Stress Triggers (And How to Squash Them For Good)

A few weeks ago I wrote about Motivational Triggers, the things in that keep me excited, motivated, and inspired to push forward in my business.

But those positive, motivational triggers wouldn’t exist without their counterpart:  The stressful, anxiety-filled bumps in the road that occupy a lot of the day-to-day load, a.k.a. Stress Triggers.

Stress Triggers are the things that completely drag me down and prevent me (and my team) from doing our best work possible.  In this post, I’ll identify the exact stress triggers that crop up and throw a wrench in the day.  And then I’ll uncover the answer to squashing them for good (hint:  It’s one, cure-all, solution).

Identifying Stress Triggers

I recently picked up meditation as a daily ritual to start my day. One thing this practice is helping me learn is the ability to step back and examine my current state, with an objective point of view.

Lately, as things in my day-to-day begin to stress me out, I’m finding it easier to pause, step back, and ask myself why I’m not happy with whatever I’m currently doing.

Through doing this, I have identified a few things that drag me down in the day-to-day:

• When I must explain something to my co-workers that I feel I shouldn’t have to.
• When unforeseen issues crop up that could have been avoided.
• When a client’s need for control or ill advised priorities hijack a project and throw it off course.
• When I don’t have enough time in the day to finish my to-do list.
• When my to do list gets so long that I become paralyzed, not knowing where to start.
• When I’m micromanaging tasks or stuck in the minutia when I’d rather be focused on big-picture and/or doing creative work.

These are the things that make me question why I’m doing what I’m doing.  They turn me off to the job, making me less interested in pushing forward.  That causes me to shut down, and the whole ship loses steam.

The Solution

But here’s the thing… These Stress Triggers aren’t just “part of the job”.  Not every business owner needs to deal with these.  They can be dissected, diagnosed, and fixed for good.

The solution is this:  Systems & Process

Every one of the stress triggers I listed above is caused by a lack of a system and process.  A fully thought-through, well-documented procedure that details step by step how something can be handled and fully optimized, is gold when it comes to building any type of business.

Let’s run through my 6 Stress Triggers again and see how a procedure could fix them:

• Stress Trigger:  When I must explain something to my co-workers that I feel I shouldn’t have to.
  • Solution:  Document a procedure so you only have to think about it and explain it once.
• Stress Trigger:  When unforeseen issues crop up that could have been avoided.
  • Solution:  The procedure should be designed to avoid these issues.  Hit the bump once, then refine the procedure to avoid it from happening again.
• Stress Trigger:  When a client’s need for control or ill advised priorities hijack a project and throw it off course.
  • Solution:  Document standard procedures for every meeting agenda and sequence of a project.  With a solid project “track” in place, the client should trust not only your expertise, but the system for getting this done right.
• Stress Trigger:  When I don’t have enough time in the day to finish my to-do list.
  • Solution:  The more tasks that are documented, the more I’m able to delegate to my team, freeing me up to focus on the things I need (want) to do.
• Stress Trigger:  When my to do list gets so long that I become paralyzed, not knowing where to start.
  • Solution:  Start with a procedure for defining priorities.  I like to do this annually and monthly.  Then break down goals into smaller ones and execute the procedures you’ve built for each one.
• **Stress Trigger:  **When I’m micromanaging tasks or stuck in the minutia when I’d rather be focused on big-picture and/or doing creative work.
  • Solution:  Document only version 1 of the procedure, the bare bones.  Let your team be the one’s to update and refine it over time, since they’re the ones “on the ground” executing it, they’re able to identify inefficiencies and include little tips and tricks to make each procedure better.

Seems so simple when you think about it.  But actually it’s not.  Systemetizing a business is a ton of work.  In fact, designing our procedures has taken up the vast majority of my time this year.

A System For Creating Systems

So where do you begin?

The best place to start is by looking at one of those Stress Triggers that currently exist for you in your day-to-day.  Then follow this system for identifying, diagnosing, and squashing it for good.

When you’re in the moment of one of those Stress Triggers, ask yourself these questions:

1. Why am I stressed right now?_
   _
2. What is it that I’m working on?
3. What is it about this task that’s not working the way I want it to?_
   _
4. What should have happened that would have avoided the task from breaking down?
5. Now start from the beginning and document this task step by step, taking into account the pitfalls that you identified by answering the previous questions.

Tools

How do I go about documenting all of the procedures in my business?

These days, I find that Google Drive is the best tool for the job.  My business is increasingly reliant on Google Apps, and the Docs and Spreadsheets are easy for everyone to access, use and update.

Another great option, of course, is ProcessKit, the app that I designed.  It’s specifically designed for documenting your SOP’s.

I have come back to Google Drive because I find it easier to keep all of our procedures organized in folders and in spreadsheets.

Here’s a snapshot of the spreadsheet I’ve been using to catalog all procedures:

The purpose of this spreadsheet is to have one central catalog of all of procedures, along with relevant info about each one, such as whether they need to be updated, which team members handle executing them, etc.  I have separated them by “department” (tabs) and “categories” (headings), making it easy for any team member to quickly find the procedure they need.

And here’s a look at one of our procedures.  This is our “template” procedure used to create new procedures:

The purpose of having a template procedure is to ensure that all procedures follow a standard format.  This makes it that much easier for teammates to jump from one procedure to the next, while minimizing the “lost in translation” effect.  When multiple people are documenting procedures, things can get messy quickly since everyone has their own style.  The procedure template keeps everyone in sync.

A few key elements of the procedure template:

• Highly descriptive title.  This makes it that much easier to find the exact procedure you’re looking for when you need it.
• **A short “overview”.  **Very important, because it lets the person know how this procedure fits within the larger picture.
• Clearly defined “steps”.  I choose a unique color and larger font size for the step titles, making them stand out and easy to follow.  Without this, it’s just a long page of flat text, which is hard to parse through and easy to miss something.
• Screenshots.  It always helps to make things visual, to minimize confusion.
• Comments.  I like using Comments in Google Docs to add a, well, a comment to any step.  I might use it to note that we need to further develop a step, or offer a tip for doing something a certain way.

It’s not easy!

This will not be one of those posts that claims to provide the “easy” “fast” solution to cure your problem.  Building and refining these systems is a ton of hard work.

I spent 2+ years refining the systems in Restaurant Engine and that’s far from complete (systematizing is never complete).  I’m currently expanding my team, and this is prompting me to spend even more time documenting procedures and fine tuning the “machine”.

But by focusing your efforts on dissecting, diagnosing, and documenting every process — early and often — you’ll only need grind through these bumps in the road once, and smooth them out over time.  This will allow you to scale up and grow.

So… What are the Stress Triggers in your business?  How can you systemetize them and squash them for good?