How to stay calm on a hectic day

You are bound to have one of those crazy days (or weeks or months) where your calendar is jammed with meetings, there are looming deadlines, and an emergency has cropped up that absolutely needs to be dealt with right away. Having a few things that hit at the same time can actually be good for you, but eventually, it is going to cause you problems. In particular, the researchers Yerkes and Dodson published a paper in 1908 (you read that right—over 110 years ago) talking about the optimal level of psychological energy called arousal. They suggested that when people have low levels of energy, they don’t get much done. That shouldn’t be surprising. As your arousal goes up, your performance goes up as well. Again, not so surprising. At some point, though, you reach an optimal level of energy, and beyond that, your performance starts to go down again. You panic, or at least have trouble concentrating. It is that inverted U-shape of the relationship between arousal and performance that is interesting. And that brings us back to your hectic no-good very-bad day. Having several meetings and a deadline can be good. It can raise your level of arousal to the point where you’re firing on all cylinders. When you find yourself over-aroused and slipping over the edge of the Yerkes-Dodson curve, it is time to calm down and get yourself back in the sweet spot. Here are a few things you can do. Lots of mindfulness exercises and meditation practices are designed to help calm you down when you are overly aroused. Find a practice that works for you. Breathing exercises are a great place to start. A simple process where you breathe in on a four count, hold for four, breathe out on a four count and hold for four is a nice exercise to calm yourself. Doing that for even three minutes can often help you get back to a point where you can focus. Make sure you’re eating right. On really busy days, you may suck down an extra coffee or another caffeinated beverage and perhaps skip a meal to buy y