Mark: Here’s a wild thought to start your day. After you’ve been awake for just 17 hours, your cognitive performance drops to a level equivalent to someone with a blood alcohol content of 0.05%. Michelle: Wait, really? So that all-nighter I pulled in college to finish a paper… I basically showed up to the exam legally tipsy? Mark: According to the science, yes. You’re functionally impaired. And it’s a perfect entry point into what we’re talking about today, because it shows that pressure isn't just a vague feeling in your head. It's a physical, measurable event in your body. Michelle: Huh. I’ve never thought of it that way. It always just feels like a giant, invisible weight. Mark: Exactly. And our guide to understanding that weight today is the book No Pressure, No Diamonds: Understanding the Power of Pressure by Matt Symonds. What’s fascinating about this book is how Symonds got his insights. He didn't just sit in a library; he went out and interviewed an incredible range of people—Navy SEALs, Olympic athletes, surgeons, CEOs—and asked them all the same question: "Tell me about the most high-pressure moment of your life." Michelle: Wow, so he collected stories from the front lines of pressure. Mark: He did. And from those stories, he found a pattern, a kind of universal recipe for pressure. He argues it’s not random chaos at all. It’s an equation.

Michelle: An equation? That sounds a little too neat. Pressure feels like pure, unadulterated panic to me. How can you possibly boil that down to a formula? Mark: Well, the formula he proposes is surprisingly simple. It’s: Pressure equals Importance, times Uncertainty, times Volume. Three ingredients. Let’s start with Importance and Uncertainty, because they’re the explosive combination. Michelle: Okay, Importance I get. If it matters, you feel pressure. But what about Uncertainty? Mark: Uncertainty is the real amplifier. And there's no better story to illustrate this than one from a Navy SEAL commander named Curt Cronin. He was leading a team on a night mission in a remote mountain valley in Afghanistan. Their goal was to capture or kill Taliban forces. Michelle: I can’t even imagine the baseline level of pressure there. Mark: And it’s about to get worse. As they’re moving toward the target under the cover of darkness, all hell breaks loose. They come under fire from insurgents. Suddenly, the stakes are life and death. That’s Importance at its absolute peak. But the killer is the Uncertainty. They don’t know where the shots are coming from, how many attackers there are, or what their own casualties might be. Michelle: That’s the nightmare scenario. The not knowing. Mark: Exactly. And in that moment, Cronin has to act. He knows fear can paralyze his troops. So he makes a split-second decision to call in helicopter support to rain fire down on the attackers' likely position. He later said something profound about it. He said, "It might have been the second- or third-best choice, but the fact that the decision was made—that made it the best choice." He took direct action to crush the uncertainty. Michelle: That’s incredible. Decisiveness as a tool. But that’s such an extreme example. How does this equation work for the rest of us, who aren't in a firefight? Mark: It’s the same formula, just different variables. Let’s take the story of a woman the book calls Michelle Segal. She worked at an agribusiness company that got acquired by a larger European firm. Michelle: Oh, I know this feeling. The dreaded merger. Mark: Precisely. The new company announces they're merging her department with their existing one. There are 13 people across both teams, but there will only be 8 jobs left. And she’s in direct competition with her exact counterpart for one of those spots. Michelle: Oh, that is brutal. The Importance is huge—her job, her family's stability. And the Uncertainty is off the charts. She has no idea what will happen. Mark: For months. It’s not a sudden ambush like Cronin faced; it’s a slow, grinding pressure. She’s living inside that equation every single day. The third variable, Volume, also kicks in here—the sheer number of tasks she has to do to prove her worth, on top of the constant anxiety. It’s the combination of all three that makes it feel so crushing.

Mark: And that story is the perfect bridge to the next big idea in the book. Cronin’s firefight was what Symonds calls a "peak pressure moment"—a short, intense sprint. But Michelle Segal’s situation was "the long haul"—a marathon of sustained pressure. Michelle: I think most of us live in the long haul. The peak moments are scary, but the day-in, day-out grind is what wears you down. Mark: And the book argues that you need to be "pressure ambidextrous" to handle both. The mental tools that help you win the sprint can be absolutely toxic during the marathon. Michelle: Okay, what do you mean by that? Give me an example of a tool that works for one but not the other. Mark: Think about focus. In a peak moment, like that firefight, your body’s natural response is something called "attentional tunneling." Your focus narrows dramatically. You might not even hear sounds properly. An officer in a shooting once said he only knew his gun was firing because of the recoil. That intense, narrow focus is an evolutionary advantage for survival in that one moment. Michelle: I can relate to that in a less intense way. I’ve totally blanked in a job interview. I couldn't access things I knew perfectly well because the pressure just shrunk my world. Mark: That’s it exactly! But now imagine trying to live with that tunnel vision for months, like Michelle Segal. You’d neglect your health, your family, your long-term projects. You’d burn out. For the long haul, you need the opposite: broad awareness, creativity, and connection. Michelle: So you need two different toolkits. Mark: Two completely different toolkits. And the story of Canadian Olympic rower Jeremiah Brown perfectly illustrates this. In 2008, he’s a former football player who decides, almost on a whim, that he’s going to make the 2012 Olympic rowing team, despite barely knowing how to row. Michelle: That sounds… ambitious. Mark: It was a three-year long haul of pure grind. Waking up at 4:30 a.m. for icy rows, working a full-time job at a bank, dealing with immense physical pain. He said, "Rowing is a pain game." That was his long haul, fueled by this massive goal. Michelle: And the peak pressure moment? Mark: The Olympic final. After three years of that grind, it all comes down to one six-minute race. His team had a disastrous first heat and almost didn't qualify. The pressure was immense. His coach even tried to "motivate" him by saying, "Think about your son, Jeremiah. He doesn’t want his dad to let him down, does he?" Michelle: Oh, that is the worst thing to say! Just piling on more Importance. Mark: Exactly. It was the coxswain, the person steering the boat, who saved them. He refocused the team, saying, "It’s up to the nine guys in this boat right now. We’re going to do it for each other—no one else." He simplified the stakes. They went on to win a silver medal. Brown had to master the long haul to get there, and then master a completely different set of skills for that peak moment.

Michelle: Okay, so we have the Pressure Equation, and we have these two different types of pressure—the sprint and the marathon. What’s the fundamental skill that lets you become "ambidextrous"? How do you actually manage all of this in the moment? Mark: The book argues that every single tactic, for both the long haul and peak moments, rests on one foundational ability: creating a little bit of space between the trigger and your response. It’s about developing what he calls "active awareness." Michelle: What does that actually look like? Mark: It's the difference between reacting and responding. The book uses a great line: "There is a big difference between being angry and noticing I’m angry." When you are your anger, you lash out. When you notice you're angry, you can connect with your capacity to choose how to act. Michelle: Huh. So it’s not about suppressing the feeling of pressure, but about stepping back just enough to observe it. To see the Importance, the Uncertainty, the Volume, and not just be consumed by them. Mark: Exactly. It’s about realizing you are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, you are not your body's panic response. You are the one who is aware of all those things. And in that space of awareness, you can choose which tool to use. You can choose to take direct action like Curt Cronin, or to simplify the stakes like Jeremiah Brown's coxswain. Michelle: I really like that. It’s not about being a superhero who feels no pressure. It’s about becoming a better scientist of your own stress. You learn to identify the ingredients and then consciously decide on the right response instead of just letting the chemical reaction happen. Mark: That’s a perfect way to put it. You learn to harness the energy of pressure instead of being drowned by it. Michelle: That makes me think… for everyone listening, what's one pressure you're facing right now? Take a second to think about it. Now, is it a 'peak moment'—a single, high-stakes event? Or is it part of 'the long haul'—a marathon you have to endure? Just knowing which one it is might change how you approach it. Mark: A powerful question to end on. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.