In the IT world working under pressure can be a daily occurrence. Knowing the steps to take when faced with an issue can greatly reduce the stress of working under pressure.
Deadlines, project changes, unforeseen obstacles, critical outages are only a few of the stressful issues that can arise in the IT world. We face these circumstances often and can feel a great deal of pressure to get them taken care of.
Pressure – The stress or urgency of matters demanding attention, The burden of physical or mental distress, The constraint of circumstances.
Working under pressure involves dealing with circumstances that can be constrained by time, resources, the difficultly of the task, all of these and more. It involves the stress that comes from dealing with a matter that must be taken care of in a timely manner. This pressure can lead to physical or mental distress.
How To Work Under Pressure
Maintain Control
The first step in working under pressure is to maintain control. For some pressure brings up emotions that can cloud decision making and inhibit your ability to deal with an issue. If you are unable to set emotions aside take those emotions and turn them into energy to deal with the issue.
Evaluate The Issue
Before you jump into action you must first evaluate the issue. What is the issue?
Be sure you know exactly what the issue is before you try and resolve it. On the surface an issue may appear to be one thing, when in fact there is an underlying cause. By jumping to conclusions and acting on the wrong issue you may in fact make it worse. Ask the important questions who, what, when, where, why to determine what the true issue is.
Once you know what the issue is determine the priority of the issue. Is it a high priority issue that must be dealt with immediately?
Have a Plan
The post “How a Proactive IT Manager Can Handle Any Crisis” details how important it is to have a plan or processes for dealing with a crisis already in place. When the issue arises you execute the plan. Each step is outlined and everyone knows what they are supposed to do.
When There Is No Plan
There are times when an issue arises that there is no plan for. In these cases the best way to deal with them is a step-by-step process.
- Determine what the issue is and document all of the circumstances surrounding it.
- Determine how critical the issue is. This will determine how quickly it must be dealt with.
- Create a simple to-do list for each step that needs to be done to solve the issue.
- Once you know the steps then it is just a matter of doing them or delegating them.
Anytime you deal with an issue for which you had no plan for after the issue is resolved write down everything while it is still fresh in your mind. You can use these notes later to create a step-by-step plan for dealing with that issue should it arise in the future.
Take Away
How to work under pressure can be summed up into three steps.
- Maintain control
- Evaluate the issue
- Execute the plan or prepare and execute the plan if no plan exist
By knowing what steps to take to deal with issues that arise you will feel far less stress when they occur. Being proactive by having plans in place for common issues can ensure the issue is dealt with promptly and relieve the stress of working under pressure.
The more you have to work under pressure, the better you get at it. This builds confidence that you can deal with any issue that arises. This confidence can help alleviate the emotions that can come up when working under pressure.
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