[danurman]

The takeaway I have is basically what you said - stressing about something may make you feel like you're working harder, but really just burns up your emotional energy. From the end of the article: "When I notice that I'm all stressed out about something or driving myself to exhaustion, I . . . try dialing back my effort by 50 percent. . . . [H]alf of my effort wasn't effort at all, but just unnecessary stress that made me feel like I was doing my best."

Stress and anxiety can be a signal that you need to take something seriously, but if you're already taking it seriously, it's not helpful. If you can drop it while still responding to the situation appropriately, you'll be better off. Focus, don't obsess; progress, don't stress.

This is something I also learned in my time working technical product support - at first, when emergencies happened with the product, I would panic and scramble. But I eventually realized that didn't actually help and just made things less pleasant for me and anyone interacting with me. Everything went better if I took the emergency seriously but calmly, and just handled it without reacting emotionally.