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For years I've struggled with anxiety and stress not making me functional. My peers often glorify the results of my work, allowing me to do interesting project
by tsunamifury 11y ago
For years I've struggled with anxiety and stress not making me functional. My peers often glorify the results of my work, allowing me to do interesting projects and working at Google, but inside a wretched ball of anxiety. Whats worse, is that the anxiety is the driver of my external success.
It wasn't till recently that I tried actuating on stress in my life, by accepting that my work is exceptional because my workflow is exceptional. I begun taking time off whenever I felt like it, self-assigning projects and ignoring unrelated requests from others etc.
That being said, some of my most stressful periods are when I'm doing nothing. The reason I got to Google is because I can't 'turn off' -- but I've come to realize that making good decisions at Google Scale requires a peaceful mind. Fear and anxiety leads to short term pain-reduction decisions that aren't often the best for the long term or large scale problem.
Its a sort of horrifying filter I haven't quite solved yet, but the first step seems to be quantifying my stress, like this article, actively reducing it, and accepting that the "turking" stage of my life needs to step back to make way for more intelligent decision-making and discipline.
- theg2 11y agoI work in a newsroom as a developer. It is often a perfectly stressful situation made worse by an open office and my own personal inability to "turn off" as you mentioned. I love my job and consider myself pretty good at it, but feel a constant stress and anxiety that I MUST channel. There are times when I simply am unable to do that and shut down mentally for a couple of hours and would love to know more about what you've done or attempted to address this issue for yourself. I worry that while this makes me very effective at my job, I'm damaging my long term health and sanity.
- atrandom 11y agoI really recommend you read this book http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achieving/dp/0062116932 http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achi... Written by a google engineer for other engineers. TLDR: practicing meditation gives you the ability to react to stress and anxiety before it blows up. I found the OP very interesting because they are essentially trying to delivery some of the benefits of mindful practices via a technical means.
- liveoneggs 11y agothis is pretty natural with age and experience on the job. A big part of maturity in IT is being able to calmly asses what is actually required instead of just go go go like a junior guy might.