structure can make it difficult to know who is meant to work on something and so important topics fall through the cracks.
I think the key to navigating the murky ownership landscape is thoughtfully managing your own scope and generally under promising/over delivering.
More often than not stress and anxiety are more acute when you’re on the hook for something, especially when you’ve publicly raised your hand.
Notification Overload
A generalization: startups love to try, test and implement new tools that can aid productivity, creativity and collaboration.
It’s often easy to see why. The people who create startups like to rethink things, try stuff and build a structure that works for them.
I certainly am guilty of this on the marketing ops side of things. I LOVE free trials.
But teams and companies use so many tools and apps that it can be an overwhelming experience to try to wrap your head around all the notifications, pings and tags.
The head spinning swirl of notifications is real. It’s not unusual to have been tagged in a Google doc, mentioned in Zepelin, pinged on Slack, replied to in a Trello card, reminded from Google Calendar and cc’d in an email.
And that’s pretty much a normal day!
This constant barrage of alerts can make it nearly impossible to focus on the tasks actually on your to-do list, creating a feeling like you’re always pulled away from the things that matter.
The mental effort necessary to cope with this rolling stream of popups make it easy to get lost or forget things. More than ever, it’s vital for startup employees to create a system to handle and manage these notifications.
I like to use my calendar as my personal assistant. Big topics are blocked out for specific time slots and I have three set times per day to review email/Slack etc..
Lot of Small Stuff = Big Problem
There is no doubt that each of these elements can have positive side effects.
Slack DOES make communication easier, pushing people to own decisions/ actions brings accountability and embracing the unknown is generally a pretty good life lesson.
Yet too often in a world with such harsh mathematics of success (I’m sure you’ve heard 9/10 startups fail), these three concepts create pressure-filled cultures that make working hard sometimes.
We’ll get into more detail on how to cope with many of these concepts in later editions, but for now, just know that the small things matter.
Try This
With Slack, email and even texts from colleagues, we’re constantly connected to our jobs. It can be hard to make sure you draw a line between your home and work lives, especially at the end of the day.
This has been a real problem for me and no matter how hard I tried, I struggled to get work out of my mind.
But last summer, I had a breakthrough when I read Deep Work by Cal Newport and learned about his concept of a “shutdown ritual.”
The ritual is about setting in your mind the plan for the next day/week and then making sure you “shutdown” your brain from still entertaining ideas that are part of that plan.
Newport writes,
At the end of the work day, I would look over my calendar and tasks. I would then check in on where I stood on my major projects. After taking in all this information, I would come up with a smart plan for the remainder of the week.
The key, however, comes after you make your plan.
Your mind will inevitably be pulled back to your to-dos or that big project you’re working on, especially if you’re passionate about what you do.
To fight this temptation, Newport developed a short mantra that he would audibly repeat to himself to ensure he stayed away from thinking about work after he left the office.
Now once I have completed my review of what I’m working on at the end of the day, I repeat the following lines:
“I have completed my shutdown ritual today. I trust what I am going to work on tomorrow to deliver on my weekly to-dos. Since I trust in my plan, I am not worried about this now.”
The key insight from Newport’s shutdown ritual is not to resist your mind drifting to your work after you’ve shut your computer and headed home.
It’s the explicit acknowledgment that you have a plan you trust and you have permission to leave your work alone for the night.
It might sound silly at first, but calling attention to the fact I have a plan has given me the confidence to leave work.. at work (most of the time 😉).
