Imagine yourself being amidst a crisis in your life or business. Your resources are scarce, and you are under immense time pressure. Your peers have already declared you are/your business is done for. What are you left with?

When managing crisis in my life so far, I have often come to a point where the only thing I had left was myself. Depending on your family, friends and business partners you might not ever end there. But there is no harm in preparing for such a scenario and knowing what to do. Moreover, there is no reason to not manage yourself in a better way to tackle the problem at hand.

I could have really needed the tools and tips in this article, when managing a major crisis in 2015-2018. My health suffered severe consequences, which I am still trying to reverse at the end of 2020. You should never ever take a crisis lightly and should always take care of yourself. In a family business you will also have to think of the health of your family, your employees, and the community.

The Stress and Energy Relationship

Prepare for the Worst but Hope for the Best

Let us take a typical army approach and prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Which is my first point right off the bat. Crisis is very dynamic and volatile; thus, things will change frequently and often from really positive to really negative. To prepare yourself you should be prepared for the worst possible scenario.

Now you might think “But shouldn’t we stay optimistic?” Yes, you should. It is very important that you stay optimistic and positive. Only then are you in the right mindset and you have the energy that you need. Preparing for the worst will actually calm you, as nothing can surprise you anymore. Not only is it less likely that you are caught off guard by something, you are also in fact more focused on the positive.

The Self-Reinforcing Cycle of Stress

Being calmer essentially means that you are less stressed. Crisis is a high stress scenario and you will have to make a huge amount of decisions on a daily basis. Stress and performance have an interesting relationship, which you can see below in the stress/performance curve.

There is an optimum amount of stress – the point where you will bring the best performance possible. If the stress slightly increases or decreases your performance will drop. Therefore, professional athletes want to keep their training stress just below the optimum, so that during competition – with the extra stress - they will hit their sweet spot. Imagine your daily life, even without a crisis. Are you already constantly stressed?

If you are you, should change that, so that you do not slip down on the performance if an unforeseen stressful situation arises. Stress can start a vicious downward cycle. When stress increases, your performance drops and with dropping performance, your results start lacking which again leads to your confidence dropping. Lower confidence leads to higher stress and off we go again.

This self-reinforcing cycle has even more effects. The lower your confidence the lower your trust levels. If you do not trust yourself, you will start doubting others. Low trust levels will again induce more stress. The more stress you have the lower your willpower will be. Imagine that getting out of bed every morning already starts to deplete your willpower. There will not be much left for decisions, and you will not make any. No decisions being made will lead to bad results and off we go with your confidence dropping. Lower confidence means that decisions will require more willpower off you to make them, as you do not feel that you are qualified enough to make them. Thus, your willpower is depleted even faster.

The Valley of Despair

Another effect that needs to be looked out for in a crisis is the so-called Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE), which is shown in the diagram below. As you can see, you will start off on mount stupid with a huge amount of confidence and as time progresses, your confidence will drop into the valley of despair. Yet again as time progresses and you know ever so more, your confidence starts to recover. From my experience you will go through this cycle with every crisis, as every crisis is different.

The DKE also plays out over your life, which is often a case in family businesses. When you have 3 generations working in the business, you will have the youngest and the oldest with enormous amounts of confidence, while the middle generation will often be close to the valley of despair. This alone is an interesting topic, which we will leave for another day. If you remember the stress cycle, we looked at earlier, you will probably see that when you hit the valley of despair, you are in quite some trouble. The valley of despair is a dangerous place, as you will not know what to do any longer and you will doubt yourself and everything else.

The fight-and-flight mode

On a more micro level stress will put you into fight and flight mode. When you enter this mode, your body turns off any unessential processes. Remember, humans lived out in nature and everyday posed life-threatening challenges. Turning off any unessential processes made sure that more energy was available for surviving in a dangerous situation. In modern times stress often lasts for days. Due to modern technology, we are stressed from getting up all the way to going to bed. This means that long term vital systems are running on power safe mode constantly.

For example, when you are in fight and flight mode your vagus nerve gets turned off (https://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/vagus-nerve#anatomy-and-function). Your vagus nerve is responsible for a huge bunch of functions, especially your digestive tract and your heart rate. Two big consequences (from many) are for example that you will have a non-functioning digestive system and your resting hear rate goes up. As you can probably guess, that is not good, and this will lead to more stress and bad performance. The micro effects on the body from stress are immense. For more information on this there are health sites such as: Healthline.com

Fore and utmost you need to reduce the stress levels, this is the A and O of crisis management. This by the way you should also do for your team. Decreasing the stress in a crisis is easier said than done. You will not be able to decrease any outside stress factors as they are not within your control. That means we will have to look inward into ourselves to see how we can manage ourselves better.

Effective Time Management

The first point to start with is effective time management. This is not about efficiency, where you just try to increase the work you can get done. Rather you should try to work “smarter” and really be careful what you spend your time on. Ruthlessly delegate anything that is not wildly important or just ignore it. Here you can use 2 simple tools/rules that will help you:

Manage Your Time According to Pareto’s Law

First of all, you should use Pareto’s law, which means that you focus only on the things with the highest impact. As mentioned above anything that is not of the highest importance should be delegated or ignored/postponed. But how do you keep a hold of the enormous number of requests, questions and tasks pilling up during a crisis?

Let’s assume the worst case: you have not got a crisis management team assembled at the moment to support you (which I highly suggest that you should). You will feel overwhelmed and swamped. Here Steven Covey’s 4 Quadrant method is extremely helpful. Evaluate each task and request for importance and urgency, from your perspective. People will try to push their agendas onto you, so it is critical to keep a cool head and make sure you focus on the important tasks. Often we will be inclined to choose according to the urgency of a task, this is a dangerous trap.

Below I have put in an example of how I organize my tasks. In crisis you will be living (about 80% of the time) in Quadrant I, which are tasks with high importance and urgency. Should there not be anything in Quadrant I for you to do, you should work on things in Quadrant II. These tasks are long term, important projects. Often in crisis we will ignore the future as we are so focused on the problem at hand and forget that our solution needs to be a long term one. Quadrants III and IV have low importance. Anything in Quadrant III should be delegated and anything in Quadrant IV should be ignored. You will see two more fields “unknown” and “scheduled”. Unknown I use to categorize tasks where I have not evaluated their importance yet. In scheduled I put any important tasks that I have done to a point, where I need to wait for someone else to do their part. Basically, any tasks that for now are completed from my end, but not completed over all yet.

Generally speaking, the key to success is within time management. There are many tools out there and many different planners. I personally like to use the Productivity planner , as this is focused on the pareto principle. Firs you plan the week ahead and then every day at the end of the previous day. For the single days you focus on only 5 important tasks. Really long to do lists will overwhelm me, as there are so many options. By only taking up 5 tasks for the day, you can make sure you focus on the wildly important.

Keep in mind that your time and energy are valuable resources. Especially your willpower is not infinite. It is like a muscle. Every decision you make during the day will zap away your willpower. After resting you will wake up with your willpower restored (only fully if you rested properly).

Start the Day Right

There are 2 things I found really helpful to safe energy, willpower and preserve my time. First, I will switch my mobile phone to flight mode about 1-2 hours before I go to bed. This will be increasingly important if you work over several time zones. Our crisis involved Europe and South America, which resulted in my checking my phone on all the time. My phone will stay in flight mode till I have finished my morning routine the next day.

When it comes to a morning routine, everyone needs to decide by themselves. I have structured it the following way:

Wake up, make my bed and brush my teeth
Drink 0,5 – 1 L of warm water
Meditate for 20 minutes
Do a 5-10 min HIIT workout
Make a coffee
Read for 30 minutes
2 hours of uninterrupted focus work
Decision time

Obviously, I will not be able to adhere to this every day, but I try to do it pareto style. If I can stick to this 70-80% of the time I am happy.

So why do I stick to this routine? Making your bed will give you a minimum sense of accomplishment. Even if the day is horrible, you made your bed. Brushing your teeth first thing is recommended, as bacteria gathers in your mouth overnight. Brush it away before you drink any. You don’t want to burden your stomach with it. Warm water in the morning gets your digestive tract moving and warms you up from the inside. Meditation will set your day in a calm manner. Often I will think of problem during meditation solutions (keep a journal next to you, so you can drop down anything important straight after). Sport is essential. Especially in crisis you will focus so much on the problems at hand, that you do not take the time to exercise. The HIIT training will get your blood pumping and your system going. This way you have a much better feeling to the day. On a side note, I recommend walking as much as you can. Walk to meetings and do not take escalators and lifts anymore. I love great coffee, but if you prefer tea or just some more water that is perfectly fine. The caffein in the morning gives me a great boost and helps me get into a flow state for my concentrated work window.

Why do I carve out 30min for reading? I love to read and these 30min in the morning ensure that I get my daily dose of education in. It not only makes me feel good as I have spent 30min learning, but it helps me continually educating myself and not get bogged down by day-to-day business.

Uninterrupted work is of paramount importance. This is a step that everyone should do. In crisis you will be hit by urgent matters and not end up working on important things. During focus work you might choose to work on your restructuring plan, family constitution or reworked vision for the business. Whatever it is, do not let these things be side-tracked. After the focused work I will go online and then I will take time to make the important decisions for the day, while my willpower is still at full capacity. This is a rule that I stole from Jeff Bezos, who makes no more decisions after mid-day.

This routine is too time-consuming, you think? Well:

If you think you have a minute you have an hour
If you think you have an hour you have a day
If you think you have a day you really have a week

I had to learn this the painful way. Not taking the time to set myself up properly and thus having stressful and horrible days. Where did it lead me? I ended up with hyper allergies, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS and some other “minor” issues compared to this. Moreover, making decisions with low willpower means you risk making bad decisions. Do not waste your mornings and evenings! Look after yourself.

Effective Mind Management

When you have your time management down, you can start to work on your mind management.

Chose Your Advisory Wisely

In times of crisis, I suggest you get yourself a coach and/or a therapist. You will not only have to make hard decisions business wise, but the stress and the decisions will put emotional strain on you. Make sure to take the time to select these advisory carefully. And then get yourself at least one mentor, that you can talk to on a regular basis. In 2015 the contact to my mentor slipped, due to a difference in time zones. For a while I tried to manage the whole conundrum without a mentor. Later on, due to suggestions by a friend, I ended up with 3 mentors, whom all had experience with crisis management. That became a turning point in our crisis, not only on a personal level. Mentors are neutral advisors, who only have your well being in their mind and no other gains (They do not get paid. If your pay for it, it is not a mentor). You will be able to discuss important decisions with them and get their view on things. This was incredibly helpful.

Another thing I found important for myself is to be open about the crisis. Many will try to keep things quiet (these days with social media it is difficult to do so). Often you think nobody knows, as no one talks to you. But in reality, everyone will know about it at some point. This secrecy put a huge strain on me. You are constantly scared of slipping up in conversations etc. Just be open with it and own it, period. Along with that, we tend to reduce our social contacts in time of crisis to focus on the crisis. I did also and in hindsight I regret it. Your tribe, your friends are so important for your mental wellbeing. Going for a drink and having a good laugh is probably one of the most relaxing exercises (for me at least). Humans are a social animal. It is in our DNA. Manage your free time wisely, meet with friends, do activities. Business is not everything!

Make sure to stay away from negative media, negative people, and unhealthy food. Crisis will stress your body enough; you do not need additional negativity and strain in your life. One of the biggest advantages of going through crisis is, that it will show your real friends, trustworthy business partners and motivated employees. Use the insight from the crisis and act on it, anyone who is toxic should leave your inner circle. And guess who decides their inner circle, you do. I also advocate for a healthy diet. I am personally awfully specific on this and will not go into detail. But please make sure you are careful with your diet. Food is your source of energy and if you put “crap” in your body, well it will not run very well.

Further up we covered the Dunning Kruger Effect. When your confidence is dropping and you end up in the valley of despair, it is important to remember one thing: You might be responsible for your decisions, but the crisis and consequences are not your fault. Be self-compassionate and compassionate with your family, your employees, and your community. I stopped being self-compassionate and with that, compassion for everyone else disappears too. Once you believe you are at fault and you are doing a bad job, it will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don’t let your mind get the better of you. The stoics would remind you, that the only thing you can truly control is your reasoned choice. Choose wisely what you think, what you do and how you think and do it.

Mind management on your side, will create an environment of psychological safety. Coupling this with Pareto and The Parkinson Effect (which just means, you can get more done in less time than you think.) will set you up for optimal performance.

Keep Your Willpower Levels High

I have talked about willpower in previous blog posts before (https://www.octavianpilati.com/blog/nine-tips-for-decision-making-in-crisis). Willpower is the single most important resource for your decision making and defines how well you make decisions. Essentially willpower management is the key to good decision making. Try to reduce any decisions you have to make during the day and make sure you make important decisions only in the morning. And make sure you get enough and plenty of rest every day and on the weekends. I used to try to work at night and on weekends in order to catch up on things, which left me exhausted for the next day/week.

The key to more success is a different one in my experience and it is to ruthlessly cut out any unnecessary meetings and assignments (back to Pareto above). Make sure you align company values/purpose as well as you can with your personal ones. Commit and own anything that you put your mind to and defy the verdict others put on you. When there is a crisis there will be many that see you fail before you even try. Don’t let these nay-sayers discourage you!

Learn from the Stoics

To improve my mind management, I looked to philosophy, mostly stoic philosophy. One of the most powerful learning I took from there is the inner citadel and the concept of what you truly control.

Stoics say that you only can control your own reasoned choice, what and how you decide. To protect your reasoned choice, you need to strengthen your inner citadel. You can do this by applying the 7 P’s (no, not the 7 P’s of marketing!): Passion, Play, Persistence, Perseverance, Perspective, Patience and Purpose. Find your Purpose and Passion. Be persistent, perseverant, and patient. Most things will take longer than you think and will be harder than you think. Change perspectives - look from other people’s perspectives at a situation or use the eagle eyes view. And foremost, have fun with it. All of this will strengthen you enormously mentally.

“The Inner Citadel is a fortress around your innermost self, so that externals, meaning all the things we cannot control, are powerless against our higher sense of will and reason.”
Ricardo Guarderrama (https://stoicanswers.com/)

Building up your inner citadel will also help you to deal with uncertainty. We humans do not like uncertainty, as in the past the risk of dying was higher in uncertain situations. Crisis comes with a lot of uncertainty and with much change. You need to prepare yourself for considerable changes and for an ever-changing environment around you. The more “certainty” you can find within yourself and in your personal surroundings the better.

To help you with uncertainty you can use negative and positive scenario thinking. This is used extensively in sports and having done competitive sport I can only recommend this. Before making a decision or going into a negotiation sit down for some time (maybe with some music that you like) and start to imagine the perfect outcome. Feel yourself doing everything right and just being awesome. Once you have gone through that start to think of everything that can go wrong, BUT make sure to immediately think of solutions. For example: Michael Phelps used scenario thinking to prepare for the instance of his goggles slipping off when jumping into the race. When this predicament actually happened in one of his races, he was able to finish the race “blind” and recorded a personal best. Negative visualization is by the way also a stoic method.

Summary: You Are Your Most Important and Biggest Resource!

We have covered quite some ground in this article. Of course, there are many more actionable tips to help you manage yourself in a crisis. The ones listed are the easiest to implement and those who do not require a great deal of money to incorporate. You can spend a lot of money on supplements, going to spas and other expensive hobbies to help yourself. You can take on coaches, book seminars and get yourself a sports coach. Those are all good, but in a crisis you will have a hard time to incorporate any big changes right away. One step at a time.

To sum up the actionable tips from above here is a short checklist:

Manage your time

Use Pareto’s law to your advantage.
Take time for yourself to study and relax.
Have enough time for sleep.
Protect your weekends.

Manage your energy

Reduce decisions to the wildly important one.
Look at your environment and get rid of any energy sappers.
Your body is a temple. Make sure you only put good things into your body (food, media etc.).
Keep the stress performance curve in mind.

Manage your stress

Use flight mode on your phone frequently.
Establish a morning routine.
Reduce dietary stressors.
Move, move, and move (sport and walking).
Think about going to therapy.

Manage your mind

Get yourself mentors.
You only control your reasoned choice. Remember that.
Make sure you have your purpose and values set.
Work on your inner citadel and build up that defence.
Practice positive and negative visualization.
Be wary of the Dunning Kruger Effect!

Crisis Management Starts with Self-Management