Morning guys,
Yesterday I stopped writing – or at least I said I would.
Lol – here I am a day later and back at it.
What it is is that I’m beginning to feel the pressure of all of the balls I’m juggling and things are beginning to slip outside of my control.
There are so many things that need my attention and I just felt – yesterday at least – that it became difficult for me to manage everything.
Table of Contents
Feeling Pressure At Work
If you’ve read any of my previous blogs then you’ll know that I’ve got a lot of things that I’m trying to juggle at the same time.
And with this in mind – it’s easy to feel the pressure of different responsibilities mounting up and together.
Even minor slips in your routine (e.g not waking up at 430am) can screw with your routine.
Coping with pressure is something that’s very challenging when you have multiple things coming at you.
In these moments it’s easy to get overwhelmed and just not do anything at all.
For me – the first thing that I thought I would get rid of is writing.
Interestingly it’s because I wasn’t seeing any commercial return for the effort I’ve put in with writing content over the last 100 days.
You begin to question the very thing you said you believe in when 100 days pass and you’ve not seen any return in your own mind whatsoever.
And with the pressure, you feel from other more ‘immediate’ tasks means you can opt to forget the longer, and the harder path you’re trying to walk.
Coping With The Pressure And The Set Backs
The other challenge that can come is the setbacks – where you actually go backwards when it comes to the progress you’re trying to make.
For example – I’m trying to rebuild my personal blog and it means that I’m undoing several years of work that’s gone into the blog to position myself as an SEO expert.
For the first two years – the 50 odd-blogs I had written (none by me) were all designed to drive business effectively.
It was a short signed strategy that I’m now unravelling after a couple of years.
We’re literally redirecting those pages to our main websites Pearl Lemon and Pearl Lemon Leads, and therefore all of the links built alongside it are also being taken away.
So as I’m writing I’m seeing the overall traffic totally decrease because of the fundamental changes happening.
In practice – that means as I’ve been writing for the last 100 days – I’m still seeing things go down in respect of the rankings..
That’s difficult to watch – that are you’re putting in solid work for a 12-week period – you’re seeing things go backwards.
Standing Strong Under Pressure
So in my instance – I sent out an email yesterday telling my team that I wouldn’t be writing any more until the end of the month.
Lydia just accepted it – as she would as part of the team.
My writing coach Chris Sowers had something very different to say about it though:
So great to have people like this in your life who basically call you out on your shit.
And under pressure, they force you to stick to the hard path.
Or at least he’s pushing me towards this.
What also then happened after this was that I shared my frustrations with my SEO team –
And thankfully there WERE able to demonstrate that the new content I’ve been writing diligently IS beginning to get awarded.
Whilst we had a call this morning I was able to pull a Google search console result and saw this:
A whole range of keywords that are beginning to appear in Google search console – and that I’m beginning to actually get organic clicks to some of the content I’ve been writing!
And here is the Google sheet count for a number of keywords that are beginning to index on the website that is related to the new content:
[convertful id=”197358″]
I’m realising how motivating this is!
Furthermore – I am beginning to get organic clicks to pages that are about – well all of the random things that I write about 
This is exactly what I needed to see – to tether some of my actions to actual progress – as a measure that I’m headed in the right direction!
So much of standing strong is having others support you with words, and data!
In this instance, I got both – so that was really reassuring for me.
Strategies for dealing with pressure
Let’s delve a little deeper now into strategies you can use for dealing with pressure – and how I am (with varying degrees of success) am trying to deal with my own life’s pressures –
Identify your triggers
I can already think about some triggers – this would be looking at Whatsapp before 9 am Mon-Fri, and looking at WhatsApp before midday on the weekend.
Furthermore, it’s checking my emails after 6 pm on a weekday, and before midday on the weekend.
These are activities that unleash the possibility of frustration from work, dissatisfied parties in my life or otherwise.
Another trigger is not running more than 3 days in a row. This leads to a lot of pent up aggression.
So looking at simple activities (or inactivity) in your life that can rile you up is a solid place to start.
Effective Time Management Can Help You Deal With Pressure
So contrary to the ‘Eat That Frog’ style of work – I actually prefer to work upon the things I enjoy in the mornings.
For me, that’s writing blogs (like this of course) and recording video content for my YouTube channel.
These are also activities that will carry significant long term benefits if I stick with them.
Then I only have ‘scheduled calls from 11 am to 5 pm.
So in short – thinking about how to structure your time is critical to managing your work pressures appropriately!
Have a Brain Dump
When you’re feeling overwhelmed with all of the things that you need to do – there’s nothing better than a good old fashioned brain dump lol.
Listing out absolutely everything that’s on your to-do list.
Even if you do nothing with that list – it’ll make you feel miles better.
Make A Short To-Do List
Of course – you CAN use that list to build a super short-to-do list that you can use to focus upon for your immediate next activities – this helps a lot also!
Build a mini-meditation technique
For me, this is taking those three short breaths and then reframing yourself to do something new.
I still don’t do this often enough – but I’m going to keep mentioning it until this sticks in my damn head lol
Practice Gratitude
This is something that I do in the shower – I use it as a place to daydream, feel good about stuff, and feel thankful about what it is that’s being built and the general path that the business is on
Final Thoughts
Pressure – when handled correctly is a great driver for growth and for you to wield as something that can help push you forward.
You’ll have times when the pressure from work, people and otherwise will make you question absolutely everything.
In my instance though – a dose of arse-kicking from Chris and some metrics to fall back upon are definitely making me feel better.
I hope some of the above might work for you.
With that in mind – let’s keep moving forward and kicking but!
Until next time 😛
