The connections and feedbacks between anxiety, decisions, Brownian motion, time, opportunity & transactions costs, and maneuvering through a crisis

I am someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my adult life.  I have learned a lot about how anxiety affects me, and how I see that it seems to affect others. 

Although I usually have a hard time separating out my professional and personal persona in my daily life, one of the few areas where I don't have that issue revolves around anxiety. 

In my personal life, anxiety forces me to act immediately and repeatedly until what ever is making me anxious is resolved.  Then, in my worst moments, my mind goes round and round until I find something else to make me anxious. Once I find another anxious situation, I can start the circle of anxious action all over again. It's an almost comical circle unless, of course,  you happen to be me or my wife.  She is a saint.

This reminds of a John Gorka song that unintentionally points out the painful and comical aspects of the circle of anxiety.
I can't get over it, so I got go around
I can't get around it, so I got to go down
I can't dig under it, so I got to go up
And start all over again

On the other hand, as a senior academic administrator, I was much more deliberate and calm.  I remember many situations where either the administration above me, or the faculty and staff in my unit were extraordinarily anxious and wanted to me act immediately and repeatedly. Yet, for some unknown genetic anomaly, I was able to remain calm, think through actions deliberately, and I think generally made better decisions than I would have if I was caught up in my personal anxiety cycle.

There most certainly appears to be a cliff that public regional universities are speeding toward. That cliff is caused by the erosion of the number of students entering college in states that overbuilt college campuses. 

Unless one is Evel Knievel, if you find yourself speeding toward a cliff when your accelerator is stuck, and your breaks don't work, it will probably be one of those moments that generates a lot of anxiety. Such is the case of administrators, faculty and staff in universities who are seeing demographic driven enrollment declines.

So, I want to make some bullet point observations how crises, anxiety, and Brownian motion synergize to create a cycle of not particularly productive action.. 

As in most of my blogging, that annoying resource, Time, makes an appearance.  Please remember that I started the activist group "It's Time for Time" in an earlier post. Time has yet to show appreciation. Nonetheless, here are some thoughts.

• In universities, faculty and staff time is often viewed as free and infinite
• Urgent situations such as approaching an enrollment cliff with a stuck accelerator and no breaks causes intense anxiety.
• When university leadership and employees experience intense anxiety, there is a great desire to act, immediately.
• When such anxiety envelops decision making, then one's brain says that any action is better than no action
• But, actions, when not made deliberately, often puts faculty and staff into  Brownian motion (see video above to watch particles in Brownian motion). 
• Hastily put together emergency actions, are generally not designed to assess whether they work-- so once in motion they stay in motion
• Whenever university employees are in Brownian motion, there are additional transaction costs (e.g., employees after to enter large amounts of data which cost thousands in tine campus wide).  
• Employees in Brownian motion end up creating opportunity costs for the university (e.g, in my case, I could spend four hours entering data into a not very good early alert system or I could use that four hours to do something else productive like  engaging with students in a way that helps keep them enrolled.)
• Universities view time as infinite and free. Thus, there is an inherent assumption that there are no such things as transaction or opportunity costs. And, therefore, actions emerging out of anxiety are never developed with a consideration of whether the transaction and opportunity costs may be larger than the potential benefit of an action.
• In situations where the opportunity and transactions costs are actually large, faculty and staff, either or both, disengage and burnout
• With a burned out and disengaged crew, it is really hard for a ship to make it through a hurricane. It is also hard for a burned out engineer to stop a speeding train from going over the cliff.
• What is one to do?  Good question. I only have suggestions from personal experience and watching "disaster movies".
• My Personal experience suggests that making decisions under the duress of anxiety, leads to bad decisions that generally just increase anxiety  and just make it more difficult to avoid the disaster. So, taking a breath or two is usually a good thing (anxiety also tends to cause one to forget to breathe).
• Through watching movies where groups of people survive crises, it seems that when there are happy endings, everyone comes together and pulls in one direction as opposed to running around in Brownian motion- and leaders discover expertise and grit among the masses..
• And, the disaster is averted because leadership earned the trust of the crew with calm, collected and stable leadership and was able to get the best out of everybody else.
• So, what is the moral of the story?
  • anxiety makes one want to act- any action seems better than no action
  • When my friend, Time, is assumed to be free and infinite in the action, Time gets upset and stirs up extensive transaction and opportunity costs.
  • When Time is invisible, actions lead to burnout and disengagement because everyone is in Brownian motion
  • Burnout and disengagement causes disaster to happen more quickly
  • So, I say, "crush anxiety"; create trust from calm and collected deliberation; minimize Brownian motion; recognize angst in the crew as a sign of caring about the ship, not animus against the captain, and leverage that caring; pull together in a well designed set of actions that minimize transaction and opportunity costs; prioritize the time the crew has on the most critical actions; .......

and have a really good car or train mechanic on staff who can get the brakes working quickly