201 Science-Backed Methods to Manage Stress in Periods of Overwork

Today we're getting those big stressed out accounting bodies moving. With today's special guest science, we're going to talk through science backed ways to better manage stress. Stress is going to happen, gang. Busy seasons are going to come and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But there are good and bad ways to handle it. I'm looking at you tub of those little tiny chocolate brownies from Costco that is like smaller than a normal brownie. So it's like they don't count because they're itty bitty. I mean you could do like a whole handful of those is like maybe a brownie and a half. You're working hard. You deserve it. I shared before. I'm a big fan of Huberman Lab podcast. He's like the Andrew Huberman's kind of the leading, I don't know, well being think boy. Right now he's a neuroscientist at Stanford, but a real think bro. So I've rounded up a collection of helpful tidbits that I picked up from his podcast about stress management because stress isn't necessarily bad. Like stress evolutionary is like this line's going to eat me right now. I need to focus on, on running as fast as I can. So stress comes from a good place, but if you're an accountant, you know it can also take you to a very bad place. So running through seven, seven notes that I jotted down from various podcast episodes there of like real things you can do, we're gonna alternate between like actual like physical things and like brain things. Because we not only have control over like what we physically decide to do with our bodies, we also have the power to exercise control over what's happening up in that noggin. Number one, let's get an easy win. Okay. They physiological sigh, which is like, I don't know if that's a scientific name or what, but some of us are already groaning. Okay, this is what it is. You do a deep inhale followed by a second short inhale. So you do a deep inhale and then a second short inhale and then a long exhale. I don't know about you. It's nice. Like it feels good. It's, it's a real thing. The whole like deep breaths and like the exhale needing to be longer than the inhales. I do like the long inhale and then like a second short one for some reason, maybe because I get bored on a long inhale that just the second one creates more interest. But it really does make a difference. And you'll notice the theme with a lot of these things is you get in these super stressed states where you're totally locked in and you have tunnel vision and you're just in a not very healthy state and simultaneously unaware of the state state that you are in and like, unwilling to take yourself out of it or zoom out and get perspective of like, okay, I'm now in a day, in a busy season, in a year, in a window of my life, when I'm doing this thing. Reality is most of the stuff I'm stressing about today, 48 hours from now, never going to think about again. So how much should I really be, like, sacrificing my wellbeing for this? Okay, number two, Number one was a physical thing. Number two is more of a mental thing. Be aware of stress. So can you, like, disassociate yourself from the stress that you're feeling and almost kind of inspect it? We sort of did this with the. The fear setting exercise maybe a month or two ago, which is centered on making the time to basically make a list of your biggest fears, the things that give you anxiety, and for each fear, go through a process of, like, assessing its kind of legitimacy and the likelihood of it happening. And if it did happen, what you would do to mitigate it. Not to dismiss all of these fears because many of these fears will be valid, but to just look at them more analytically. Because if we don't pause and take the time to do that, they'll just like, I don't know. I'm convinced that our brain, just for many of us, needs this passive level of anxiety and it just finds things to pull in. No matter what your life circumstances, stances are like, if you look back on your life, the lowest periods where you were struggling the most, and maybe you actually justifiably should have been concerned. If yourself back then could have seen where you were now and how privileged you are, you'd be like, that guy's got nothing to worry about. But we still find a way to worry about things. So be aware of that stress and identify what is good stress and what is ultimately not helpful stress. Because stress, it can be good. But there's a lot of stresses that we feel that are not productive. Maybe it's something that you don't have any control over. Maybe it's something from someone who said something that was irritating to you or you upset someone and you really shouldn't, like, let them get in your head to ruin your day. There are good stresses. The stresses that are like okay, I'm going to work late tonight because I got to get this thing done that I committed to, and that's just what the situation is. No use feeling bad about it. Like, no need to feel bad for myself. That's just where we are. I'm going to harness that stress to, like, motivate me to get this thing done. And then there's the not helpful stress. Oftentimes more like around social things or letting people down who are a long ways down the list of people you need to be worrying about. Letting down versus keeping happy. Right. You don't want to turn up for work every day, putting on the cape for everybody at work and then, you know, letting down the people at home who actually matter. You don't want those people just getting the leftovers. So those folks who are not at the top of the list are the people you need to keep happy. If they're the ones stressing you, that's probably not helpful. Like constructive stress, gang. This episode is sponsored in part by Accruer. Have you seen this one yet? We did a demo day on the main channel for it a couple few months back. So Accruer, all it does is it connects to your QuickBooks online files. And whenever it sees, like in an expense or an invoice or anything like that in the description, I think the phrasing is for period, like date to date, it will automatically post journal entries to accrue that revenue, that expense, that payroll journal entry, even to accrue that across periods, it will prorate it by like the number of days in a month. Even if you go in and you change that down the road, you change that description to a different date, it will update all those accrual journal entries. So if you've got clients doing contracts where that revenue gets recognized over, you know, a year or two, a number of months, and you got a whole bunch of those going on at the same time. Makes that super simple. If you got clients doing prepaid expenses and you actually track them, makes that super simple as well. The payroll journal thing was actually really cool to me because it will then, like, figure it out based on the number of days in either period. It's all super smart. By a company called Finoptimal. They're building like a whole bunch of these little kind of tools for public accountant folks like us. To check this one out, head over to accruer.com or check out the link in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by cloud. Cloud accountant staffing. Y' all know I'M a big advocate of hiring offshore. One of the biggest changes I made in my firm, we transitioned a Legacy firm from 100% onshore local hiring to 100% distributed US and then 100% distributed globally. Hiring and honestly is the best thing we did. It virtually alleviated all of our hiring pains, completely changed how we thought about staffing projects and the type of work that we wanted to bring on. Because you know what, the folks we hired offshore, really freaking good. A lot of misconceptions around the type of people that you hire offshore because your enterprises will oftentimes use offshore folks for like menial work. Absolutely not the case. There are tens of thousands of people working for big four accounting firms. You know, offshore outside the US you can get folks that can do anything from tax to junior level stuff to super senior level stuff. But try to do that yourself, figure it all out yourself. That's going to be hard. It's going to be scary. Really good place to start. Cloud accountant staffing. They will hold your hand through that process. Their story is super simple. An accounting firm in the US hired a bunch of people in the Philippines, fell in love with them, but didn't fall in love with the fees they were having to pay to the staffing companies that were managing these employees. So they built their own solution and now they're starting to pull other accountants in. I'd encourage you. A big tipping point for me was when I was like, I'm going to stop being opinionated on this and just try to learn. And so I talked to the other practitioners, I talked to some of the vendors that would like help you get into offshoring. That really opened things up for me. So if you've been on the fence, I'd encourage you to at least learn about it and you start heading down that path. Consider cloud accountant staffing number three. Back to a more physical thing. This one is wild. Look at something far away for real. Like that's a thing. So interestingly, stress is associated with intense focus. And when you are stressed, your pupils actually dilate, changing like the actual shape of your eyes lens. And it's what leads to what they call this soda straw focus, where your field of view gets really, really narrow. So if you think about periods. Well, in fact, if you're just looking at your monitor right now or whatever you're doing, think about what is the stuff at the edges of your peripheral vision for. So right now for me, that's a window on my right and a lawn rocking chair that's on the Deck and it's super windy and it's getting blown all around and I should probably do something about it. On the left hand side is a white wall and like just I can barely see a light stand. And so if you're sitting at your office looking at your monitor, like what are those things around the boundaries of, of your peripheral vision? If you think about when you are in a super focused state staring at that monitor in like, in this like focused, really locked in mode of work, you're not seeing anything in that peripheral vision. Like your vision actually changes. And this happens when you are stressed and actively doing the opposite. Widening your view can actually help reduce stress. It's not unlikely. You know how people say that you can like fake a smile to try to make yourself happy? By actively focusing on like the things in your peripheral vision, you're then changing the shape of your eyes lens away from a state that's associated with stress. I'm actually convinced that this is one of the reasons why like walking is so good for you is walking is actually taking a break and looking at things further away. In fact, there's a wild study. Let me track this down. This is just coming back to my memory. A wild study they did in Korea. Hang on, there's an AI for this. I'm going to give something a try. Pie. I am trying to find a study that was done in Korea where they got children outside more like and had more playground time or something with the hypothesis that seeing things or getting more time away from things that are close up in your vision would somehow have like developmental benefits or learning benefits. Help me find that study and outline it for me. It sounds like you're talking about a study that examined the benefits of outdoor time for children in Korea. The study found that spending more time outdoors can improve children's social and cognitive development, physical activity and vision. The results of the study showed that children who spent more time outdoors had better developmental outcomes than those who spent less time outdoors. The study concluded that encouraging children to spend more time outdoors can have positive effects on their development and overall well being. Does that sound like the study you were looking for? Okay, it's coming back to me now. So in Korea they have like the largest number of children with myopia. Is that how you say it? Myopia? It's where you spend so much time looking at things that are close to you that your eyes then like eventually lose the ability to clearly see things that are further away. And so they've done these studies in Korea testing like giving Children more time outside as opposed to more like inside face in a book, learning type time. And it's had a bunch of developmental benefits. That was PI, by the way, Interesting AI assistant. They actually just launched a new model that's must most improved. Like seemingly every AI tool right now. But being able to get the brain into a less stressed state opens up all sorts of things, like being able to think more creatively and more holistically when it comes to problem solving. And it can be as simple as looking at something far away. And anecdotally, I think you can probably relate to this in situations where you're like removed from work and there's, you know, a beautiful view or something like that. Like it definitely changes your brain chemistry. I was at an office at one point where I had a super nice window behind me where I could see quite a ways. And it absolutely makes a difference. Literally I had my, I had my back to the window at that point. Literally just spinning around and taking a break for 90 seconds and just looking and watching at what's happening. And you can feel how your brain like changes from that very locked in soda straw view. Like good in some ways, but limited in other ways. Sort of focus. And sometimes your brain, oftentimes your brain can benefit from that. Like zooming out when you're super locked into a problem or stuck on something. Number four, be aware of physical tension, like actual physical tension. I can tell you where that happens. For me, it is all right up here, right in the shoulders. And I actually didn't discover this until I did a saltwater float tank, like sensory deprivation tank. If you've never done this, highly recommend from a person who's mildly claustrophobic. I was still able to do it. It is, I love these things. If you're not familiar, basically they put you in an oversized casket. It's much bigger than a casket. But you get closed in this tank with saltwater, buck naked, you float in this salt water, it's completely dark. The water is the exact like temperature of your body or something. And it's just the right humidity inside of this chamber to where the idea is you literally can't feel anything. You can't see anything. It's complete darkness. You can't feel anything. You don't feel the water on your skin or anything. And you're literally just suspended. It's not like laying on a bed where you have gravity pushing on you like you are completely suspended. And you generally do it for a minimum of like 70 minutes. Most of the ones I've done have been 90 minutes. These are. They call them different things. Float pods, float tanks, sensory deprivation tanks. I freaking love these things. It's the. When I get out of this, it's. My body feels unlike anything else. There's no other, like, type of massages or anything else that, like, gets me to this state. But the first time I did it, my shoulders were on fire. I actually did it during attack season where I was like, well, this just seems like a way to, like, blow off some steam. Almost like forced meditation. And some people, a lot of people will like, hallucinate and, like, it's weird things happen when your brain is turned completely off. Not in, like, a scary way, necessarily, or psychedelic way, although people definitely do a lot of psychedelics in these things too, but in a unbelievably refreshing way. But when I first did it, in fact, every time I do it, my shoulders are in, like, intense pain for about 20 or 30 minutes because evidently, when I go around, like, all of my tension is held in my shoulders. And this is literally the only time in which I let those things down and, like, they're not under pressure. Now, different people carry stress different ways. My wife, she's a. She's a teeth grinder, a clencher. A lot of people clench their fists. But the act of carrying that long term can actually, like, accelerate physical exhaustion. Like an act, it can actually physically make you tired. And as an accountant, where your job is to signal as the alpha accountant that you can go longer and harder than anybody else, we got to avoid that physical exhaustion, right? Being aware of that physical tension, like, if you can mitigate it and not make it worse than it needs to be, you're not, like, unnecessarily burning energy. Number five, exercise. Go for a walk, man. Nobody ever came back from a walk in a bad mood. You know and I know we just can't make time for it. We're too busy. A couple things from the podcast from Huberman Labs. Quote, forward ambulation, which is what he calls it, AKA walking. Write that down. Forward ambulation triggers a process called optic flow. As visual images pass by our eyes, it signals to our nervous system to reduce activity in the amygdala, a brain structure associated with anxiety and fear. It lowers levels of anxiety and sets the neurology in a direction that is alert but not anxious, allowing for increased focus and responsiveness. I've been trying to get better about taking walks during the days now, and, man, does it make a big difference if I'm stuck on Something or writing something. Like I'll get 10 or 12 minutes into a walk and I'm like, I've knocked out, you know, 30 minutes of what would have been 30 minutes of work if I was sitting at my computer. Like it makes a real difference. Unfortunately, I worked at one office where I had great walking options, another office where I a couple other offices where I had no good walking options. So unfortunately that's not always possible. Some folks will do the, the under desk treadmill and it's better than nothing. But I still don't think it is a replacement for a change of scenery. I think that matters and also like if you can combine being able to walk with being able to see things that are far away, how helpful that is for the brain chemistry. But I think we, we probably skew too much of our time to like just doing the work and not giving ourselves breaks. I mean I for one, like when I see people talk about the pomodoro technique where they're like, you can only focus on something for 25 minutes. I don't know about you, that seems adorable to me. Where I'm like, It takes me 25 minutes to focus on something. Who are you? And then I try to lock in for like three hours if I can. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Step so to Sponsored in part by Live Flow. If you've ever thought about selling better paying advisory projects, folks who will pay a top dollar to do a bit of coaching with them each month, maybe this is a thing that you're already doing. 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Learn more about that one. Check out the link in the show Notes this episode is brought to you in part by Team up, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options is that Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company guys. Gals gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you so you can retain your team for the long term. Team Open source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Xero, QBO and Dex also recruit specialist roles. Team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants. Thought experiment. What if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season? Just just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky ol inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody a Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever going to get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines you know, I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team up number six. Try to learn to perceive stress in a more positive light. Change your mindset about stress and the way it impacts your body and try to lean more into like, what are the positive effects of stress rather than the negative effects of stress. One of the episodes, one of the guests talked about the concept of stress shields. Finding stress shields that resonate with you, reminding yourself of past successes, stuff that, that will remind you. Like, no, I don't, I don't need to let this overwhelm me. If you're like a tax pro in tax season, this ain't your first rodeo. You got through all the other ones. Like, is there, is there a triggering memory there where you can lean into that and be like, I'm busy right now, but everything's going to be just fine. I don't, I don't need to be overwhelmed. Being able to kind of reframe that stress response as empowering. Like, like, you're buckling down. Like, I got this. Evidently this can lead to an increased peripheral blood flow and improving the heart's ability to pump. That's, that's, I don't know. That's what a science person said and I wrote it down. Seems real. Last one, number seven, social support. So bunch of studies around both humans and primates that show that particularly when it comes to long term stress, social support is very helpful for improving emotional wellbeing and managing stress levels. I can say in my life, like anecdotally, absolutely the case. I always share like the very best thing, the most motivating thing I ever did in accounting firm running was making friends that run accounting firms and being able to talk shop with them. And how that completely changed my outlook and stamina for running an accounting firm. A couple caveats here. Simply having acquaintances or demanding support without reciprocation can actually exas. Always. That's a tricky one. Exacerbate stress if it's not like two sided. So if I go home and I complain to my wife, that's not necessarily going to make it any better. You're looking for a situation where you can let off some steam but also support somebody else. Like, it has to be two sided. One other note here from the pod. This can blow up on you if you are making efforts to find and like build these social relationships. So the highlight here I had. The quest for social support must be undertaken with sensitivity and awareness of the context for one's stressors. So where this can blow up on you is if you're like, I don't have any friends. And so then you, like, undertake the quest to then go find friends and, oh, we all know how that can go badly. But this is kind of leaning into, like, what has maybe been. I don't know. The biggest quality of life improvement for me is just being visible and talking about firm stuff online and all that. Finding a couple other people that you vibe with and then doing the uncomfortable adult thing of like, being like, hey, you want to chat sometime or just hang out? Which I know when you're grown up is hard. There's the fear of rejection. There can be a massive quality of life improvement and make all this stuff, like, much more sustainable long term. So if I can give you two action items here. Put something within your visual, like, space to remind you to, you know, do this breathing thing or look at something distant. Give yourself a visual or a reminder to do this from time to time to manage that stress level throughout the day. Know that if you stick a post it note or something up, within 72 hours, your brain's gonna have learned to tune it out. So like that quote on the wall or the post it note or whatever it is, it works for like a week tops. Like, our brain just learns to tune out the things that are static and not changing. So you could change it from time to time. You could put it in a different location, but give yourself some sort of built in reminder to just check in. Are my shoulders super tight right now? Am I clenching my jaw? And then second, put something on the calendar with somebody you enjoy spending time with when you know that you're going to be stressed. If next week's gonna be gnarly, reach out to a friend that runs accounting firms and be like, hey, you wanna just like, chat for a half hour next Thursday afternoon? Being able to offer support while also getting support can go a long ways to help you manage that stress. Now, all the reasons that you won't do this. What do you mean, buddy? I got too much to do for this woo woo stuff. I got to keep the nose to the grindstone. K. All right, we got a special guest for managing that Persona, Nervous Ned. The internal voice inside of you that's like, why? Why am I gonna change what I do? I've been getting by just fine. Sure, maybe my blood pressure is a little bit high, but we're keeping clients happy. Anyways, this internal dialog that's like, you're doing just fine, Bob. This is nervous Ned. Let's Do a let's have a quick little debate with Nervous Ned here because I think it's actually helpful to like hear it. Hear it out loud and analyze it for what it is so that we can put it to bed and be like okay, no, that's. That's like not a rational thinking part of my brain.

Now hold on just a minute there, bucko. As a certified public accountant, and yes, certified, I'm gonna keep mentioning that because it's a big deal. I gotta say, some of these stress management techniques seem a bit far fetched if you ask me. I mean, look at something far away.

Pff.

Buff. What it like staring off into space is gonna magically make my stress disappear? And don't even get me started on this whole perceiving stress differently nonsense. Eeehe. Stress is. Stress is a big store partner. Trying to convince yourself otherwise is like putting lipstick on a pig. Now I will say that exercise and social support those I can get behind. A good walk and a chat with a buddy can do wonders for the old nerves. But the rest of it. Ha ha ha. I think I'll stick to my tried and true method of crunching numbers and double checking everything a hundred times over. As I always say, an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of of perspiration. So while you're off doing your deep breathing and peripheral vision exercises, I'll be here, nose to the grindstone, making sure everything adds up.

This is the second debate in a row where I don't know that I'm winning. Okay, rebuttal here. Listen, all I'm doing is presenting the science. If it says it'll help, then who am I to argue with it? Isn't it something we should be using?

Well, well, well, look who's got all the answers. Science, Schmience. I say science, science, science. But I suppose you've got a point there, pal. If these newfangled techniques can help keep my blood pressure from rivaling the national debt, then maybe, just maybe, I ought to give em a try. Ha ha ha. But don't expect me to start hugging trees and chanting umm anytime soon. I'm still a numbers man through and through. Eeeheeh. An ounce of skepticism is worth a pound of gullibility. As I always say.

That doesn't even make sense. I think we won the debate. The prompt was we're debating and I think Nervous Ned just rolled over. That might be my first win. Any other stress tips or ideas? Stuff you do to manage it? Feel free to pop it in the comments. Thanks for coming and hanging today. We'll see you in the next one. Bye, Ned.

See you later, Science Man.

See you later, Science Man.