We’re All Anxious Right Now: Here’s How to Cope

30 Mar 2020

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Acting on emotion leads to bad decisions, so you need to slow down. Here’s how. With the news around the COVID-19 pandemic developing quickly, people are making decisions — often quickly — on everything from whether to cancel meetings to how to best project their family and colleagues. In a time of crisis and uncertainty, there are several psychological factors that impact our ability to make decisions. Our brains are responding to a sense of threat, a deep feeling of uncertainty, and a lack of control and information, all of which leads us to make short-sighted decisions that may fill immediate psychological needs but aren’t necessary in the long term. To make better choices, we need to slow down and access the deliberative reasoning part of our brain. Any decision to act should be based on deliberation, sober reflection on data, and discussion with experts — not in reaction to a headline or a tweet. Based on the following HBR articles: "Managing the Stress and Uncertainty of Coronavirus" by Morra Aarons-Mele https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/03/managing-the-stress-and-uncertainty-of-coronavirus "Slow Down to Make Better Decisions in a Crisis by Art" Markman https://hbr.org/2020/03/slow-down-to-make-better-decisions-in-a-crisis "A Simple Way to Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments" by Leah Weiss https://hbr.org/2016/11/a-simple-way-to-stay-grounded-in-stressful-moments --------------------------------------------------------------------- At Harvard Business Review, we believe in management. If the world’s organizations and institutions were run more effectively, if our leaders made better decisions, if people worked more productively, we believe that all of us — employees, bosses, customers, our families, and the people our businesses affect — would be better off. So we try to arm our readers with ideas that help them become smarter, more creative, and more courageous in their work. We enlist the foremost experts in a wide range of topics, including career planning, strategy, leadership, work-life balance, negotiations, innovation, and managing teams. Harvard Business Review empowers professionals around the world to lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a positive impact. Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters Follow us: https://hbr.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review/ https://www.facebook.com/HBR/ https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review

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