Continuous pressure can cause serious physical and mental problems if not managed properly. Being under pressure is different from being stressed: according to experts, while stress is the day-to-day life that keeps you alert and helps you spot opportunities, pressure has more to do with an excess of the future; “Tension improves yields. The pressure exhausts and burns”, recalls Eduardo Lazcano, author of the book emotional communication (Edit LID, 2017).
There are many successful entrepreneurs who have belatedly faced everything from rashes to hernias to heart problems. A Spanish entrepreneur, Alejandro Artacho, narrates: “Me got up at 5:30 on Monday morning to travel to London and returned on Wednesday night, to start on Thursday in Madrid and continue intensively the rest of the week… Add to that being all day on the phone I fell asleep and woke up looking at my phone. I ate terrible, I slept terrible, in two years I gained 20 kilos and, as my girl told me, every day I was more sour, more unhappy”.
Indeed, experts believe that there are many risks at the mental level that can cause overwork and pressure, including: anxiety, depression, chronic stress, insomnia and exhaustion (burnout), regardless of whether you can fall into fatigue. mental illness and the consumption of psychoactive substances. All this can lead to hypersensitivity, inability to make decisions and lack of emotional regulation.
Sleep in particular is the first thing you lose when you’re under pressure. When you come home from a long day under the pressure of finishing a project, planning a release, and/or solving a series of issues on the fly, you notice a series of unresolved issues and dedicate yourself to “moving forward”. ” as much as you can and schedule the next day’s activities, and when you finally get to bed, it takes forever to sleep, as your brain is still revved up.
Not getting enough sleep can have effects that will impact performance at work, for example: loss of attention, impaired memory, negative impact on decision-making, loss of concentration, poor blood supply to the brain, and slowed down reaction time.
The pressure of entrepreneurs to get their project off the ground soon makes it difficult for them to disconnect from the activity for a reasonable time and rest physically and mentally. The question then arises: how long should an entrepreneur take for a vacation?
There are experts who say that an entrepreneur should take at least one week every quarter. This is enough time to: relax and restart with a clear mind towards the objectives of the next quarter; reset the biological clock; plan the next steps, reflect and appreciate everything you already have. Working longer hours is not necessarily synonymous with higher productivity. The important thing is to achieve a balance and get out of the “I have to” routine (to be available, to be present, to multiply myself, etc.), because that is living according to the agenda of others.