“It’s not stress that kills us; it is our reaction to it.” – Hans Selye, pioneering stress researcher
Stress. It’s that thing you never think about until it’s there. But when it is there, it occupies almost all of your mental space. You can’t escape it. It follows you everywhere like a shadow, even into your dreams – if you manage to sleep at all.
Most often, stress emerges from interactions with other people. Situations where someone asks you to do something you feel incapable of doing. Or when you promise something and don’t deliver. Or when someone keeps pushing and asking and demanding constantly. Since you need to provide feedback or complete something, it all becomes this growing snowball in your head that literally prevents you from sleeping.
The result? Anxiety and the inability to sleep properly. Even if you slept for a solid seven hours, you might wake up earlier than you should. You find yourself unable to fall back asleep because thoughts about what needs to be done are circulating in your head. They pursue you constantly. You can’t just get rid of them.
This is incredibly draining because, first of all, this state is unusual for most of us. Maybe some people have adapted to living under constant stress, but for many, it’s a relatively rare condition that signals something’s wrong. It’s uncomfortable and unnatural, and you want to eliminate it as quickly as possible.
According to a 2021 Deloitte survey, 77% of professionals have experienced burnout at their current job. It’s not just you – this is an epidemic. The World Health Organization reports that stress-related conditions like anxiety and depression cost the global economy approximately $1 trillion in lost productivity each year. This isn’t just affecting your sleep – it’s destroying dreams, ambitions, and possibilities.
I understand that the source of this stress is your own psyche – it’s you who created these obligations. And when you don’t fulfill them, you start to stress. Tasks pile up – client work, things that aren’t functioning properly in your projects, deadlines that feel impossible. It all consumes an enormous portion of your mental space.
“Your mindset matters. It affects everything – from the business and investment decisions you make, to the way you raise your children, to your stress levels and overall well-being.” – Peter Diamandis
But there are ways to kill this stress before it kills your dreams. I’ve tested these methods myself, and they work. They’re not just theoretical bullshit from some wellness guru – they’re practical approaches for real people dealing with real stress in the real world.
The Mental Prison of Unfinished Business
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” – David Allen, productivity expert
Let’s be honest – forcing yourself to switch contexts and think “it’s just work, not my whole life, not the end of the world” is fucking difficult. Work naturally occupies a huge part of your mental bandwidth, and it’s challenging to somehow get rid of this stress-producing machine that runs in your head 24/7.
The ideal solution would be to take all these tasks I’m currently doing myself and delegate them to others. But that’s not so simple, especially in the early stages. When you don’t yet have a stable team, when you don’t have the cash flow to support that team, when you don’t have established processes that allow you to work smoothly with a team – you have to deal with stress on your own.
What’s happening in your brain has a name – psychologists call it the Zeigarnik effect. Your brain keeps nagging you about unfinished tasks, causing mental tension that doesn’t let up until you resolve them. In studies on workplace stress, employees who tackled issues directly had significantly lower stress levels than those who used emotional coping without addressing the root cause.
Here’s a real example from my life: Yesterday, I was completely exhausted by the end of the day. My work is intellectual, and there’s a certain limit to how much I can do. By evening – usually when I go for a walk and then have my gaming session to mark the end of the week – my client started bombarding me with new tasks. A massive snowball of tasks accumulated, each occupying a specific space in my head, and beyond a certain threshold, it transformed into stress because I couldn’t think about anything else.
This is what happens to all of us – the mental load becomes overwhelming. Tasks build up like a dam about to burst. Your brain simply cannot process that much information while simultaneously maintaining the emotional balance necessary for creative work, relationships, or simply enjoying your life.
The irony is that feeling this stress is actually a good thing. It means your system hasn’t normalized chronic stress as “just how life is.” Your body and mind are sending you clear signals that something’s wrong. Listen to them. According to the Mayo Clinic, your body’s stress response is designed for short-term emergencies; when activated long-term, it “wreaks havoc on your mind and body.” People may subjectively feel they’ve gotten used to living under stress, but research shows they still suffer negative physiological effects like elevated cortisol, inflammation, and hypertension.
“If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension.” – George Burns, who lived to 100
One advantage many of us have (that we rarely use) is the ability to change our environment. If you don’t like where you live, you can change it – it’s within your power. I’ve changed my location multiple times within the same country and have changed countries several times. It’s one of the most effective ways to drastically change your life in the direction you want.
Moving does add a bit of stress initially, but afterward, against the backdrop of such adventures, everything else seems insignificant. Your stress tolerance increases significantly. Next time you face these tasks, instead of avoiding them, you can meet them with open arms, remembering that you’ve solved more difficult problems in more complex situations. What’s happening now isn’t actually such a serious problem.
But until you reach that point, until you can build a team or change your environment, you need practical methods to defeat the stress monster. Let’s get into those now.
Proven Methods to Kill Stress Before It Kills You
“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.” – Lily Tomlin
Stress doesn’t have to be your permanent roommate. Below are methods that actually work to get your brain back online. I’ve tested all of these personally hundreds of times. They’re not aspirational bullshit – they’re practical tools for when your brain feels like it’s about to explode.
Method 1. Complete the Fucking Task
The most obvious and direct way to eliminate stress is to address its source head-on. If you’re stressed about something because it isn’t done – just do it. This shuts up that inner voice screaming that something needs to be done. Once it’s done, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
In stress coping theory, this is called problem-focused coping, and research confirms it’s often the most effective approach when the stressor is controllable. A study on workplace stress found that employees who used problem-solving coping had substantially lower subsequent stress levels than those who used emotion-focused coping without addressing the root cause.
How to do it? There needs to be some physical action that represents the completion of the task. In my case, each task concludes with a brief report to clients that something is done, now it works like this, the button is fixed, etc. Task completed, checkbox ticked in the task management system. This ritual tells your brain that this task is finished and no longer needs to occupy space. After this, I truly stop thinking about it.
This is the cleanest, most effective stress-killing method. It literally eliminates the thing causing your stress. But it’s not always possible to use this approach. That’s when you need…
Method 2. The Strategic Pause
Sometimes completing the task immediately is physically impossible. Take my situation last Friday evening – typically a time when I finish work early and start my gaming session to conclude the week and transition into rest mode, which is essential for any work because it’s important to switch your mental focus.
The client started pressuring me, sending a huge number of new tasks. I realized I couldn’t physically do them right then, but the deadline was supposedly that day, with everything needed by Monday.
In this case, my solution, since I didn’t want to let the client down and took responsibility for these tasks, was to work on them over the weekend. I explained that I couldn’t do it right then because if I tried to tackle these tasks on Friday evening after my walk, when my brain had already switched contexts mentally, the results would be extremely poor.
I could spend hours on a simple task that, with a fresh mind, I could solve in literally 15 minutes. I’ve tested this hundreds of times in practice – sitting there at night, poking at one task for hours and failing, then waking up in the morning and finding the solution in 15 minutes.
Recognizing when you’ve hit cognitive exhaustion is crucial. Stanford researcher John Pencavel’s work revealed that output beyond approximately 50 hours per week drops off sharply. Someone working 70 hours achieves no more than someone working 55 – those extra 15 hours are essentially wasted effort.
I understood it would be much more efficient to finish my day, perhaps with a gaming session or by going to sleep, and deal with it tomorrow. I objectively assessed that I couldn’t solve these tasks effectively today.
So I communicated my decision to the client, saying we’d work on the weekend. This didn’t reduce the mental space the tasks occupied in my head, but it at least pushed them back a bit. It didn’t eliminate the stress, but it put my brain on pause, knowing a plan was in place.
Working longer and harder without rest has diminishing or negative returns on productivity. After about 17-19 hours of continuous wakefulness, cognitive function declines to a level equivalent to being legally drunk. After 24 hours, it’s around BAC 0.1%.
The pause isn’t about avoiding responsibility – it’s about strategic timing to ensure quality work while preserving your sanity.
Method 3. Physical Context Switch
“Doing something that is productive is a great way to alleviate emotional stress. Get your mind doing something that is productive.” – Ziggy Marley
If you can’t eliminate the stressor immediately for whatever reason, you need to find other methods. One approach is temporary stress management until you can address the root cause.
Any form of physical activity is an excellent way to distract yourself and relieve stress. It shifts your brain’s focus to something else – to your body’s movement, muscle work, and breathing. During exercise, your brain is busy with restoring muscles, distributing heat throughout the body, etc., rather than ruminating on work tasks.
Harvard Health Publishing notes, “Exercise reduces levels of the body’s stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. It also stimulates production of endorphins, the body’s natural mood elevators.” These biochemical effects create a sense of relaxation and well-being post-exercise.
You don’t need to go to the gym if you’re not into sports – even simple activities like walking are beneficial. The key is using physical activity to switch contexts.
Method 4. The Nature Reset
“Nature itself is the best physician.” – Hippocrates
Nature – or even the city, depending on your preferences – gives an even stronger effect because it combines physical activity with visual context switching. You’re no longer sitting in front of your computer staring at these tasks; you’re out observing nature or your surroundings.
From my experience, nature seems to have a greater effect because it contains more entropy and fractal changes – everything changes unpredictably, and you never know what will happen in the next second.
Think about the ocean – every time you approach it, it’s different. The shoreline constantly changes as the sea reshapes it. I’m not talking about coastlines reinforced with concrete; I mean natural beaches. A sandy beach is always in motion – sand getting deposited, then washed away. The shoreline is always different. If you visit the sea daily, you’ll notice it changes. The sand is never the same as it was yesterday. The waves are never identical either.
Because of this – let’s call them fractals for simplicity – which look similar but are each unique, you see something new every second. Your brain has to process it anew each time.
Even if we don’t consciously perceive the differences in details between one wave and another, your subconscious sees the complete picture. Even if we don’t realize it, your brain processes it as entirely new information. It’s a constant rewrite of new information over what’s already in your brain.
A 2019 study in Frontiers in Psychology demonstrated that just 20 minutes in nature significantly lowers cortisol levels. Participants who spent 20-30 minutes in a natural setting had cortisol drops of over 20% on average.
Your tasks won’t disappear. Hopefully, you’ve recorded them in a task management system. Most importantly, you don’t need to keep them in your head. Nature provides an extraordinary powerful effect that allows you to “disconnect,” as they say. It’s genuinely that effect.
The city might work less effectively because it’s built by humans and has more repetitive patterns. A building that stood in one place yesterday is in the same place today, and it basically doesn’t change. It changes on a microscopic level, of course – dust settles on it, cracks appear – but these changes are mostly invisible to the eye unless something drastic happens, like the building being demolished.
This happens on a much smaller scale and less frequently than with nature, which is constantly in motion. Nature is never static. Buildings, for the most part, are static.
It’s great if your city is immersed in greenery, like Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, which have many natural elements that can serve the same purpose of distracting your brain. But nature in its pure form is ideal. Even in any city, you can find a park where you can walk for free and enjoy nature.
Method 5. External Brain Dump
The next method is to externalize all your tasks into a task management system. I hope you did this immediately. As soon as a task appears, the key is to formalize it.
Instead of leaving it where it is – and I made this mistake yesterday when the client wrote in our general chat and I left the task there – you need to move each task to your task manager. Why? Again, it’s a ritual that tells your brain that this thing no longer needs to occupy space in your head because you’ve saved it somewhere.
It gets replaced by the understanding that all necessary information is saved and won’t disappear. It’s in a safe place, and you can always come back to it. This gives you peace of mind.
For instance, if I have 10 tasks that need to be done by tomorrow, and I’ve saved them all in a task manager, instead of those 10 tasks in my head, there’s only one: I need to complete the tasks recorded in my task manager. That’s it. So I don’t have 10 tasks to remember individually, just one piece of information that repeats consistently.
If I do this exercise regularly and record tasks in a manager, I only need to remember one thing – that all tasks are in there. I don’t need to stress about each one.
This is a vital tool that helps you get rid of the mental burden you carry in your brain – you transfer it to paper or a digital equivalent.
By the way, if you do this on physical paper, writing with a pen or pencil, it has an even stronger effect because your body is involved. Your brain processes information more easily when it’s registered through multiple sensory channels simultaneously – we engage the mind, perception, physiology, the microdynamics of finger movements, visual processing as we see the text, and auditory processing through the sound of writing on paper. All of this influences how we perceive what we’re doing and writing.
Experiments in cognitive psychology have shown that writing by hand activates different neural pathways than typing. Researchers at Indiana University found that children who practiced writing letters by hand showed increased neural activity in areas associated with reading and writing – activity that wasn’t present when they typed the same letters.
Method 6. Journal Purge
Similar to the previous method but broader in scope – take a sheet of paper (ideally) and start writing everything currently happening in your head. All those anxieties, worries, all that excitement – just a stream of thoughts onto paper. After writing for a while, you’ll notice that the anxiety gradually begins to fade.
Why does this happen? Again, we’re freeing up space in your head and transferring it to paper. It’s now safe, and you can go about your business calmly. If you need to return to this information, it’s all there.
This signals to your brain that it doesn’t need to keep thinking about this constantly, even if it’s important. The important stuff is saved on paper. You don’t have to worry about it.
Psychologist James Pennebaker’s foundational work on expressive writing found that writing about one’s deepest thoughts and feelings regarding stressful events can improve mental and even physical health. A 2017 study in Psychophysiology demonstrated that anxious individuals who did a brief expressive writing exercise before a stressful task performed better than those who didn’t, suggesting that writing freed up working memory resources that worry would have consumed.
It’s not just psychological. A study on job seekers found that those who journaled about their negative emotions found employment at a significantly higher rate than the control group – 53% versus 25%. The journal writers also reported fewer depressive symptoms.
Method 7. The Zoom Out Exercise
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James
This is a mental exercise best done during a walk or physical activity. You imagine your life and situations at a different scale. Okay, you have this task that needs to be completed – what does this task mean on the scale of your city? It might have some impact if you’re doing a task for a business that affects construction in the city or people who are clients of this business – naturally, their lives might be affected by whether you complete this task.
Let’s go further, changing perspective, changing the level of abstraction to the country where you live. Does it affect anything at the country level? Again, it depends on the business, maybe in some cases, but I think in most cases, no one will notice if the tasks aren’t done today but are done tomorrow. No global change will occur at the country level.
What about the entire planet? Will mother nature notice if your tasks weren’t completed? Here I seriously doubt it, unless you’re designing a nuclear bomb.
At this scale, it’s clear how insignificant the problem is. Go even further – look at our planet from the moon, when it’s small and tiny, just a little ball hanging in space. What problems concern you at that moment if you imagine yourself on the moon’s surface? This task hardly seems significant.
Step back further – look at the solar system, at the enormous distances between our planets. Even within one solar system, it’s incredible. You can’t even see them – they’re just points in the sky, white glowing points that simply disappear as you move away from them.
Go further still and look at this in the scale of our galaxy. Does your task have any place at such scales? No, it’s such a minuscule, incredibly atomic thing that even within one or two days – by cosmic standards, this time is infinitesimally small.
As we move further to galaxy clusters, even the entire lifespan of humanity becomes so insignificant and small and simply unnoticeable in all of space-time that what happens within your timeline or within your specific task is just… well, not even a grain of sand. It’s smaller than that.
You realize how exaggerated the importance of your task is, and it exists exclusively in your head. At minimum, this reduces the mental load and level of anxiety about this task.
This perspective shift is a form of cognitive reappraisal – looking at your situation from a different viewpoint to change its emotional impact. Research on stress and coping found that people who naturally employ positive reappraisal experience fewer negative outcomes under stress.
Method 8. Sex with Partner
Sex perfectly relieves stress. Most importantly, not with yourself, as that won’t really help, but with a partner. This is also an excellent way to relieve stress, scientifically proven.
Sexual activity (particularly with a partner) releases a wave of “feel-good” hormones like oxytocin and endorphins while reducing cortisol (the primary stress hormone). One study found that after positive physical contact with a partner, people had lower blood pressure and cortisol responses to stress than those who only received emotional support or no contact.
Regular sex has been associated with lower baseline blood pressure and better stress reactivity. Researchers at the University of Paisley observed that people who had intercourse before a stressful task had more moderate blood pressure spikes than those who abstained.
Method 9. The Ultimate Combo
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
This is a combination of all the above methods in one. What do I mean? Take your body and move it somewhere outside, ideally in nature.
Start walking or running, whatever you prefer. You can take a notebook if it’s convenient, with a pen if writing is comfortable, or just take your phone with a voice recorder to capture your thoughts.
We combine all these methods:
- First, distraction and switching of visual context.
- Second, physical activity. Depending on how you walk or run, even a casual stroll already provides the necessary effect.
- Third, ideally, this happens in nature so you can see fractal changes and entropy, forcing your brain to process this information in large quantities.
- Finally, you have a notebook or voice recorder where you can put down your thoughts or dictate them, thus saving everything accumulated in your head – including thoughts about this stress – in a safe place.
This is actually what’s happening with me right now. After yesterday’s load, I forgot to follow my own advice and went to sleep after my gaming session. I should have probably gone for a walk and put all my thoughts in a journal.
But I do this every day, every morning anyway. Right now, I’m on my morning walk, literally dictating my thoughts into a voice recorder. I went to the sea, looked at the huge waves that are here today. The sea is restless.
And now, at the end of my walk, as I dictate these words, I feel how much easier it’s become, how much this situation has released me. I understand I’ll handle it. I perfectly understand that everything depending on me, I’ll do. I’ll complete all these tasks, even if they seemed impossible yesterday, or there were too many, or they all piled up on each other. No, everything is fine. Everything is in order. And I’ll do it all, despite having other plans for the weekend.
This multi-modal approach – combining exercise, nature exposure, journaling, and perspective shifts – is highly effective because it addresses stress on several levels (physical, mental, emotional) simultaneously.
Bonus Method: Dance
Finally, dance! Turn on your favorite music and forget about everything – just jump and move in a way that completely distracts you. This really helps too.
If you love club music, you can go to a club and dance. If you prefer any other music, you can put on headphones and combine it with a walk, or you can just dance when nobody’s watching – really dance in a way that distracts you and saves your brain from the stress load.
Music has a profound effect on our neurochemistry. A 2013 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that people who listened to upbeat music could improve their mood and boost happiness in just two weeks. When combined with movement, the effects are even more powerful.
Reclaiming Your Mental Space
“It’s also our collective delusion that overwork and burnout are the price we must pay in order to succeed.” – Arianna Huffington
You’re now armed with battle-tested methods to kill stress before it kills your dreams. The truth is, stress is not a requirement for success or achievement – it’s often the very thing standing in your way.
Remember that you have more control than you might think. Whether it’s completing tasks directly, strategically pausing when you’re fried, walking in nature, or zooming out to gain perspective – you have tools that work.
What happens when you let stress run unchecked? Your creativity diminishes. Your decision-making suffers. Your relationships strain. Your health deteriorates. And ultimately, your dreams – the very things you’re working so hard for – start to slip away.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The research is clear: managing stress isn’t just about feeling better – it’s about performing better. Companies like LinkedIn and Bumble have given entire workforces week-long breaks after recognizing that burnt-out workers are less effective. The 4-day workweek trials in multiple countries have shown that with more rest, people maintain or even improve productivity while experiencing significantly less stress.
Start small. Choose one method from this article and implement it today. Maybe it’s a 20-minute walk in the nearest park. Maybe it’s externalizing all your tasks into a system. Maybe it’s the zoom-out exercise while waiting for your coffee to brew.
Whatever you choose, remember that each time you successfully manage stress, you’re not just surviving the day – you’re protecting your future, your health, and your dreams.
“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’.” – Eckhart Tolle
Don’t stress. You’ll handle this.
Apply these methods. You got this.