The ability to not become stressed out probably depends on your ability to ignore things.
I had a nice morning coding some designs that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. I was able to focus on the task, methodically working through the project, and I made quite a bit of progress.
Meanwhile, a flurry of emails are disrupting my inbox with new tasks and projects, while in the back of my mind, I knew that I had more work today than the hours available to do those things. But, I was able to ignore all of that for 90 minutes of nice, quiet, well-thought out work. Perhaps I hit the point where I realized that no matter what I did I wasn’t going to get it all done, but somehow I was able to ignore all of that other stuff.
These other tasks, projects, and concerns are always going to be bombarding me I think, but perhaps a strategy to reduce the stress of it all is to just get better at ignoring most of it. I think there are a few strategies to help myself out, like not being logged into email except for a few points throughout the day. I’ll have to practice this ignoring thing a bit and see if I can perfect it and my skills at truly not worrying about all of the stuff that I’m not working on.