Alright. So I’m probably… definitely the worst person to go to about stress. I’m a very (very very) stressful person, and I have no idea why. I always think it’s because I take on a lot of work, but I get even more stressed out when I have no work to do. Shrug emoji.

So the point in this blog post is to talk about how I deal with stress, or more specifically, how you really should not deal with stress. Right now, I’m writing this as a procrastination tactic because I have so much work to do and my brain is in shut-down mode. In a couple of hours it’ll be in scream mode, which is basically what happens when I procrastinate too much and then have to do everything all at once.

Haha!

Step 1 in dealing with stress

Look at everything you have to do all at one go. Take a look at your to-do list for the week, or even better, the number of tasks you have to go through in JIRA for the entire month. Take it all in. Don’t prioritize. Don’t divide tasks up into smaller bite-sized chunks. Look at all of it.

Step 2

Freak out about everything you have to do and take a break to calm yourself down. You’ve earned this break. Looking at your entire month in JIRA is a brain-wrecking, tear-jerking task. You deserve to pamper yourself.

Step 3

Don’t pamper yourself. Take a break in order to calm yourself down but don’t take any steps to achieve that. Let those JIRA tasks wonder around in the back of your mind… aimlessly… peacefully… until they all merge together to form one massive ball of disorder and anxiety and run to the front of your mind. They’ll scream at you. Scream back at them.

Step 4

Try to push the scary JIRA tasks back into your subconscious by thinking about other things. Sprint to the fridge and make sure you have enough milk for today. Think about that word sprint. Remember your JIRA sprint. Scream again.

Step 5

Look around your environment. Take in the world. Realize how lucky you are to even be stressed in the first place. You have things to gain and things to lose. Remember everything you could be losing right now. And also remember the laundry you were meant to do yesterday but didn’t because you were screaming.

Step 6

Do that meditation thing. Sit down, visualize your thoughts leaving your mind, focus on how you’re breathing. Fail. Think about how you’re failing. Think about your previous internet search query about how to meditate. Try to figure out why it didn’t work for you. Open Google and search it again. Freak out about how Google is evil and stealing your data. Switch to duckduckgo.

Step 7

Open JIRA again. Go to your text editor. Make a to-do list for today. Overestimate the work you can get done. Freak out about how you’ve overestimated the work you can get done.

Step 8

Write a blog post.