The Work Trap

Without the sense of unease that comes from having deadlines and expectations, we tend to do the minimum required to get by.

We also fall into the "work trap," where we feign "busy" as a way to stay in our comfort zones and avoid doing new things.

The comfort zone makes it hard and uncomfortable to do stuff outside that zone, but it also gets smaller if we don't push it. Things that were right on the edge (but still inside) of the comfort zone suddenly take a lot of effort to do.

Many of us deal with stress in two ways:

1. Problem-focused coping is when we try to figure out what can be done and what cannot.
2. Emotion-focused coping is when we are overburdened and start to whine and rant, feeling the pressure.

To help us out of this trap, we need ...