How To Perform Under Pressure

How To Perform Under Pressure

Do you wish to learn how to perform under pressure? 

Has it ever occurred to you that working under pressure is not totally bad? 

Do you wonder how people achieve excellent results despite being under pressure?

In this blog post, we share helpful insight into how to perform under pressure.

How To Perform Under Pressure

how to work under pressure

Pressure is one thing that can not be avoided in life, generally either in a corporate or social setting.

It even becomes more intense when you have to handle it all alone. 

However, when you learn how to handle pressure, it boosts your productivity.

It also develops your soft skills.

As enticing as a high level of productivity coming from well-handled pressure sounds, not many persons know how to handle pressure. 

Also, the mere thought of working under pressure scares some people and makes them feel incapacitated.

There’s no need to feel sad if you don’t do too well under pressure as you’re not the only one struggling with such problems.

There are ways you can improve yourself and learn to perform under pressure.

Let’s discover what these simple steps are.

Simple Steps on How To Perform Under Pressure 

Ways To Get Better At Working Under Pressure

To  Perform Well Under Pressure, Place Your Priorities Right

One of the major causes of pressure is misplaced priorities, especially in the workplace. 

When you place some irrelevant thing over the relevant ones, it leaves you with little time to attend to an overflowing schedule of important tasks. 

When this happens, you become stressed from struggling to meet several deadlines. 

However, when you place your priorities right, you take care of things in the order of importance.

This way, you don’t have too many important things seeking your attention simultaneously.

In all, this reduces stress and helps you perform under pressure. 

Do Not Procrastinate On Tasks

Another major cause of stress in the workplace is procrastination. 

This thief of time doesn’t only give you the so-called freedom to push your tasks from a to-do list to a will-attend-later list.

It also makes you feel like you have enough time to attend to your tasks. 

When you get distracted and push your tasks to a corner and perhaps going out for a break at the wrong time or even checking social media to catch up on your friends, you lose time to do things. 

When you finally feel like doing the tasks, you would have a little time.

The knowledge of piled-up tasks and little time to attend to them puts you under stress, increases pressure, and reduces your productivity.

If you happen to work in a team, you may end up delaying them. 

Rather than putting yourself under undue pressure and pushing yourself to meet tight deadlines, you can avoid this situation totally.

You can do this by overcoming procrastination and handling tasks at the appropriate time.

To perform under pressure, you have to learn to overcome procrastination and make proper use of your time.

Thereby increasing your productivity. 

Performing Under Pressure

Have a Routine 

One thing a routine does in our daily life is to helps organize ourselves. 

It puts us in a position of knowing what next to do after each task daily.

It also goes a long way in helping us to handle tasks in the right manner and time. 

In as much as a routine sounds limiting, when an extra task is tossed your way, it makes it doable.

With a proper follow-up on your routine which would have helped you clear out your schedule, you would have ample time to squeeze in another task for the day and get it down before the day goes down. 

That will not only increase your productivity, it will also help you avoid unnecessary pressure. 

Break Down Major Tasks into Smaller Ones; It Makes It Easy To Handle and Perform Under Pressure

The bulkiness of a task can put you under stress. 

The thought of how difficult the tasks are or the various activities required to handle the tasks can put you under serious mental and physical pressure, especially when tight deadlines are tied to the tasks.

At this point, you might go into panic mode.

Also, you’ll find it difficult to think clearly nor focus on the tasks.

Thereby affecting your performance on the task.

However, when you break down your tasks into smaller milestones, it makes the tasks more manageable and easy to handle.

Thereby reducing your stress and helping you get things done despite the pressure of the demanding tasks.

Secrets to Performing Well Under Pressure

Draw Out a Plan

Tasks are meant to be attended to following some plans. It makes them easy to finish. 

Without a plan, you’d be stuck at the beginner stage for long.

It would reduce your speed of productivity and make you feel pressured. 

With a well-structured plan that you can stick to, you feel at ease attending to your task.

It boosts your creative spirits and gives you the zeal to work. 

Also, it makes you carry out your task one after the other in an organized manner and makes it easy to handle whatever pressure the tasks might bring to you.

Learn To Ask For Help

There is always this urge or drive to do your task all alone and get it done in the workplace.

Whosoever does that is seen as skilled, resourceful, and outstanding. 

However, there is always this point when you can not be all resourceful alone. 

At this point, you need the help of your team member to tidy and round up the task. 

Do not feel less productive or ashamed of asking for help when the work pressure becomes too much to bear.

It is better to ask for help than to be late and drag your team and productivity backward. 

For your team to help, you have to let them in on what’s on the ground.

When they help you, you’d be amazed at how fast the task would be finished and how high productivity would be. 

Performance Under Pressure

Know When To Take a Break, It Eases Pressure

When faced with an overwhelming schedule, do not jump right into you with the mindset of trying to attend to them.

You will not achieve anything in that mind frame. 

Your brain is disoriented and how to get it together is not by jumping right into a messed-up schedule. 

This is the point you need to step out of your workspace, take a walk, grab a snack, or a soft drink.

What you are doing at that point is ease off intense feelings that are putting you under pressure.

The result of this is a cool mind with a plan on how to attend to the tasks. 

This practice usually comes in handy in every workplace.

It boosts energy and makes you perform better under pressure. 

Pull Your Attention Away From The Future, It Will Help You To Perform Better Under Pressure

When faced with multiple tasks, we are always in the state of what will happen in the future if I don’t attend to them all today. 

What will happen in the future will always happen no matter how you fight it. 

Always keep your head out of that cloud; it gives you peace of mind to face your task. 

It boosts your moralé and allows you to focus on what needs to be done at the present moment. 

This does not only reduce pressure, but it also increases your productivity and helps you to do perform under pressure. 

How do you perform under immense pressure

 

Acknowledge Pressure as an Opportunity To Grow

One thing that gets us tensed when we are pressured is the mindset that we are in trouble and may not come out of it. 

Pressure can not exist if there is no success to achieve. 

Also, pressure can not exist if there is no low level of productivity. 

Therefore to function better under pressure, always look at pressure situations as an opportunity to grow in your career. 

Envision it as a way of growing new skills; it will help you to handle pressure with a positive mindset.

Consequently, helping you develop yourself and perform better under pressure.

Turn Your Task into Fun Challenge

It may look impossible and childish, but when you add fun to a task, it helps you to carry out the task easily. 

The fun added to it will reduce the seriousness and the pressure that comes with the task. 

It is the same technique teachers use in teaching children in schools.

It makes them see school lessons as fun. 

Most times, you perform poorly under pressure because you see pressure as a threat.

Thinking like this will only instill fear in you.

Instead, reframe the way you think about pressure and think of it as a fun challenge you must overcome.

Thus, giving you the confidence you need to handle and perform better under pressure.

How do I stop feeling pressure

Have a Positive Mindset Towards Pressure

Research has it that people’s best potentials surface when they are faced with challenging situations.

This is a known fact as people can develop fantastic ideas, especially when there is a deadline ticking in on them.

Pressure is not to be seen as a disaster or a killjoy.

It boosts your potentiality if you allow it. 

Pressure is an aspect of everyday life that can not be eliminated. 

When you see it as something that showcases your vulnerability or something that makes you incapable of a simple task, you’re further putting yourself under emotional stress. 

However, to perform better under pressure, you need to understand that pressure creates room for growth.

It challenges you to be better than you are and boosts your confidence when you must have done it right. 

With a positive mindset, you see pressure as an everyday challenge that you can conquer, not the other way round. 

Allow Yourself to be Vulnerable

Vulnerability does not mean you need saving.

Instead, it is accepting the reality of a situation and your imperfections.

Now, acceptance does not mean giving in to challenges or giving up on yourself.

Sometimes, to overcome your fears, you need to lean into your fears and not fight them.

It’s all about saying, “yes, I know I’m not good at this, but I can do this if I learn how.”

Doing so puts you in a better position to identify all the angles from which you can approach them.

The same goes for when you’re under pressure and that the pressure of the task is really getting to you.

When you face the pressurizing situation from the point of “I am tensed, but I can do this,” it gives you a better chance of performing better than “I can not do this, and I don’t care.” 

With the former, you would utilize some skills you never knew you had in you, but you don’t even get to do anything with the latter, let alone discover how well you can perform under pressure.

Benefits of Learning To Perform Better Under Pressure

Can anxiety cause pressure in the head

Boosts Your Creativity

Performing under is one of the ways of putting your creative skill into use.

Pressure naturally makes you creative by thinking of a possible way of doing a task differently and fast.

That process widens your creative mind and makes you develop outstanding ideas in the process, boosting your creativity. 

Increases your problem-solving skills

Asides from making you creative, performing better under pressure highlights your problem-solving skills.

Thinking of a way to attend to a task that has a deadline hanging loosely in the air will push you into looking for the solution to the problem, indirectly enhancing your problem-solving skills. 

 

You’ll become Innovative

being under lots of pressure stress

The thing about pressure is that it gives room for improvement and innovation.

As a business owner, when you realize that your competitors all use the same pattern you use in solving a problem, you would want to come up with a different pattern that would work better than others. 

In that process, your innovative skill comes into use.

By the end of the day, you have created a new thing.

Therefore, developing your innovative skills.

Increased productivity

When you learn to perform under pressure, you no longer become stuck on tasks without knowing what to do.

Even more, you become better at using the pressure as fuel to push you harder to achieve tasks.

Consequently, increasing your productivity and efficiency.

Final Words on How To Perform Under Pressure

how do you handle pressure can you work well under pressure

Pressure is a thing you can not exclude in a workplace and all aspects of life.

In as much as it makes life difficult, it also gives room for development and success. 

However, to work under pressure, you have to learn how to place your priorities right.

Also, you have to learn to sort out your tasks, knowing which a more important than the other. 

Similarly, you have to have a positive and developmental mindset towards pressure.

Allow yourself to be a little bit vulnerable; it opens you up to use your skills and work towards success. 

Do not forget to add fun challenges to your task.

It makes you see less of the pressure that comes with the task and see more of the fun that is in it. 

Furthermore, do not also forget to take a break when pressured.

It gives a clear mindset to attend to your schedule. 

Finally, a good night’s rest is as important as the breath you take daily.

Its essence can never be over-emphasized.

It gives your brain enough strength to function better when pressured. 

We do hope these simple tips help you become better at handling pressure and increase your productivity.

Please, feel free to share your journey with us in the comments section below.