Is Stress Helping Me?
Stress — a state of emotional or mental duress that results from very demanding and high-pressure situations. Seems to fall in line with the definition that a good majority of people carry with them when they think of stress, right?
When we hear the word “stress”, we begin to think of those late nights we’ve had finishing our never-ending research paper or lab report, or that time we battled with meeting different financial obligations and only having a job at the time that was making ends meet. It can go without saying that, when we think of stress, we think of something that is unhealthy, and something that we should try to better for ourselves in order to live a more productive and healthy lifestyle. However, what if stress actually serves as one of our most direct sources of high-value production? As I come to think of it, I know it has for me.
Now, I would like to start off by recognizing that stress does bring a lot of intense and anxiety-driven emotions, something that some people may not handle too well. For some, it is much better to try and avoid stress at most costs to best care for themselves and their mental/emotional well-being. I would like to re-emphasize this and make any potential reader aware that this is not an attempt by me to advocate for more stress in people’s lives, but more so to open a discussion surrounding the other side of stress that I believe can equate to some of our most productive moments.
As I have reflected on my time in school, I very much so reminisce the times where I found myself in very stressful situations. Most of the time, these stressful moments were because of my own doing, whether that was because I procrastinating on an assignment, or simply trying to do too many different tasks at once. I recall nights where I had aimed to stay up most of the night to finish a large assignment that was due the next morning, only to find myself waking up in a state of panic with only a few hours to complete and submit my assignment.
I will be the first to admit that those moments definitely were not my brightest, however, something I came to notice was that I often performed very well in a vast majority of those assignments or tasks that I faced in a highly stressful state of being. In fact, to my own surprise, I would often produce better results/grades on those assignments than ones that I had dedicated multiple days on doing, with even time to spare. This constant pattern made me really contemplate how much influence stress has on my ability to perform and produce at an even higher quality than I do when being in a non-stressful state.
There are many different reasons why this seemingly effective correlation between stress and productivity may exist. Some argue that this is tied to our “fight or flight” response as humans and how we release a large amount of adrenaline and cortisol when we feel stressed, which allows us to focus on and perform at higher levels of productivity than usual. Others discuss how stress can allow us to be more solely concentrated on completing certain tasks, that it prevents us from falling into the trap of overanalyzing or second-guessing ourselves.
While these multiple interpretations for how stress leads to higher productivity exist, I have concluded that, at least for myself, stress actually serves to my advantage more times than not, and has allowed me to produce higher qualities of work than I otherwise would.
While I again would like to recognize the fact that not all of us react to stress or anxiety in the same way, and overall am in agreeance that too much stress can have a negative effect on our health, I believe that stress, in certain instances, can actually serve as a “natural stimulant” to higher levels of productivity, ones that we sometimes cannot reach when not presented with a stressful feeling. However, I believe that this discussion is definitely one that desires multiple interpretations and perspectives from different people, but I would like to encourage anyone who may be reading this to reflect on how you manage and treat or perceive stress, because there may be a lot more nuance to it than we have come to realize.
