Stress and Performance: Good Stress: Bad Stress.

Mention the word Stress and the immediate response is that you should do something to control it.  The question, however, is,  Are all stress bad for you?

Performance and stress are closely linked. Too little stress such as a boring and unrewarding job will result in poor performance and as the stress demand of a task increases, you become more productive  until you reach optimum efficiency. Unfortunately if that stress continue to increase your level of performance suffers.

From the graph, you can see that when there is low stress, performance is not good but as the stress level increases, performance increase and reach the top of the curve. This is the optimum stress. Optimum stress is the level of stress that an individual will perform at his or her best.

This will vary from one individual to another. Some people reach their optimum stress level early while others thrive on it and continue to excel when others succumb to the pressure that additional stress produces. In other words, some are burned out while others keep going.

When stress increases beyond the optimum level, performance drops accordingly. The Inverted C curve shows how quickly performance drops with only small increases of stress.

Optimum stress is the good stress and any more beyond this becomes bad stress. Beyond optimum stress, the demand exceeds the natural resources you can muster to cope. At this stage stress becomes a real issue. Not only is performance a problem, but persistently high level of adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisone is bad for your general health.

This type of stress can cause other illnesses. It stimulates the heart, reduces the response from your immune system and can also affect vital organs of the body.

If you recognise stress beyond optimum stress level, then it is up to you to take positive action and make the important changes.

Dr. Phil Hariram

Phil the Stress Doc.