“I’m so stressed out! Can you help me?”

I get that a lot, particularly when people hear that one of my areas of expertise is helping people produce under pressure. It’s a fair question, but an off-target one. Fair, because stress and pressure are similar. Off-target, because they’re not the same.

Here’s the difference. Stress is a condition. You have a tough job, or an unhappy marriage, or unruly kids. These can all cause stress. Pressure, however, is an event. You have ...

I burned the broccolini last night.

As world crises go, this was pretty minor. Still, it served as a useful metaphor for producing under pressure. (Hey, it was useless as a side dish, so I had to do something with it!) Follow me along on this, step-by-step, and you’ll see what I mean.

1. There’s always more pressure when we’re doing something unfamiliar (all other things being equal). A cardiac surgeon feels more pressure during her first open-heart surgery ...

My favorite quotation (and yes, the word is “quotation;” “quote” is a verb, thank you) from Harry S Truman (and no, there’s no period after the “S,” because it’s not an abbreviation; “S” was his entire middle name — my goodness, I’m being irritatingly picky today!) is this one:

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

But my second favorite quotation from Harry S Truman is this one:

“Not all readers are leaders…but all leaders are ...