Struggling with Overwhelming Expectations and Project Pressure

Your health is absolutely important. If you don't look after yourself, I can guarantee that you will be the price. And "working late and weekends to make up for health-related breaks", that will be even more damaging to your health. If your output is "below expectations", that's not despite working overtime, it is because you are working overtime. You work most effective if you don't exceed 40 hours a week.

So go to your manager and tell them the facts. A fact that would be obvious to anyone outside the USA is that you won't achieve anyone's goals by working yourself into the ground and destroying your health. There are three possible outcomes: You quit or get fired now, you work yourself into the ground, achieving nothing good, and quit or get fired in a few months, or go back to normal working pattern - including leave to recover from your operation - and actually make some progress.

And how did I manage pressure? I have ONCE at young age found myself in the situation that more was expected from me than I could do, and stress got at me, and destroyed my productivity (and made me deeply unhappy). Then I decided one morning this was enough, it wasn't my problem, it was my bosses problem, told them that I would just do normal working time, and if that meant the project wasn't finished when my boss wanted it, that was his problem. He was a bit astonished, my working time went down back to normal, and I went back to achieving what I could achieve. And any pressure and stress, I just ignore. Stress doesn't help.

So if your boss is wise, they will choose the third of the possible outcomes. You will avoid the second one (and if your boss wants you to work harder, ignore it. Take your salary as long as you can, and accept that you cannot succeed. Although by removing the stress from your life, that alone should improve things).

BTW. Working from home can reduce pressure a lot. Especially with a long commute and a busy office space.

Consider stepping back.

Your health, both physical and mental must come first. It is clear from your description that you're NOT ranting, but truly feeling the stress.

At my company, we are doing a rewrite of a very mature system and have added a number of new devs to the team. The amount of stress this adds to the work environment is nuts.

Another option is going to management and let them know that you need help. If they have any sense, they'd rather know before a problem occurs rather than later in the cycle.

It isn't reasonable for a company to expect 100% out of someone recently back from surgery.

If the manager is pushing their angst onto you, they need to be called on it and they should become part of the solution instead of the problem. How to do that is part of the question. (I assume that reasonable managers don't want to chase off people).

How did you manage the pressure and improve your performance?

If you know you're trying hard and your manager is still penalising you, then it's their fault, not yours. It's up to them to motivate and make sure their underlings are being both useful assets and contented ones. So DON'T let it affect your morale.

Remain positive and weather the storm or if it gets too much, job search or tell them to lighten up, you're trying your best and the pressure isn't helping.

Usually this means they're under some sort of strain themselves, but that's not something you need to try and work out.

I was in similar situation 2y back.

• Now, i made sure i dont work more than 7hrs a day. + nowork on Holidays
• eventually, i was able to:: better paraphrase the issue, Better handle the managers, Better handle the customers, give better stories for timeline slippages.
• Added I am more creative at work.

I think you are afraid of losing job. But consider the above. Its worth-it.

I used to work 14hrs/day. No holidays. I was afraid of losing job. But after trying, things are diffarent now. Hope it will help you aswell.