Anxiety isn’t the same as stress, but they are related. <ul><li>Stress is a response to direct external stimuli that goes away when you tackle the problem. </li><li>But unlike stress, anxiety is impressively self-sufficient. It can happily exist all on its own, like a delicate snowflake of existential fear that won’t melt when the sun comes out.</li></ul>

The Workplace War: Work Anxiety Vs. Stress

Instead of trying to calm your way out of anxiety, reframe the feelings as excitement and convert performance-related anxiety into goal-busting arousal congruency—a fancy term for channeling that sense of adrenaline that comes from high-anxiety situations into a positive effort.The crucial part is to simply accept you are anxious. It’s easy to waste time and energy trying to fight anxiety on all fronts. So don’t do it.

Don’t Calm Down

Use your anxiety to access feelings of accomplishment. Tim Ferriss recommends going further to manage anxiety-induced low productivity. Set aside three hours to complete one small task, even if that means putting off other urgent tasks. Taking your time to get one thing off your plate is surely better than fumbling through three important tasks and completing none

Curb Analysis Paralysis

If you switch between tasks, seek distraction, and avoid addressing your goals, it could signal the beginnings of an anxiety episode. Closely monitor productivity fluctuations and you’ll essentially develop an early warning system for those anxious feelings. If you regularly beat yourself up for not doing enough then it’s very easy to miss your daily achievements. Remember that it’s not always about what you didn’t do.

Treat Your Productivity Like An Anxiety Barometer

How attached are you to your devices? Nomophobia is the fear of being without a connected device.The need to be constantly connected to information can skew priorities.  But your productivity should not depend on your ability to get online. In fact, by disconnecting, you remove a number of barriers to productivity. You can say goodbye to browser tab overload, for a start.

Go Off The Grid

If your anxiety spikes when you’re unclear of your goal, demanding high-quality feedback is important. Repeatedly trying to clarify action points can not only hamper productivity, it can make less assertive people feel burdensome to clients.

Ask For Feedback

<div>
Published on March 11, 2021 
</div><div>
7 min read
</div>Is this you? It’s 4 pm and you know that you’ve got an unrealistic amount of tasks left on your to-do list. Feelings of unease and restlessness start to creep into your mind and body as you try to fathom how you’ll get all this work done in time.&nbsp;You're not alone. <a href="https://blog.trello.com/fostering-psychological-safety?hsLang=en" rel="noopener" dir="ltr">The National Institute of Health approximates</a> that nearly 40 million adults in the U.S. are affected by anxiety. Work culture seems to be especially tough on mental health. Research from <a href="https://adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr">the Anxiety and Depression Society of America claims</a> that 56% of anxiety sufferers deal specifically with performance anxiety and fear at work.That’s right—there’s a 50-50 chance that your ‘never-bats-an-eye’ coworker or boss is feeling their work anxiety disorder too.But how can you channel these feelings and emotions to succeed in the workplace? How can you channel that anxious energy into repeatable, productive work sessions?<h2>The Workplace War: Work Anxiety Vs. Stress</h2>Feelings of anxiety can affect your mental health and exists on an emotional spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, you could have low-level emotional disquiet symptoms. For example, you’ve got a big client pitch coming up, or your car is making a strange sound and you don’t have the money to fix whatever is causing it.At the other end of the spectrum is an acute white-knuckle panic: There’s literally a bear in your yard, your house is on fire, that sort of thing.When you experience acute panic, your adrenal glands dump cortisol and adrenaline into our system, causing your blood pressure to surge and your heart to race. This energy surge enables you to (hopefully) escape from the bear's attack. Without this "fight or flight" response mechanism, you would die.But when your body reacts with “bear-in-yard” type symptoms to "client pitch"-sized problems, your anxiety disorder stops being useful.Anxiety isn’t the same as stress, but they are related.&nbsp;Stress is a response to direct<a href="http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/StudentAffairs/WomensResourceCenter/resources/WRC%20Stress%20and%20Anxiety%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> external stimuli</a> that goes away when you tackle the problem. But unlike stress, anxiety is impressively self-sufficient. It can happily exist all on its own, like a delicate snowflake of existential fear that won’t melt when the sun comes out.If you feel intense relief after finishing that client pitch, that’s workplace stress saying goodbye. If, however, you feel constant, residual dread when thinking about your workplace or employer, then that’s workplace anxiety stubbornly refusing to take a day off.Living with a residual feeling of dread takes effort—It’s like having two jobs. And anyone who’s worked two jobs knows that performance and productivity always take a hit.Nature has<a href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-what-motivates-us-to-get-up-for-work-every-day" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> programmed you</a> to want to feel productive because it’s been your biological imperative for so long. Perhaps they had an anxiety disorder or depression, but there was nothing to help them with their mental health. Resource scarcity is an existential threat, and the anxiety symptoms surrounding it is an evolutionary relic of tougher times.But our nervous systems haven’t figured that out yet.The anxiety and stress wear you out, and your productivity drops lower. You punish yourself for your lack of output with an anxious response, then you rinse and repeat.<h2>5 Tactics For Overcoming Workplace Anxiety</h2>Here is a roundup of differing ideas about how to channel your anxiety. Find one that works for you:<h3>1. Don’t Calm Down</h3>You might think the natural response to handling performance anxiety at work is to take some deep breaths, find a quiet spot, and gather your thoughts.Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School disagrees.&nbsp;She advocates “anxious reappraisal.” Instead of trying to calm your way out of anxiety, reframe the feelings as excitement and convert performance-related anxiety into goal-busting<a href="http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-a0035325.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> arousal congruency</a>—a fancy term for channeling that sense of adrenaline that comes from high-anxiety situations into a positive effort, rather than simply trying to “keep calm and carry on” when it doesn’t feel right.The crucial part is to simply accept you are anxious. It’s easy to waste time and energy trying to fight anxiety on all fronts. So don’t do it.<h3>2. Curb Analysis Paralysis</h3>Anxious people are all too familiar with the lethargy-inducing hassle and fear that comes with having to make lots of decisions. Combating decision fatigue takes more than just wearing the same outfit every day, like Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg do. You have a limited amount of willpower each day, so you need to treat your decision-making moments carefully.Competing priorities and a lack of goal-setting will eventually lead to decision fatigue in your working life.&nbsp;As <a href="https://hbr.org/2012/03/the-magic-of-doing-one-thing-a.html" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr">the Harvard Business Review points out</a>, multi-tasking robs you of clear stopping points. Those are crucial to your sense of accomplishment.Instead, use your anxiety to access feelings of accomplishment. If you use Trello, rather than creating a card or checklist that reads ‘finish article,’ break it down into micro-tasks.<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/NxHK8eJ21-_E_Kln-GWIBsh9uhYlfkt0n3X5JhmkFechJy5pXvb4FlkouujYLGVh6wXJ58wuQTHvuH12q4_xGCCA0jw02r6AfFKmV-FCqpXEmfY56bZfSr5zWJGBYl4LNrSgFJUH" width="680" height="680">Checking off that item is a win and, psychologically, small achievements lead to bigger ones.Tim Ferriss recommends going further to manage anxiety-induced low productivity.<a href="http://tim.blog/2013/11/03/productivity-hacks/" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> Set aside three hours</a> to complete one small task, even if that means putting off other urgent tasks. Taking your time to get one thing off your plate is surely better than fumbling through three important tasks and completing none.<h3>3. Treat Your Productivity Like An Anxiety Barometer</h3>Research conducted at<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/how-depressed-people-use-the-internet.html" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> Missouri University of Science and Technology</a> suggests that fluctuations in focus can be an early warning sign of impending anxiety. If you switch between tasks, seek distraction, and avoid addressing your goals, it could signal the beginnings of an anxiety episode.&nbsp;Closely monitor productivity fluctuations and you’ll essentially develop an early warning system for those anxious feelings. If you regularly beat yourself up for not doing enough then it’s very easy to miss your daily achievements. Remember that it’s not always about what you didn’t do.<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/YBikSRXFI0kaRw5ECByynZA4p1KmzSxxkhrWuxRIst7uKJCUev91ccFG8L_YlXcm4WFKvvg89ovra-4RsQ8sbCx5BNEp3w9JfZ7l0NwRenhi39swDdPquRUcTne1-3Vg4sXGFFkD" width="297" height="297">You can even label your Trello cards to document how tasks make you feel. Record fluctuations in motivation and mood. This will help you spot goal-related triggers and clarify where work-related anxiety comes from.Is it a specific type of task? Is it a specific client? Is it deadline-related?&nbsp;This technique will build a clearer picture of patterns that can trigger feeling overwhelmed. Once you know what moves the anxiety needle up, you can plan your work accordingly to keep it at an even keel.<h3>4. Go Off The Grid</h3>How attached are you to your devices? Nomophobia is the fear of being without a connected device.According to<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-study-nomophobia-mdash-fear-of-being-without-a-mobile-phone/" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> Scientific American</a>, nomophobia arises according to “the degree to which we depend on phones to complete basic tasks and to fulfill important needs such as learning, safety and staying connected to information and to others.”The need to be constantly connected to information can skew priorities. In a recent<a href="https://www.kiwimovers.co.uk/news/does-england-have-snakes-what-people-google-before-moving-to-london-and-the-uk/" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> study</a> by a London shipping and logistics firm, data scientists analyzed the most common Google searches related to popular tourist destinations around the world. The most common search was ‘Does ______ have WiFi?’ This even applied to searches related to zoos and beauty spots.Your productivity should not depend on your ability to get online.&nbsp;In fact, by disconnecting, you remove a number of barriers to productivity. You can say goodbye to browser tab overload, for a start. In fact, as Claire Karjalainen points out in this piece about airplane productivity, productive people actively seek out no WiFi zones.Author and founder of HARO, Pete Shankman, booked a return flight to Tokyo with the sole intent of writing a book distraction-free.Download important information into a text document, then disconnect from the WiFi and watch your output levels spike.<h3>5. Ask For Feedback</h3>If your anxiety spikes when you’re unclear of your goal, demanding<a href="https://blog.trello.com/process-feedback-at-work-stress?hsLang=en" rel="noopener" dir="ltr"> high-quality feedback</a> is important. Repeatedly trying to clarify action points can not only hamper productivity, it can make less assertive people feel burdensome to clients.Research conducted by<a href="https://approve.io/blog/itll-be-good-for-your-portfolio-the-toxic-phrase-driving-up-anxiety-for-uk-freelancers" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr"> Approve.io</a>, a rapid feedback tool for freelancers working remotely, revealed that feedback without clear and specific action points can lead to anxiety.Organizational psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper, who contributed to the study, believes meaningful feedback is the key to reducing productivity-related anxiety. He writes:“The physical isolation freelancers experience from their clients means it’s often a lot harder to get meaningful, actionable feedback on projects. Feedback and requests by email may not be sufficiently clear.Lack of clarity from clients can lead to stress for the supplier, especially if they’re worried about bothering their client with requests for feedback or elaborations.”He recommends regularly scheduled face-to-face meetings, in-person or over video, to keep the feedback loop on schedule—and keep that unnecessary anxiety at bay.&nbsp;<h2>Remember To Go Easy On Yourself</h2>Forgive yourself, if necessary. And remember that productivity doesn’t always equal performance.None of the techniques above will have an impact unless you’re ready to stop punishing yourself today for how your anxiety affects productivity. It’s unlikely you’ll ever completely stop those stomach knots appearing from nowhere, so don’t waste precious energy trying.&nbsp;Instead, use that energy to achieve small wins and incremental gains that feed a sense of accomplishment and progress.The spectrum of anxiety, including the vast range of clinical anxiety diagnoses, is varied and complex. People may experience anxiety in mild to moderate or occasional forms, or may live full-time with a serious anxiety disorder. If you feel, at any time, that your anxious feelings or mental health are negatively affecting your day-to-day life, please don't hesitate to seek professional help.Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/trello" rel="nofollow noopener" dir="ltr">@trello</a>)!

56% of anxiety sufferers deal specifically with performance anxiety at work. Here are five proven theories to help you manage work anxiety in a productive way.

Stashed ideas

Is this you? It’s 4 pm and you know that you’ve got an unrealistic amount of tasks left on your to-do list. Feelings of unease and restlessness start to creep into your mind and body as you try to fathom how you’ll get all this work done in time.

You're not alone. <a href="https://blog.trello.com/fostering-psychological-safety?hsLang=en">The National Institute of Health approximates </a>that nearly 40 million adults in the U.S. are affected by anxiety. Work culture seems to be especially tough on mental health. Research from <a href="https://adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey">the Anxiety and Depression Society of America claims </a>that 56% of anxiety sufferers deal specifically with performance anxiety and fear at work.

That’s right—there’s a 50-50 chance that your ‘never-bats-an-eye’ coworker or boss is feeling their work anxiety disorder too.

But how can you channel these feelings and emotions to succeed in the workplace? How can you channel that anxious energy into repeatable, productive work sessions?

Feelings of anxiety can affect your mental health and exists on an emotional spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, you could have low-level emotional disquiet symptoms. For example, you’ve got a big client pitch coming up, or your car is making a strange sound and you don’t have the money to fix whatever is causing it.

At the other end of the spectrum is an acute white-knuckle panic: There’s literally a bear in your yard, your house is on fire, that sort of thing.

When you experience acute panic, your adrenal glands dump cortisol and adrenaline into our system, causing your blood pressure to surge and your heart to race. This energy surge enables you to (hopefully) escape from the bear's attack. Without this "fight or flight" response mechanism, you would die.

But when your body reacts with “bear-in-yard” type symptoms to "client pitch"-sized problems, your anxiety disorder stops being useful.

Anxiety isn’t the same as stress, but they are related.

Stress is a response to direct<a href="http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/StudentAffairs/WomensResourceCenter/resources/WRC%20Stress%20and%20Anxiety%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf">external stimuli </a>that goes away when you tackle the problem. But unlike stress, anxiety is impressively self-sufficient. It can happily exist all on its own, like a delicate snowflake of existential fear that won’t melt when the sun comes out.

If you feel intense relief after finishing that client pitch, that’s workplace stress saying goodbye. If, however, you feel constant, residual dread when thinking about your workplace or employer, then that’s workplaceanxiety stubbornly refusing to take a day off.

Living with a residual feeling of dread takes effort—It’s like having two jobs. And anyone who’s worked two jobs knows that performance and productivity always take a hit.

Nature has<a href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-what-motivates-us-to-get-up-for-work-every-day">programmed you </a>to want to feel productive because it’s been your biological imperative for so long. Perhaps they had an anxiety disorder or depression, but there was nothing to help them with their mental health. Resource scarcity is an existential threat, and the anxiety symptoms surrounding it is an evolutionary relic of tougher times.

But our nervous systems haven’t figured that out yet.

The anxiety and stress wear you out, and your productivity drops lower. You punish yourself for your lack of output with an anxious response, then you rinse and repeat.

5 Tactics For Overcoming Workplace Anxiety

Here is a roundup of differing ideas about how to channel your anxiety. Find one that works for you:

You might think the natural response to handling performance anxiety at work is to take some deep breaths, find a quiet spot, and gather your thoughts.

Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School disagrees.

She advocates “anxious reappraisal.” Instead of trying to calm your way out of anxiety, reframe the feelings as excitement and convert performance-related anxiety into goal-busting<a href="http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-a0035325.pdf">arousal congruency </a>—a fancy term for channeling that sense of adrenaline that comes from high-anxiety situations into a positive effort, rather than simply trying to “keep calm and carry on” when it doesn’t feel right.

The crucial part is to simply accept you are anxious. It’s easy to waste time and energy trying to fight anxiety on all fronts. So don’t do it.

Anxious people are all too familiar with the lethargy-inducing hassle and fear that comes with having to make lots of decisions. Combating decision fatigue takes more than just wearing the same outfit every day, like Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg do. You have a limited amount of willpower each day, so you need to treat your decision-making moments carefully.

Competing priorities and a lack of goal-setting will eventually lead to decision fatigue in your working life.

As <a href="https://hbr.org/2012/03/the-magic-of-doing-one-thing-a.html">the Harvard Business Review points out </a>, multi-tasking robs you of clear stopping points. Those are crucial to your sense of accomplishment.

Instead, use your anxiety to access feelings of accomplishment. If you use Trello, rather than creating a card or checklist that reads ‘finish article,’ break it down into micro-tasks.

Checking off that item is a win and, psychologically, small achievements lead to bigger ones.

Tim Ferriss recommends going further to manage anxiety-induced low productivity.<a href="http://tim.blog/2013/11/03/productivity-hacks/">Set aside three hours </a>to complete one small task, even if that means putting off other urgent tasks. Taking your time to get one thing off your plate is surely better than fumbling through three important tasks and completing none.

3. Treat Your Productivity Like An Anxiety Barometer

Research conducted at<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/how-depressed-people-use-the-internet.html">Missouri University of Science and Technology </a>suggests that fluctuations in focus can be an early warning sign of impending anxiety. If you switch between tasks, seek distraction, and avoid addressing your goals, it could signal the beginnings of an anxiety episode.

Closely monitor productivity fluctuations and you’ll essentially develop an early warning system for those anxious feelings. If you regularly beat yourself up for not doing enough then it’s very easy to miss your daily achievements. Remember that it’s not always about what you didn’t do.

You can even label your Trello cards to document how tasks make you feel. Record fluctuations in motivation and mood. This will help you spot goal-related triggers and clarify where work-related anxiety comes from.

Is it a specific type of task? Is it a specific client? Is it deadline-related?

This technique will build a clearer picture of patterns that can trigger feeling overwhelmed. Once you know what moves the anxiety needle up, you can plan your work accordingly to keep it at an even keel.

How attached are you to your devices? Nomophobia is the fear of being without a connected device.

According to<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-study-nomophobia-mdash-fear-of-being-without-a-mobile-phone/">Scientific American </a>, nomophobia arises according to “the degree to which we depend on phones to complete basic tasks and to fulfill important needs such as learning, safety and staying connected to information and to others.”

The need to be constantly connected to information can skew priorities. In a recent<a href="https://www.kiwimovers.co.uk/news/does-england-have-snakes-what-people-google-before-moving-to-london-and-the-uk/">study </a>by a London shipping and logistics firm, data scientists analyzed the most common Google searches related to popular tourist destinations around the world. The most common search was ‘Does ______ have WiFi?’ This even applied to searches related to zoos and beauty spots.

Your productivity should not depend on your ability to get online.

In fact, by disconnecting, you remove a number of barriers to productivity. You can say goodbye to browser tab overload, for a start. In fact, as Claire Karjalainen points out in this piece about airplane productivity, productive people actively seek out no WiFi zones.

Author and founder of HARO, Pete Shankman, booked a return flight to Tokyo with the sole intent of writing a book distraction-free.

Download important information into a text document, then disconnect from the WiFi and watch your output levels spike.

If your anxiety spikes when you’re unclear of your goal, demanding<a href="https://blog.trello.com/process-feedback-at-work-stress?hsLang=en">high-quality feedback </a>is important. Repeatedly trying to clarify action points can not only hamper productivity, it can make less assertive people feel burdensome to clients.

Research conducted by<a href="https://approve.io/blog/itll-be-good-for-your-portfolio-the-toxic-phrase-driving-up-anxiety-for-uk-freelancers">Approve.io </a>, a rapid feedback tool for freelancers working remotely, revealed that feedback without clear and specific action points can lead to anxiety.

Organizational psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper, who contributed to the study, believes meaningful feedback is the key to reducing productivity-related anxiety. He writes:

“The physical isolation freelancers experience from their clients means it’s often a lot harder to get meaningful, actionable feedback on projects. Feedback and requests by email may not be sufficiently clear.

Lack of clarity from clients can lead to stress for the supplier, especially if they’re worried about bothering their client with requests for feedback or elaborations.”

He recommends regularly scheduled face-to-face meetings, in-person or over video, to keep the feedback loop on schedule—and keep that unnecessary anxiety at bay.

Forgive yourself, if necessary. And remember that productivity doesn’t always equal performance.

None of the techniques above will have an impact unless you’re ready to stop punishing yourself today for how your anxiety affects productivity. It’s unlikely you’ll ever completely stop those stomach knots appearing from nowhere, so don’t waste precious energy trying.

Instead, use that energy to achieve small wins and incremental gains that feed a sense of accomplishment and progress.

The spectrum of anxiety, including the vast range of clinical anxiety diagnoses, is varied and complex. People may experience anxiety in mild to moderate or occasional forms, or may live full-time with a serious anxiety disorder. If you feel, at any time, that your anxious feelings or mental health are negatively affecting your day-to-day life, please don't hesitate to seek professional help.

Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter ( <a href="https://twitter.com/trello">@trello </a>)!

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

How To Channel Your Work Anxiety In A Productive Way

The Workplace War: Work Anxiety Vs. Stress

Don’t Calm Down

Curb Analysis Paralysis

Treat Your Productivity Like An Anxiety Barometer

Go Off The Grid

Ask For Feedback

IDEAS ABOUT

MORE LIKE THIS

6 tips to help you manage your day AND your anxiety when working from home

8 Ways to Conquer Social Anxiety at Work

How Can I Manage My Social Anxiety at Work?

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

How To Channel Your Work Anxiety In A Productive Way

The Workplace War: Work Anxiety Vs. Stress

Don’t Calm Down

Curb Analysis Paralysis

Treat Your Productivity Like An Anxiety Barometer

Go Off The Grid

Ask For Feedback

IDEAS ABOUT

MORE LIKE THIS

6 tips to help you manage your day AND your anxiety when working from home

8 Ways to Conquer Social Anxiety at Work

How Can I Manage My Social Anxiety at Work?

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career