"Who are you stressed about?"
That's what I asked myself as I got into the car. New morning, strategic thinking day with a big successful company about to begin.
The concept: come up with initiatives that will push the company forward. High-stakes. My mind hadn't rested all weekend.
And it's not like I'm not used to this — I've had more stressful days. Decks with more complexity. I can do it again and again.
But there's always that pressure.
Good pressure vs. bad pressure
Saturday evening, my partner noticed the shift in my energy.
"It'll be great," she said.
But it's not worry, I explained. It's healthy pressure.
The kind that pushes you to refine one more idea at midnight. That finds you staring at the ceiling, connecting dots. That makes your brain go on turbo during the drive.
Here's what I've noticed after years of doing this work: the pressure never goes away completely. And the people who try to eliminate it entirely — who optimize so hard for certainty and comfort that nothing ever makes them nervous — tend to plateau at "good."
"Excellent" requires a little friction.
The signal in the discomfort
When I'm working with a manager who tells me they never feel pressure, I get curious. Either they've found something truly remarkable (rare), or they've stopped caring enough (more common).
Some of the best presentations I've given came from sessions where I didn't sleep well the night before. Some of my worst came when I was fully relaxed and over-prepared to the point of being mechanical.
The discomfort is a signal that something matters to you. That you care about getting it right.
If you're feeling a little pressure right now about something at work — that's probably a good sign. It means you're in the "excellent" range, not just coasting through "good."
(And if you're not feeling any? Maybe worth asking what happened to the last thing that genuinely challenged you.)