I was talking to a high school athletics director this week from Trussville, Alabama. He had reached out to discuss a book I’d written 15 years ago. It’s about pressure and why some people excel under it and others don’t.
There are five things that people who are good under pressure do, and each one builds off the one before. It starts with focus. He wanted to give the book to his coaches so they could help their student-athletes win when it mattered most.
Talking about a book I hadn’t talked about in years took me back to that pre-kids, early-marriage time when adding more and more things to work and life was easy. It felt like a game that we were winning.
But at a certain point you quite literally run out of time – promotions, obligations, kids, dogs, cars, yardwork, insurance hassles, end of school, beginning of school. It goes on.
I realized that book, written when I didn’t have children and published when we had one small, stationary, generally silent child, has a lot of lessons for working parents.
The five traits of people who are great under pressure, whether they’re athletes, business leaders, litigators, military leaders, or working parents, are the same: Focus, Discipline, Adaptability, Being Present and the Push and Pull of Fear and Desire.
Like many working parents, I enter this last month of school with scars from having gone through this gauntlet for a dozen-plus years. There is simply too much to do and even if you cut down on sleep and exercise, barely enough time to do it.
And I want to do all the things that this month offers. I want to be at every end-of-school event, game, choir recital, show for my children and have their siblings come along, too. I want to spend time with just my wife alone without a beloved child firing an interruption missile through our conversation. I want to keep exercising, get enough sleep, and be outside doing the outdoor activities that everyone in the northeast craves when the sun finally emerges. Running The Company of Dads, I know this is one of our busier times – with talks and events leading up to Father’s Day. I want to be a good listener when my wife talks about her work or anything else.
None of these are clutch situations, but taken together I feel the pressure. I’m sure you do too.
So here’s what I’m doing. Whatever the thing, I’m focused on it. I’m staying disciplined so my mind doesn’t wander. When something disrupts what I’m doing – a traffic, a text from a daughter, a call from my wife – I’m adapting. Most of all I’m being present – and that means no checking email or scrolling to fill dead time. What drives all of this is the desire to fully enjoy the moment and the fear that if I’m not focused, disciplined, adaptable and present I’m going to choke under the pressure of so much to do.
Being clutch is too often and too narrowly assigned to athletes. This is how working parents can be clutch too.
