Stress: When It Helps, When It Hurts, and How to Bring It Back Into Balance
The Performance Power of (Short-term) Stress
Stress often gets a bad reputation.
A lot of people think of stress as something negative, lurking behind every unread email, calendar invite, or long 'quick question' message. But stress isn’t always bad. If we manage it well, it can help us focus, do better, and tackle challenges we might otherwise avoid.
49% of Americans experience significant daily stress.
- Gallup’s Global Emotions Report
The real issue isn’t stress itself.
Unmanaged stress causes problems.
As project managers, we routinely track schedule, budget, scope, and risk. Yet we rarely discuss stress as a delivery risk. When pressure becomes chronic, decision-making deteriorates, mistakes increase, and collaboration suffers.
There’s a difference between pressure that helps you move forward and pressure that drains your energy, patience, sleep, and clear thinking. One helps you get into a productive state. The other leads to burnout.
The trick is learning the difference.
The Good Side of Stress
Psychologists call positive stress 'eustress.' It’s connected to growth, motivation, challenge, and achievement. Research shows that moderate stress can improve alertness and performance, especially when people feel in control and have a clear purpose.
Not all stress is harmful. Moderate levels of stress can sharpen focus, improve motivation, and boost performance.
You’ve probably experienced this already.
Preparing for a big presentation
Launching a project
Running an event
Solving a crisis
Starting something new
Your mind sharpens. You focus on what matters most, and distractions fade away. Sometimes, you get three days’ worth of work done in just six hours, powered by coffee and determination.
This isn’t healthy in the long run, but it works well in the short term.
I remember one of the most intense examples of this while running an Innovation Jam at Shell.
The mission was massive: to run an online brainstorming event on innovation and solutions with thousands of senior staff worldwide over 48 hours. The goal was to identify and solve major organizational challenges in real time.
The challenge?
We had a very small core team running the entire thing.
According to the Global Sleep Atlas, the average person sleeps about 7 hours per night, but during a demanding project, I managed only three hours of sleep each night for nearly three days while our team collaborated across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. At 2am, I helped kick off the next phase and made sure everything stayed on track.
Was it stressful? Completely.
Did I enjoy being awake at 2 a.m., talking strategy while trying to grab a coffee to keep me going? Not especially.
But I believed in the project.
That mattered.
The stress helped us focus. The pressure brought the team closer. Everyone understood the mission and trusted each other. We became more adaptive, more collaborative, and somehow energized, even though we were exhausted.
Meaningful pressure creates synergy.
Key takeaway: Stress combined with purpose, autonomy, teamwork, and progress usually feels rewarding, even when difficult.
When Stress Turns Toxic
Now let’s look at the other side.
Not all stress creates momentum.
Some stress simply creates noise.
I went through this during a digital strategy project for an HR team. We spent weeks working with stakeholders and participants to prepare for a workshop. The timeline was tight, and I was juggling several commitments at once.
While I was away handling another task, my team called with bad news.
A client-side team member decided to independently rework large sections of the workshop content.
Not collaboratively.
Not aligned with the agreed process.
They simply added chaos to the project by working on their own.
This kind of stress felt completely different.
Instead of sharpening focus, it undermined trust.
Instead of creating flow, it created uncertainty.
The night before the workshop, I hardly slept. My mind kept running through problems, risks, and backup plans at 3 am, like a Netflix show that just keeps playing.
The next day was harder because of it.
Not getting enough sleep made me less patient, less focused, and more tired. Small problems felt bigger. Making decisions got harder. The stress stopped being helpful and turned toxic.
Research from the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Health Publishing consistently shows that chronic stress impacts sleep, cognitive performance, emotional regulation, and physical health.
Put simply, your brain stops helping you solve problems and starts seeing everything as a threat.
That’s when stress loses its usefulness.
At this point, it’s crucial to distinguish between helpful and harmful stress.
Helpful stress usually includes:
A clear goal
A sense of purpose
Some level of control
Team support
Visible progress
A defined timeframe
Harmful stress usually includes:
Uncertainty
Misalignment
Lack of control
Poor communication
Constant interruption
Undefined expectations
Ongoing pressure with no recovery
One creates focus.
The other creates emotional static.
Key takeaway: The impact of stress depends more on context and support than on sheer workload.
The “Flow Zone”
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described flow as a state in which challenge and skill are balanced. You’re stretched, but not overwhelmed. Focused, but not panicked.
This is where many high-performing teams operate at their best.
Not relaxed. Not chaotic. Engaged.
In project work, innovation sessions, leadership, and creative problem-solving, some pressure is often needed. Deadlines push decisions. Limits encourage creativity. Momentum helps teams stay on track.
Without pressure, many projects drift endlessly into the vague corporate space called 'next quarter.'
Key takeaway: Sustainable high performance requires a balance between flow and recovery periods.
Even elite athletes don’t sprint continuously.
How to Bring Stress Back Into Balance
Here are some practical ways to manage stress before it takes over.
1. Separate Real Problems from Imagined Problems
Stress loves ambiguity.
When your mind feels overloaded, everything can seem equally urgent. Write things down and figure out what the real issue is.
Ask:
What specifically is the problem?
What can I control?
What action can I take today?
Getting clear on the problem can ease anxiety faster than you might expect.
2. Protect Sleep Like It’s Part of the Project Plan
Because it is.
Poor sleep makes you more reactive and less able to think clearly. Not getting enough rest hurts your focus, memory, and decision-making.
When stress rises, sleep is usually the first thing sacrificed.
Ironically, sleep is what you need most.
3. Watch for “Fake Urgency.”
Not everything marked urgent is important.
Some people create pressure because they’re disorganized. Others do it because anxiety spreads quickly through teams.
Early in my career, I treated every deadline as an emergency. I thought the best project managers were the ones who could constantly operate under pressure. Over time, I realized that teams don't perform at their best when everything is urgent. They perform best when they can distinguish genuine priorities from noise.
Learn to pause before absorbing someone else’s panic.
Having a calm person in a chaotic meeting is extremely valuable.
4. Build Recovery Into High-Pressure Work
After major deadlines or intense delivery periods, teams need decompression time.
The Innovation Jam was successful because the stress participants experienced was perceived as manageable and helpful to achievement, aligning with the concept of challenge stress as described in recent research.
But keeping that pace for weeks at a time eventually led me to feeling burned out.
5. Focus on Shared Purpose
Teams handle pressure better when they understand:
Why the work matters
What success looks like
Who is responsible for what
Having a clear purpose changes how pressure feels.
Confusion only makes pressure feel worse.
The Truth About Stress
Stress is neither inherently good nor bad.
Sometimes, stress helps you achieve something meaningful. It sharpens your focus, brings teams together, and drives growth. At times, stress is a warning signal that systems, communication, expectations, or boundaries are breaking down.
The goal is not to eliminate stress entirely.
The goal is to recognize which type of stress you're experiencing.
After the Innovation Jam, I noticed that my concentration dropped for several days. I had achieved a great result, but I underestimated how much recovery my mind needed afterward. So be ready to give yourself a break.
Lean into the kind of stress that energizes you, sharpens your focus, builds teamwork, and drives momentum. But pay attention when pressure starts creating exhaustion, confusion, or fear. Those are signals that something needs to change.
And if you ever find yourself awake at 2 am on a global project call, eating vending machine snacks while trying to coordinate innovation across three continents, just make sure the coffee is good.
