Extreme performance coaching: how to tell if you have an extreme job and what to do about it

Just about everyone sometimes finds his or her job overwhelming, but truly extreme jobs are exceptional in their demands on your time and your energy.

These jobs can be highly stimulating, satisfying, and lucrative. But they can also lead to health problems, relationship issues, and emotional burnout. If that’s sounds familiar, here are some key elements to help you determine if your job is extreme:

If you answered yes to more than five of these statements, you have an extreme job. So how can you navigate your extreme job to reap the rewards and minimize the damages?

Much like an extreme sport, succeeding in an extreme job is all about keeping a positive outlook and setting manageable goals. With the right framework, the stress of a high-pressure job can fuel excitement and motivation — rather than encouraging despair and frustration.

And just like athletic coaches, performance coaches can help high-performers manage their workload with an array of tools designed to help business leaders consistently perform at their best. Five of the most common tools we use are: relaxation, self-talk, imagery, goal-setting, and concentration. To understand how those techniques can work together to manage extreme jobs, here are two examples:

Meg had a job with a very unpredictable work flow. She found it very stressful to deal with the slow times, when she felt bored, agitated, and useless. But she was even more stressed out by the peak times, because she wanted to always be organized and on top of her workload. She enjoyed the rare moments when the workload was right in her comfort zone, but much of the time she was “freaking out.”

We challenged Meg to come up with a different way of visualizing the ebb and flow of her work, rather than swinging from “useless” to “unable to keep up.” After experimenting with a couple of different images, Meg discovered she could draw on one of her favorite leisure activities, canoeing. She realized that she would find canoeing very boring if the pace of the river was always the same. What made it fun was the variety – the calm stretches and the rapids. She began seeing the quiet times at work as a chance to rest and take a look at the passing “scenery.” And the busy times became the rapids – exciting and thrilling rather than demoralizing. Meg began to canoe through her “work stream,” and both her performance and her enjoyment were much enhanced.

David’s job required him to be in the office from 7 a.m. until at least 7 p.m. He liked the challenge and the high demands of his work, and he was proud of his ability to keep the pace. By the end of each day, though, he was exhausted and resentful. We asked David to keep a log of how he spent his time at work and discovered he pushed himself to work at top speed hour after hour with no breaks and almost no nourishment. We showed him research results that proved his relentless approach actually led to reduced productivity.

At first he was skeptical, but he agreed to experiment with taking brief relaxation breaks every ninety minutes – disconnecting from his work, focusing on his breathing, and stretching to relieve muscle tension. He also tried eating small, nourishing snacks at least every two hours. To David’s amazement, the time he “lost” to these breaks was more than compensated by his increased productivity when he re-engaged. And while he was tired at the end of the day, he no longer felt the grim fatigue that had been plaguing him.

Extreme jobs are not for everyone, but for some people, nothing else will do. A performance coach can offer the tools that enable high-energy performers to maximize both their productivity and their joy.

If that’s something you’re interested in, email me.