My Mental Model for dealing with Stress
Stress should be something you recognise and can understand in yourself. Here’s a way to do that.
Back in January 2016 I joined Monzo as employee number 17. By the time I started there were more like 13 or so of us due to some early churn, and so began the most enjoyable and rewarding job of my career so far. Within months we had a banking licence, and within a few years had more than a million customers and were valued at more than £1bn.
Almost exactly four years later, in January 2020, I was the seventh longest serving employee and handed in my notice. I didn’t have a job lined up but knew that the time was right for me to leave. I agreed to a longer notice period than contracted to make sure I left the team, and Monzo, in the best place I could (I wrote about that here).
Since then I have been reflecting on what has transpired over the years; what has worked, or not, and what I have learnt, including learning that this was my time to go. Something that has been a constant for me at Monzo has been stress. It has taken all different forms, and impacted me in many different ways.
This is my mental model for dealing with stress — the stress that can be good and often necessary for breaking through a glass ceiling, how to recover from different stress types, and when to know that the stress is no longer useful to you or those around you.
I think about stress in 5 different stages, and my aim is to provide anyone who reads this with a way to think about stress so that it doesn’t become over-bearing. It is important to remember that every person’s stress levels will be different. What is Stage 1 stress for some might be Stage 3 stress for others. Find your own baseline, but ultimately stress should be something you recognise and can understand, so that you can turn your understanding of how stress impacts you into a skill.
Stage 1 — Some low-level stress is good
Being under pressure, from yourself or others, can be a useful tool for honing and finessing ideas, or for producing work to a deadline. In my time at Monzo, this has been my baseline. There has always been some sort of stress caused by external pressures, perhaps questions from the Financial Conduct Authority or meeting new regulatory deadlines. These happen often and come from almost anywhere, often unexpectedly. There are also internal pressures, sometimes meeting deadlines, product release dates or trying to make the customer experience better.
My experience has been that a low level of stress makes me perform well, without being too exhausting or overwhelming. I can usually tell I am in this state because I feel invigorated and energised to get things done. I thrive when I am here. This kind of stress can be handled through relaxing weekends and using the full holiday allowance your company affords you. I welcome Stage 1 stress.
Stage 2 — Bursts of high stress make you better and more resilient
Whilst some Stage 1 stress is good at all times, I have found that brief bursts of high stress — Stage 2 stress — can make me perform better overall and increase my resilience to stress in general. Bursts of Stage 2 stress actually increase my baseline stress so that I can generally deal with more stress whilst performing well and recovering easily.
This is how I visualise Stage 2 stress. I call it the Stress Resilience Curve.
Stage 2 stress only works when it is brief — literally in bursts. It needs to be balanced with regular periods of time back down at Stage 1 stress levels to allow full recovery. This time at the bottom of the curve also allows you to reflect and recognise how much you learnt, understand what you could do better next time, and think about how you’ll deal with the next peak.
In my time at Monzo, I think I have performed best when I have been in this curve regularly; each complete cycle of increased Stage 2 stress and being back down in Stage 1 taking about 3 months. This was particular consistent for me in 2017 and 2018, which corresponds to the time I was first managing people, building a team, and fully understanding what it meant to be a leader. For me, being on the “up” of the curve starts off by feeling exciting and interesting, and usually at the peak feels just slightly out of control and like I might not manage to achieve everything (and sometimes, culminated in me failing to achieve things). But then being on the “down” comes with a deep sense of gratitude and interest in what I’ve learnt. As I start to go “up” again, I realise that a cycle has completed and that I am better off for it.
2017–2018 were stressful for me, and there were times I felt overwhelmed, but those times were brief and were always followed by a real sense of accomplishment. Those were also some of my favourite times at Monzo.
Stage 3 — Prolonged high stress is sometimes necessary and requires intentional recovery
When Stage 2 stress persists and you don’t have the relief and recovery time afforded by regular Stage 1 stress, you will need to be intentional in finding recovery time. Prolonged high stress might be necessary for the completion of a project or to manage until you can hire more people. But you need to be aware of when you’re in Stage 3 and plan ahead for intentional recovery. In my experience, intentional recovery of this kind is grouping a few weeks of annual leave together, or having an agreed plan in place to hand over work or be on a slower project for a while. I usually prefer the holiday approach!
I have been in Stage 3 stress three of four times since I joined Monzo. They were usually to do with our team being under-staffed or the company going through a huge growth spurt like in May-August 2019. I recognise that I am in Stage 3 stress when things feel like they are more than just slightly out of control for more than a week at a time. A weekend break does not ease pressure off, and often, a few things get the “scrappy is better than nothing” approach. During these times, the intentional recovery was going to our family lake-house in Wisconsin for 2 or 3 weeks at a go and doing nothing but water sports, reading, and drinking wine.
A really important measure to ensure you are in Stage 3 stress (as opposed to Stage 4 or 5 — see below), is to take your own temperature the day before you are back to work, and at the end of your first day back. When I was in Stage 3, I always came back from my holidays feeling refreshed and ready for the next thing. After my first day back in the office I felt energised by seeing everyone again and being able to help solve problems.
Stage 4 — Super stress leads to burn out and can erode performance and trust, requiring periods of time off
If Stage 3 stress lasts for too long or you can’t find the time to intentionally recover, then things can escalate fairly quickly to Stage 4 stress. I call this super stress. In my experience, being super stressed can lead to worsening performance and a lowering of trust from your boss or your team. The most effective way to deal with Stage 4 super stress is to take a complete break from work, ideally for about 4 weeks.
When you hit Stage 4 super stress, you’ve already gone through the previous 3 stages, which means you have had a prolonged period at Stage 3 and are unable to catch a break. You already feel like things are out of control, and “scrappy is better than nothing” applies to almost everything you do. When I am at Stage 4 one of the first things that happens to me is I find it harder to control my emotions. Things that would not have bothered me, or wouldn’t have caused me to leave Stage 1 stress a few months prior, shoot me straight to Stage 4. Rationalising the impact of ideas or projects or people becomes harder, and I know I become more difficult to work with. I often end up in tears in the evenings and feel wired all of the time.
If you get to this stage, then the chances are that you are producing less good work and are communicating less effectively. This might lead to missed deadlines or over-promising. It can erode the trust your boss has in you, or that of your team.
It’s time to take a break.
After the break, you need to take that temperature test again. Are you back to feeling refreshed and excited to come back to work? Do you feel good after your first day back? I have seen many people over the years come back from a month off and be ready for another year or two, and that is a clear sign of Stage 4 recovery working wonders.
I have been at Stage 4 once, and it started in July 2019. Monzo was in the midst of a huge growth spurt and the team was flat out. We felt like we had been made to work on projects that we couldn’t succeed at due to not having the right skills in the team, and also that we were not being listened to. Some of this was my fault and I felt guilty and responsible. I had busted my gut to recruit four excellent senior hires, approaching two directly and persuading them to join, and working really hard to secure the other two. Three of them had never worked for a younger, less-experienced boss. It was emotionally draining to bring each of them along the journey with me to help them understand what an opportunity they had at Monzo.
Once they had all accepted their jobs offers I was spent. I was definitely at Stage 4. I recognised this and said to my boss at the time that I realised I couldn’t leave the team until these new senior hires were embedded, but that once they were onboarded and proved they could be successful, I would need a month off. I asked to have December off.
This was a big mistake.
By this point I was already at Stage 4 and I needed time off then and there. I should have taken 4 weeks off in July or August. In hindsight, my boss should have recognised this too, but as is often the case at fast-growing startups, most people are struggling to keep on top of their own stress levels, let alone being hyper-aware of what stage others are at.
So I soldiered through. I welcomed and successfully onboarded the new hires and made sure the team would be fine if I took a month off. But my learning from this time is that if I ever recognise I am at Stage 4 again, waiting to take time off is the ultimate sacrifice and might well lead me straight to Stage 5.
Stage 5 — Prolonged super stress that is not alleviated by time off can lead you to getting off the rocket ship
If you are at Stage 4 and you can’t take time off to recover, the stress can get buried deep and start taking things from you, causing you to trigger the final get out clause you have left — resigning.
Stage 5 stress is all-consuming. It might make your body ache, can cause you to break out in acne, have sleepless nights and weeks of tears. Absolutely nothing can stop you thinking about work, headaches become a daily occurrence, and even the prospect of getting up and getting to work feel like a huge amount of effort. For me, all of these things were true as I neared my agreed time off in December 2019. I was in pain all of the time, found it hard to think rationally about anything or make good decisions. Having a good laugh or joke with the team felt like heroin — the high was so good it felt unnatural. And then the rest of the time felt like sludge. I was becoming less and less useful to my team and my boss, and so the sooner I took a break the better.
Ultimately I had five weeks off and it took me at least two for my body to stop aching.
I did not want to resign. I loved, and still love, almost everything about Monzo. It has been an incredible journey. But the day before returning to work I felt my body tense up, and by the end of that first day I felt like I was back at Stage 5 stress levels. This is the temperature test that means it might be time to pack your bags. Ultimately, nothing is worth living through Stage 5 for more than once.
