How to stop worrying about work so much?

[MrsSpendyPants]

I'm a project manager in the oil and gas field.  I am not a technical professional (not an engineer nor in IT).  I was an amazing individual contributor and have been a project manager for over five years.  I am always on time and under budget on my projects.  However as I am relying on other people to do the work, there are obvious mistakes that occur and I feel like most of my job is explaining to stakeholders why mistakes happen.  It has never derailed a project and, while yes, it usually costs some money to fix, we come in under budget for everything else so it's a wash on the project.  This constant explaining about mistakes definitely takes a mental toll and I feel like I'm always on the hot seat.

I used to make a base salary of 50k plus a percentage of the cost of each project, which put me at 150k-200k a year.  With the tank of the oil and gas market, the company took away the commission and are just paying 90k.  I have the most projects in the company and am tied for the largest project currently.  I didn't lose any projects due to the downturn, had one slightly reduced.  I am having trouble justifying the anxiety level for 90k.  I have a paid off house, expenses with cushion and daycare run 5k a month, and have a family networth of 1.2MM at 30 years old.

I have a BS in Energy Policy from a good state school and am studying for my PMP certification (hoping to take test next month).  I do see a talk therapist and used to take Zoloft for the anxiety but did not like the brain fog it induced.  I don't get panic attacks and no physical manifestations besides some sleep loss.

I live in a MCOL area near a larger city.  First of, how easy would it be for me to find another 90k a year gig?  I think knowing that there are other options out there would help me feel less anxious.  I provided most of my career information above to see what people thought. 

Second, for those that have been in similar situations, how did you stop worrying about work so much and enjoy life?  I am fully confident that I am good at my job and I give it all and other people could not do better.  I would just like to stop worrying about it when I'm spending time with my family, during sleep, on weekends etc.  Any mental exercises or behaviors that help?

I'm trying to get a hang of this before I feel the need to say F-it and quit.  Any help is appreciated.  Thanks so much!

[Wintergreen78]

If you are doing project management for oil and gas projects of any size, and have successful projects to point to, I would definitely expect you should be getting paid more than that. Of course, work in that industry is super cyclic, and I’m sure it is really down right now. But I would definitely be sending out resumes and trying to find someone else who is hiring. If nothing else, it would give you some comparables to try and re-negotiate your salary with your current company.

I live in California, so everything is much more expensive, but professional salaries in oil and gas were well over $100k/year in my area.

[blingwrx]

90k salary is not hard to come by in a HCOL area for someone with experience like yourself, that may mean you have to commute to the bigger city though. It could even be worth it to take a lower salary as long as the job was low stress with a standard 40 hours or less work week. You can't put a price tag on time with your family and your health.

It looks like you're in a great financial situation where you don't need to work a high salary job just to get by. I don't know your expenses but 1.2mil invested + paid off house in a MCOL area could be FIRE already for most people. Staying home you could save that 5k on daycare expenses so that's a big plus.

It's hard to say if you'll be able to find a better job in your specific industry and who knows how stable the industry is in the future. I would say look into other industries and leverage your project management background. Get that PMP certification then update your resume and start looking. It doesn't hurt to look around and see if you get any call backs, you're not obligated to take the job if it doesn't pay what you want.

If you do want to continue working, the last thing you want to do is quit the current job until you find something else. It's a lot harder to land another job if you're unemployed.

[Laura33]

I get it:  I'm a lawyer.  I am literally paid to be right all the time.  If I'm wrong, there are lawsuits and ethics complaints, and more importantly, I may have just ruined someone's life.  The pressure not to screw up is intense.

What's the answer?  It's completely counterintuitive:  assume that you will screw up.  Don't expect everything to go right; assume that things are going to go wrong, often for reasons that are completely out of your control.  Your job isn't to prevent all screw-ups; it's to manage the screw-ups that occur, as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. 

The reality is that almost no mistakes are as earth-shattering as they seem to be at the time.  The people who succeed are the ones who can calmly deal with it.  It sounds like you are one of those people -- so congratulations, that is an awesome life skill that will serve you well in any job.  So you are not anxious for any substantive performance reason, but rather just because you feel like the fact that something went wrong is your fault.  If you can change your thinking on that, you can start giving yourself credit for how well you manage the screwups instead of beating yourself up because something went wrong (or living life on tenterhooks wondering when the inevitable is going to happen).

Note that this attitude change is also powerful in how people treat you.  When you act apologetic and upset that something happens, people are much more likely to see it as your fault (which then doubles down on the anxiety).  But if you are able to shift your mental process to "shit happened, and look how well and quickly I shoveled it," then the people around you will also focus on how well you responded.

[ctuser1]

I don't have inputs on the earning side. I have faced the work-stress myself in the past and have found "Agile Mindset" to be useful in pre-empting stress related to inevitable screw-ups.

1. You focus on "fail fast". i.e. you define a task completion date, completion criteria and figure out if something has failed within that bounded time-frame. This mitigates failures from festering and damages from those failures compounding.
2. You DO NOT focus on Root Cause Analysis in the middle of dealing with a damage control situation. This (focusing on unproductive root cause analysis) is probably the biggest cause of stress. You religiously do a "Sprint Review Meeting" (https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/meetings/sprint-review-meeting) at the end of every sprint where you focus on all RCA and other general improvements. If someone brings up an RCA discussion (e.g. "why did this happen?") when you are knee deep in mitigating it, you shut him/her down by saying "we have a RCA planned for X date, I'll send you the invite and we can discuss this there". You need to do that religiously irrespective of the rank of the person asking it. And then, of course, you do proper root cause analysis in the sprint review meeting. If you can't avoid the question (e.g. if the CEO is asking it) then you stop all work on mitigating the issue, do RCA, and then get back after you are done with it, with full understanding of all parties that this will delay the fix.


Please note that there is a lot of buzzwords and unproductive ceremonies associated with the whole Agile stuff. Please don't get sidetracked by them - just try to understand the reasoning behind those and focus on that.

You need to be very hands on to be a good, Agile, project manager. i.e. you may not need to be a petroleum engineer, but you better understand all the components that go into digging a well and don't get lost when an engineer explains you why the "normal" way of doing things need to be adapted in this situation. This ability is important everywhere, but critical for Agile project management.

If you are doing PMP, that is great and will likely make your resume attractive. Last time I looked into PMP (a decade ago, not sure if this is the case now), however, it was all waterfall and militantly anti-Agile. So be careful there :-) Unfortunately, I have found all Agile training courses to be heavy on rituals and low on the reasoning behind it - so can't recommend any of those either. If you are used to consistently mitigating screw-ups and completing projects successfully, then you are probably doing Agile intuitively without realizing. Just read up a bit more on how other people think about it, and maybe you will feel this whole thing to be so much under control that it will stop bothering you or stressing you out.

   

[mm1970]

What's the answer?  It's completely counterintuitive:  assume that you will screw up.  Don't expect everything to go right; assume that things are going to go wrong, often for reasons that are completely out of your control.  Your job isn't to prevent all screw-ups; it's to manage the screw-ups that occur, as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

+1

Meditation, exercise, crocheting (which is meditation for me).  Project and Program management sucks because you literally do almost nothing.  Like, all I do is manage programs and projects, not people.  So when shit gets messed up, they look to me to fix it (but it's not possible because we refuse to hire more people or force the existing one to use new processes sooo......)

[Mrs. Sloth]

I am sorry as I know how you feel! It is a horrible way to be and live. I am trying my best to cope as well. What helps me cope on the weekends is that I give myself permission to have a "free day" on Saturdays where I completely allow myself to have fun and relax. Sometimes I do the same for Sunday mornings but also makes a plan to devote a couple of hours on Sunday to do a little work to ease my anxiety about work. This is often met with dread when the time comes to do the work but at least I have allowed myself dedicated time for fun and relaxation instead of constantly worrying off and on the entire weekend.

Are you close to FIRE? It may help if you have a finish line in mind and can start your countdown. It helps with the stress, at least for me. Good luck!

[Abe]

I get it:  I'm a lawyer.  I am literally paid to be right all the time.  If I'm wrong, there are lawsuits and ethics complaints, and more importantly, I may have just ruined someone's life.  The pressure not to screw up is intense.

What's the answer?  It's completely counterintuitive:  assume that you will screw up.  Don't expect everything to go right; assume that things are going to go wrong, often for reasons that are completely out of your control.  Your job isn't to prevent all screw-ups; it's to manage the screw-ups that occur, as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. 

The reality is that almost no mistakes are as earth-shattering as they seem to be at the time.  The people who succeed are the ones who can calmly deal with it.  It sounds like you are one of those people -- so congratulations, that is an awesome life skill that will serve you well in any job.  So you are not anxious for any substantive performance reason, but rather just because you feel like the fact that something went wrong is your fault.  If you can change your thinking on that, you can start giving yourself credit for how well you manage the screwups instead of beating yourself up because something went wrong (or living life on tenterhooks wondering when the inevitable is going to happen).

Note that this attitude change is also powerful in how people treat you.  When you act apologetic and upset that something happens, people are much more likely to see it as your fault (which then doubles down on the anxiety).  But if you are able to shift your mental process to "shit happened, and look how well and quickly I shoveled it," then the people around you will also focus on how well you responded.

I agree with the above, as a surgeon. The best surgeons I have trained with take on the toughest cases but don’t lose their cool regardless of what happens. They have realized (and I have with time) that one person can control only so much. Nothing is certain, and all plans have flaws. Make sure your clients understand the risks, what you plan to do to mitigate them, and demonstrate that you’re proactive, not just reactive. When problems occur then admit mistakes, apologize and learn from them. Remain calm in the face of adversity and people will respect you for it. None of the above is easy and it takes practice.

[RunningintoFI]

I can't speak to the stress aspect of the role as well as most of the other posts already have but I can tell you that Project Manager is the second most posted position nationally right now after Truck Driver so you are definitely in the drivers seat for a transition to a less stressful environment once you have your PMP.  Great job accumulating so much stash by 30 as well!

[clarkfan1979]

My wife had a low stress job at a retail store making 50K to 55K. She ended up getting a 10K promotion to a manager that was in charge of 7-8 million of annual revenue. She supervised 3-4 managers and another 30-40 employees under them. It was way too stressful for the compensation (60K to 65K) and after one year she quit. For that level of stress, expectations, hours and level of expertise that she brings, she should be paid in the 100K to 120K range.

Most people just accept the stress because they need the money. We had enough that she didn't need to keep doing it. When she quit, her manager got the whole deer in the headlights look. He was pressing her pretty hard and he knew it. When she quit he knew that he didn't have anyone able to replace her. He immediately knew he wouldn't make his bonus for next year. He probably lost 20K to 30K in bonus money when she left. 

[parkerk]

"shit happened, and look how well and quickly I shoveled it"

This is amazing and possibly my new motto.

[use2betrix]

How large (in dollar value) are the projects you’re managing? I am a manager in Oil & Gas (not a project manager, but a dotted line to our PM and solid line to our corporate department director) over projects ranging from $250MM - $400MM, so I’m pretty familiar with all levels of the construction.

We have contractors performing various scopes of work with their own project managers that manage scopes of a few million dollars or $100MM. I am also over all the vendor/shop fabrication for these projects, and each shop/vendor has their own PM dedicated to projects.

Regardless, $90k is pretty low for all but the smallest companies. Unless you are managing projects that are a few million or less, that’s under paid. For reference, I made $90k (plus per diem, truck allowance, gas card) about 5 years ago for a much smaller construction company on much smaller projects (around $12MM) and was also a department manager (1 level below the PM). He made around $135k/yr plus some bonuses.

The issue is that right now oil and gas sucks. This is not a good market to be looking for work, and really, most anyone with a job should feel pretty fortunate. Our company recently cut inspector pay by about $200/day for 50+ field inspectors. In a booming market, people would be leaving immediately. Unfortunately, the market is flat so they don’t really have an option.

Regarding stress, I can understand your frustration. I’m the same way and recently started taking xanax to help cope with the stress. It’s been a huge help and I just take it as needed.