Reducing Internal & External Pressure

Guiding Principle: Artificial pressure and adrenalizing should be avoided at all costs. We face a list of internal and external pressures from the moment we start work each day. As we advocate for slowing down at work, it’s important to begin identifying which pressures are artificial and which are real so you can put things in perspective and prioritize your daily agendas.

For example:

• Real internal pressure: standards, morals, and beliefs we hold ourselves to
• Real external pressure: bills, rent, familial responsibilities
• Artificial internal pressure: self-imposed expectations that no one is asking for
• Artificial external pressure: workplace expectations set arbitrarily and unfairly

More often than not, the root of artificial pressure is fear-based thinking. These can be intrusive thoughts telling us that if we don’t complete a task, something negative will happen as a consequence. For example, we fear missing a deadline because it may compromise the next round of funding or fear that failing to finish one task will lead to getting fired.

Defaulting to survival mode while working increases our adrenalin and convinces us to do more and more – to work at an unnatural pace to succeed at unattainable standards that either we or our workplaces have set. There may be times that this adrenalizing feels like an accomplishment, but this is unsustainable, and what may have started off feeling productive is leading to burnout.

In this section, we’ll help identify red flags and workaholic tendencies in the workplace that can create artificial pressure and discuss boundaries we can incorporate into our work habits to protect ourselves from artificial pressure.