If you feel more anxious than you used to, you're not imagining it.

And it's not because you suddenly forgot how to handle pressure.
Something actually changed.

Not the stress or anxiety itself. That's always been part of the job. A certain amount of it is useful. It keeps you sharp. It forces you to pay attention.

What's changed is how often it's getting triggered.

More decisions. More inputs. More change. Less time to process any of it.

It's not one big problem.

It's ten, stacked on top of each other, all hitting at once.

Why uncertainty wears you down faster

Your brain is a prediction machine. It constantly generates expectations about what comes next. When reality doesn't match those predictions, you feel it. Anxiety is the brain's response to that gap.

We evolved this way. The brain treats uncertainty as a threat whether you're choosing between two job candidates or wondering if your company survives the next 18 months.

There's a study I recently keep coming back to. One I learned about from Ashley Goodall, author of “The Problem With Change.”

Two groups were given 20 electric shocks.

One group got consistently strong shocks. Predictable. Same every time.

The other group got mostly moderate shocks combined with a random three strong shocks. They didn't know when they were coming.

The latter group showed 50% higher indicators of stress.
Even with their shocks, on average, being less strong.
Because they couldn't predict when a big one would be delivered.

That's where many leaders are right now. McKinsey research shows that global uncertainty measures have nearly doubled since the mid-1990s. CEOs used to juggle four or five major challenges at once. Now they're dealing with twice that.

A little uncertainty helps you stay alert.
Constant uncertainty keeps your system running all day.

The part nobody says out loud

Leaders are supposed to be able to handle this. That's the expectation.

You've got the experience. The title. The responsibility. You should be able to absorb it.

So when it starts to feel like too much, the default assumption is: this is on me.
That's not entirely true.

The pace is faster. The inputs are noisier. The number of decisions is higher. And most of them don't come with clean information. You're making more calls with less clarity, more often.

HBR recently reframed workplace anxiety not as a personal failing but as something that deserves real leadership attention. Their advice is practical. Slow down. Don't isolate yourself. Most of it comes down to creating space before you react.

When we don't feel psychologically safe, we make defensive decisions. And might choose personally safer alternatives instead of what's best for the organization. That shows up in performance long before anyone calls it anxiety.

The options problem

I've been vegan for over 15 years.

If I go to a normal restaurant, I've got two options. Maybe three. I pick one. Done.

If I go to a vegan restaurant, I can eat everything on the menu.

And I get stuck. I feel anxious.

Too many options. Too many ways to not pick the best dish. I start thinking instead of deciding.

That's what a lot of leadership feels like right now.

More data. More tools. More ways to solve the same problem.

I’ve written about indecisiveness before. The inability to make a decision stems from fear. The leaders who move aren't the ones with the most information. They're the ones who trust themselves to act without it.

You're not the only one feeling it

One of the most useful things I see in peer groups is what happens when leaders compare notes.
Different companies. Different roles. Same feeling.

That moment when someone says, "Yeah, I'm dealing with that too," matters more than people expect.

Not because it solves the problem. Because it removes the idea that you're the problem.

In a recent group facilitation I did, four of six corporate executives said they were feeling anxious. Not concerned. Not busy. Anxious.

The triggers looked different. The root cause was the same. A lack of control in a situation that mattered to them.

There's a difference between understanding the problem and having someone to process it with.

Let some fires burn

Here's where most leaders make it worse.

They try to handle everything.

Every issue gets attention. Every problem gets pulled in. Every fire gets put out.

That works for a while. Until it doesn't.

Then everything starts to feel urgent.

And when everything feels urgent, nothing gets the level of thinking it actually needs.

Stephen Covey's time management quadrants still apply here. Quadrant I is Crisis. Important and Urgent. Quadrant II is Strategy. Important but Not Urgent. The more time you spend in Quadrant I, the less you spend in Quadrant II. But Quadrant II is exactly what reduces the number of crises.

The construct comes from Eisenhower. Nearly a century later, it still holds.
When I work with an overwhelmed leader, one of the first things I do is look at their calendar. How much is Quadrant I? How much is Quadrant II? Then I have to get them out of crisis mode, sometimes by encouraging them to let fires burn.

You don't have unlimited capacity.

You have a fixed amount of attention and decision-making ability in a day.

So you have to choose. Not just what to work on. What NOT to work on.
That's not avoidance. That's the job.

Slow is often faster

The instinct when things speed up is to move faster.
More decisions. Faster responses. Shorter timelines.

If you're constantly reacting, you're not actually leading anything. You're just keeping up.
Brené Brown's work on anxiety and over/under-functioning talks about how we all have patterned ways of managing anxiety developed in our first families. Over-functioners take over. Move into action. Abandon feelings. Under-functioners shut down and withdraw. Both are armor.

As a self-described over-functioner, I see this in nearly every leader I work with. The instinct when things get chaotic is to do more. Control more. But that makes the anxiety worse for you and everyone around you. Panic induces panic. But calm is also contagious.

Sometimes the better move is to pause.
Do I actually have enough information to respond?
Is this urgent, or does it just feel urgent?
What happens if I wait an hour? A day? If I let that fire burn?

That space is where better decisions come from. We explored this idea in a previous article on self-awareness. Leaders don't realize they're creating anxiety until people stop speaking up. The damage happens before you see it.