Tilting is a term I picked up from playing video games. Imagine you’ve got a team of people playing superheroes and you just lost a game. You make some mistake that loses the game, and then you’re stuck in your head thinking how terribly you are… and then another mistake. And another… and then you’re yelling at your teammates. This is tilting, and it shows up in more places than just video games.

Anatomy of a Tilt

I always thought “tilting” was a great term to describe someone on negative run of output. It tends to also go a bit deeper than just venting (but venting can be part of it) and becomes a downward spiral of negativity directed either at oneself (internal tilting) or others (external tilting). I found a great definition from a user named “Kryptine” over on the Blizzard forums (and outcome given the video game context):

As their post suggests tilting may be initiated by something YOU do (for example - in the video game context falling off a cliff and having to start over), or your inability to succeed due to the actions of others (your team member doesn’t pass the ball so you miss a critical play). Regardless of how it begins, the end result is the same - a single spark sets off a downward spiral of negativity resulting in a substantially worse outcome (smashing your computer with a hammer in Kryptine’s case).

All tilts begin with some trigger which kicks off the mental decay. At work this could be missing a deadline, getting poor feedback, etc, but there’s always one specific point that causes it to start. Once it begins, it becomes self-reinforcing, kicking yourself over missing a deadline causes you to get overly critical with a teammate, which causes friction which makes your mood worse. They all also (thankfully) end at some point… generally when you realize things are going from worse to terrible and you just walk away for a bit.

Internal Tilting

Most of the time we think of tilting as something we watch other people do, or we do to others (we’ve all had SOME experience doing this). I find that my own self-talk can fall into this category too. Generally this feels like it comes out of nowhere…. “Dummy, you screwed that up the same way last time”, “Well that was incredibly stupid of me”. These tend to be knee-jerk responses to something happening, and I find unlike someone on my team tilting (more on that below), it crops up with some regularity. I’m not sure if this is me being too critical of my own work, or just a runaway internal monolog, but sometimes it is very disruptive.

I’ve found a few ways to help mitigate it’s impact:

• Keep an “I Rock” folder - A stockpile of positive or supportive messages from colleagues / friends is a great way to help those negative voices calm down / go away.

• Ask a colleague for their thoughts - Frequently I find getting an external opinion about my negative thought helps smooth things out. Most of the time I’m either misreading a situation, or or blowing something out of proportion.

• Imagine a stop sign - I’ve been using this one more frequently to stop a runaway train of thought. Just imagine a stop sign (or anything, really) popping up and stopping whatever thought is floating around. You might have to do it several times, but its been reasonably successful for me.

The aftermath of an internal tilt is always a bit challenging… you basically just need to be gentle with yourself and let it go. Take a moment to think about what happened, see if you can identify WHY it happened so you avoid it next time and move on with your day.

External Tilting

This is much easier to observe, since you can see / hear someone doing it. This tends to take the shape of a team member being hypercritical, or focusing only on the errors committed. A major difference between this an internal tilting is external tilting can impact multiple people. Imagine you’re in a meeting and someone goes off on you, or in chat, or any other environment that multiple people are in together. Not only will the target of the tilt feel the impact, the rest of your team will as well. An odd advantage of this is that the rest of your team can help to curb or correct the tilt, so the approaches to correcting it look a bit different.

• Point out positive things - This is a bit situation dependent, but when someone is on a negative tear pointing out a win can help get them back on track (or at least nudge them that way).

• Let them vent - Depending on the context, sometimes just letting them vent for a while can burn the tilt out. This can be dangerous since it may put them (or others) into a worse tail-spin, so I tend to reserve this for one on one connections.

• Walk away - This can take the form of you or them walking away for a bit. Simply excuse yourself, get up and leave. Take some time to do anything else to allow yourself (of them) to reset and recenter.

If I’m the one tilting in a meeting II will do my best to call myself out and apologize (usually after the fact). Frequently I will ask my team for help in figuring out what happened and why so we can all avoid it next time. If someone else was tilting, I’ll see if I can identify why and see if I can help avoid that going forward (not always possible, but certainly worth the effort).

Tilt Detection and Avoidance

It’s one thing to recognize a tilt in progress and try to disarm it, it’s something else entirely to avoid it completely. Internally I am ruthless with negative thoughts. As soon as I detect one, especially if it’s in reaction to something (like an email that ticks me off) I mentally step back and evaluate what’s going on. Is it possible I’m mis-reading the email? Who can help me fix whatever problem has popped up? Simply taking a few minutes to breath and look at my options helps keep me from spiraling.

External tilts can be a bit harder to manage since we don’t get that same internal feedback, so frequently we can only watch as someone goes off the deep end. The strategy with these is in preparation and knowing your team. Most of us can probably guess what our teammates triggers might be. This makes it relatively easy to determine if/when someone will tilt; just be on the lookout for those triggers. Easier said than done, since it requires you having enough info to make that determination, but it’s certainly possible. When I think someone is beginning to tilt I usually reach out right away with an offer to help. Sometimes it’s accepted, sometimes it isn’t, but simply reaching out can help nudge someone away from the end.

Keep it positive

At the end of it all the best way to avoid, or recover from, a tilt is to keep things positive. Focus on the parts of the project/day/whatever that are going well, and help others see that as well. While it can feel a bit like you’re faking it (and you very well might be!), it can nudge everyone towards a less stressful outcome.