A conversation with Ashley Whillans, the Volpert Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a PhD in social psychology. 

Stress is part of a healthy life.

In the right dose, it sharpens us. But in modern work, the dose is often constant. Leaders and high performers feel it as much as anyone: mounting pressure, pace, responsibility. 

But stress rarely announces itself. No one wakes up and declares: “I’m stressed.” Instead, it first shows up in our behavior.

Long before it is consciously named, or becomes visible in health metrics or engagement surveys, stress silently reshapes how we operate: narrowing attention, accelerating decisions, eroding recovery.

Stress is information.

For leaders under sustained pressure, that information appears first in judgement, relationships, and decision quality. And when decisions compound at scale, their consequences compound with them.

In this conversation, Professor Whillans, whose research explores the intersection of time, money, and happiness, defines Stress Intelligence through a behavioral lens: how stress alters decisions before we name it, why those most rewarded for pushing through are often the least likely to notice it, and what leaders can do earlier.

Stress Intelligence is the learned leadership capacity to detect stress early, interpret it accurately, and design performance that compounds sustainably.

Time poverty: the invisible stress amplifier in modern work

WONE: Ashley, before we dive in, could you introduce yourself and the lens you bring to understanding performance under stress?

Prof. Whillans: I’m Ashley Whillans. I’m the Volpert Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. I’m a social psychologist by training, and my research looks at the intersection between time, money, and happiness.

Most relevant here: I study the psychological experience of time poverty: the chronic, psychological experience of feeling like you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. Eight out of ten working adults report experiencing time poverty on a regular basis.

When we feel like we don’t have enough time available, our research suggests this psychological state can influence how we think, how we make decisions, and how we relate to other people.

And I study solutions, individual and organizational, to help us become more time affluent, experience less stress, and ultimately report greater joy and satisfaction.

WONE: Time poverty isn’t just busyness. It’s one of the defining pressures of modern work, and it reliably distorts priorities and decision quality.

Those distortions are often the first indicators that stress is influencing performance long before it’s consciously recognized.

What is Stress Intelligence, behaviorally?

WONE: When you think about Stress Intelligence, especially for people who see themselves as high performers, what does it mean in behavioral terms?

Prof. Whillans: When it comes to reducing stress and optimizing performance, Stress Intelligence is about stopping to pause, notice and reflect on how we are feeling. And this ability to pause, notice, and reflect may matter more for stress resilience and well-being than pushing through difficult feelings and experiences. 

I think of Stress Intelligence as three behavioral capabilities:

1. Noticing: recognizing when stress is rising and catching early behavioral signals before they become a crisis.
   
   

2. Reflecting: identifying not only that you’re stressed, but where it’s coming from. Not all stress is the same.
   
   

3. Solving: matching strategies and solutions to the stress you experience.

If stress is controllable, a problem-focused approach can help: make a plan, take action, address the issue.

But if it’s outside your control, problem-focused coping can create frustration, and emotion-focused strategies like acceptance or reframing may be more effective.

And the key is: most of us don’t have the tools or language for doing this. But we can begin by noticing stress, and instead of shoving it in a box, we can pick it up, look at it, listen to it, and ask what it’s trying to tell us.

WONE: Prof. Whillans’ model sounds simple, but in practice it can be deceptively difficult. For high performers, stress isn’t just a feeling, it can often feel like a threat to identity.

Stress Intelligence requires separating the signal from the story we attach to it. And that’s where the real challenge begins.

Why high performers are often the least stress-aware

WONE: Why can stress awareness be hardest for high performers?

Prof. Whillans: For high performers, noticing stress is hard because many of us have built our identities around being capable, handling pressure, and digging deep. And, our organizations reward us for this behavior.

So the first step is noticing when we’re hitting up against our limits, and questioning whether powering through is really the best course of action. 

WONE: Here’s the paradox: the traits that create success under pressure can also obscure the signal that pressure is becoming unsustainable.

This creates a risk pattern. Pushing through works in short bursts. But it draws from finite resources: attention, patience, judgement, connection. 

Over time, that withdrawal accumulates. Where biology is the eventual cost, behavior is often the first visible receipt.

“Digging deep” has a cost

WONE: Can you share a moment where you realized stress was shaping your decisions more than you realized at the time?

Prof. Whillans: The noticing and reflecting piece is really key for high-achieving people because you get used to putting fatigue in a box and saying: this is part of success. I can handle it.

But slowly over time, when you dig deep, you’re taking something from somewhere.

There’s a metaphor I love: digging deep means you’re digging into your roots. Every time you push past your limit, you’re taking soil you need to build a strong foundation.

For me, it shows up in small ways before my conscious awareness catches up. During busy periods, I stop going for walks. I stop moving my body. I start rolling out of bed and going straight to my phone instead of having my favorite morning ritual: coffee and quiet reflection.

And maybe a week or two into that, I might snap at my child, my husband, or a colleague. Or I start having negative thoughts about other people. That recentering moment is: that’s not who I am. That’s stress and busyness.

So it’s not one moment. It’s a pattern. And it’s an ongoing practice of re-centering.

Digging deep means you’re digging into your roots. Every time you push past your limit, you’re taking soil you need to build a strong foundation.

WONE: This is the behavioral signature of rising load: your values don’t disappear, but your access to them does.

Stress Intelligence is the capacity to notice that drift early enough to intervene.

Three early behavioral signs stress is shaping your decisions 

If Stress Intelligence begins with noticing, the practical question is: what exactly are you noticing?

WONE: When stress rises, how does it influence people’s decisions before they’d describe themselves as “stressed”? In other words, what does stress look like before we call it ‘stress’? 

Prof. Whillans: There are a few cognitive and behavioral shifts to look out for.

1) Cognitive narrowing: urgency replaces importance

When we’re busy and overwhelmed, there’s what researchers call the mere urgency effect: we gravitate toward whatever is easiest and right in front of us. Completing the easy tasks in front of us can give us a boost of competence and control, but it can also put us into time debt.

So the first clue is becoming hyper-fixated on small, maybe non-important tasks, instead of stepping back to ask whether something is truly the best use of our time.

WONE: In other words: when clearing becomes more important than choosing, stress is shaping behavior.

2) Myopic thinking: short-term relief replaces long-term capacity

Prof. Whillans: When we’re stressed out and overwhelmed, we gravitate toward fast dopamine hits: junk TV, chips, skipping exercise, instant gratification to soothe us quickly.

So if you find yourself cancelling workouts, adding an incremental hour that isn’t actually productive, or reaching for quick fixes instead of nourishment, it’s a clue you’re overwhelmed and your body is trying to get back to homeostasis quickly.

It doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you need to go back to noticing, reflecting, and acting on the underlying feeling, rather than trying to solve it with a quick fix.

WONE: These behaviours then aren’t moral failures, but signs of a system seeking rapid regulation. But repeated over time, short-term relief erodes the long-term capacity that high performers rely on.

3) Social withdrawal: withdrawal replaces connection

Prof. Whillans: The third clue is when you stop reaching out to others and stop helping others.

When we’re stressed, we try to conserve resources. We ignore texts, cancel plans, avoid small acts of service, reschedule the coffee, skip the mentoring conversation.

But research suggests the best time to reconnect – to help a colleague, partner, or friend – is when you feel most overwhelmed. That’s when you need connection most. Even 30 minutes can help you feel more in control of your time and happier.

WONE: So the moment you stop helping others is often the moment you need connection most. Social withdrawal is one of the most overlooked early indicators of rising load, and one of the most powerful leverage points for recovery.

The trade-offs ambitious leaders make under stress

Stress doesn’t only change what we do. It changes what we sacrifice.

WONE: Under stress, what trade-offs do ambitious performers start making without realizing it?

Prof. Whillans: These trade-offs are almost always in the same direction: immediate relief over sustainable long-term performance.

Trade-off #1: work time over recovery time

Under stress, ambitious people sacrifice sleep, exercise, and leisure first. These feel like low-cost cuts because the benefits are delayed.

But recovery time is what sustains performance over time. Cutting recovery is like running up a credit card balance: you feel fine until suddenly your energy is bankrupt.

Trade-off #2: output over relational investment

Under stress, people deprioritize the “soft stuff”: the check-in, mentoring, team lunch.

But those are the interactions where ideas are born, creativity flourishes, and important information gets passed on. We focus on outputs – the deck, the presentation – but we don’t cultivate the connection and trust that are inputs to the quality of that output.

Trade-off #3: decision speed over decision quality

Under stress, people reduce cognitive load by making fast decisions, relying on heuristics, becoming less open to new information or dissenting perspectives.

In the short run, speed feels efficient. In the long run, it can lead to worse outcomes and missed opportunities, which can create more stress.

WONE: This is the hidden cost of modern performance culture:

• Recovery becomes negotiable.

• Relationships become expendable.

• Speed begins to outrun judgement.

Stress Intelligence intervenes here: before temporary efficiency hardens into long-term damage. 

Why Emotional Intelligence isn’t enough under pressure

WONE: Emotional Intelligence (EQ) has been a leadership buzzword for years. Where does EQ fall short in high-pressure environments, and how might Stress Intelligence (SQ) fill that gap?

Prof. Whillans: Emotional intelligence is a cognitive process: you can make a plan to handle a difficult email or conversation.

But when we’re stressed and overwhelmed, the plan can go out the window. We may act out of gut feel. If we only focus on Emotional Intelligence and not Stress Intelligence, by the time we need emotional intelligence, our capacity for it may already have been eroded.

So I see Stress Intelligence as the foundation of Emotional Intelligence: building the resilience and space needed to actually deploy EQ skills when it matters.

WONE: EQ is a skill you deploy under pressure. SQ is the upstream capability that determines whether you can.

When stress becomes a strategic risk

WONE: What makes early stress awareness so much more practical than trying to power through?

Prof. Whillans: Early awareness is better because you’re addressing overwhelm before it becomes debilitating, before it leads to myopic decisions that can negatively impact yourself, your social relationships, or your organization.

I teach a case at HBS about an executive under high stress who became myopically focused on short-term financial performance, and the consequences were severe. The point is: this isn’t just about daily habits. Stress shapes organizational decisions with real consequences for employees, stakeholders, and companies.

It’s easier to catch up on sleep and take a week off than fix an entire year of mistakes made in a reactive, stressed, myopic way.

Becoming aware, developing language, practicing tools, and socializing stress practices in the workplace isn’t just helping ourselves, it’s helping our organizations and society.

WONE: This is where Stress Intelligence moves from self-awareness to strategic capability.

Stress becomes diagnostic information. It reveals whether workload is sustainable, whether pace is calibrated, whether recovery is protected, and whether decision quality is beginning to erode.

For leaders, stress is data about the health of the system, and, read correctly, an early-warning infrastructure. 

Stress is information about work design

WONE: If Stress Intelligence were widely understood and applied in the workplace, how would leaders and tools change?

Prof. Whillans: If stress intelligence became a core leadership capability, we’d shift from more reactive intervention to proactive workplace design.

Many organizations treat stress as an individual problem with individual solutions: here are tools, manage yourself better. That’s good, but insufficient because it ignores the systematic sources of stress leaders control.

With stress intelligence, leaders would ask different questions:

Not “how do we help people cope with our meeting culture?” but “what would meetings look like if designed with human stress in mind?”

Not “how do we reduce burnout after the fact?” but “what are early behavioral indicators of unsustainable workloads, and what signals can leaders track before burnout happens?”

Instead of annual engagement surveys, we’d use more real-time indicators: decision quality, collaboration patterns, recovery behaviors.

And leaders would recognize something many miss: their own stress patterns ripple through teams. Late-night emails, cancelled one-on-ones, reactive decisions. Those behaviors become culture.

Stress isn’t a personal failure to manage. It’s information about how work is designed, and leaders who can read that information can design work that is productive and sustainable.

WONE: This is the category-level reframe at the heart of Stress Intelligence:

Not: How do we help people cope?
But: What is stress telling us about how work is structured?

The question shifts from individual endurance to systemic architecture, from managing symptoms to redesigning the conditions that create them.

The highest leverage habit: protecting recovery 

WONE: If stress is information, and stress-intelligent design is the lever, what single behavior shifts the trajectory most?

Prof. Whillans: Protecting your recovery.

When high performers recognize depletion and actually prioritize recovery, sleeping enough, taking breaks, spending time with loved ones, everything else can improve: decisions get better, relationships get stronger, creativity returns, resilience increases.

And this isn’t just individual. It’s collective. After busy seasons, leaders can take projects off people’s plates so they can truly rest.

I also think it’s helpful to think of this process as grounded in nature: seasons, cycles. Life has booms and busts. Business cycles have seasons. Hours in a day have energy shifts.

Instead of fighting that, sprinting all the time, we could lean into natural rhythms: sprint, then rest. Sprint, then rest.

WONE: Recovery isn’t what you do after performance. It’s the upstream condition that makes performance sustainable.

Stress Intelligence is the capability that protects that condition, before biology, burnout, or culture force the correction.

Stress Intelligence in practice: Prof. Whillans’ personal playbook

My “I need a pause” signal

"Stopping workouts. Rolling out of bed and going straight to email."

Most reliable reset

"Getting out in nature… especially in a forest."

One habit I protect when life gets intense

"Morning quiet time. Sacred."

A small practice that makes a disproportionate difference

"Scheduling transitions: 15-minute buffers between meetings so you’re present, not mentally jumping ahead."

One word I wish people used less about stress

"Managing. You don’t manage stress. You understand it, sit with it, prevent it, and design your way around it."

A closing reframe

Stress Intelligence isn’t asking us to lower our ambitions. It’s the capability that allows us to sustain them.

The leaders and organizations that win in the next decade won’t be the ones who push harder for longer. They’ll be the ones who detect earlier:

• Earlier signs of narrowing judgment, before decisions compound

• Earlier erosion of recovery, before energy bankrupts

• Earlier behavioral shifts, before culture absorbs them

…and respond with precision.

Prof. Whillans: We can begin to develop Stress Intelligence by noticing when we’re experiencing stress. And instead of trying to shove those feelings in a box, we can pick them up, look at them, listen to them, and ask what they’re trying to tell us.

The key is not to ignore stress as a signal of being a poor performer, but to treat it as powerful information that protects both wellbeing and competitive advantage.

WONE: Stress is not the enemy of performance. Unexamined stress is.

Stress Intelligence is the capability that turns stress into signal, and signal into strategic advantage.