How do I deal with standup anxiety?

It's okay to include a note about what you were working on during this time.

I want to build further on this. I advise many of my clients to keep a running work log where they record what they do, where they get stuck, and their wins. They also record when they help another person/team.

Two standups/day is a lot, and seems like a strategy to micromanage (IMO!), but I hope your work log can save you some anxiety. You can always pick up 1-2 things from it to give an update on.

If you really have no update in a stand up, you could just say "No updates on top of what I already shared—still working on X." But I wouldn't make this the norm day after day.

Like Rahul said, you can also pay attention to what others are saying, and if everyone is anxious over this frequency, a conversation needs to be had with the manager. Maybe an idea to float is sync stand-ups in the morning and async updates at the end of the day on Slack?

Totally agree that at the end of the day, it's the perf review that matters. But stand up updates can make or break people's opinions on their teammates' work, which can be detrimental in peer reviews in the end. Sharing steady progress on your work is your best bet to continue to "look good."

Two standups/day is rough 😳 I wonder if that can be reduced to just once/day if you explain the situation to your manager?

It's not uncommon that work doesn't happen in the office. Crazy, I know! Our offices (and workdays generally) are filled with distractions that split our time and attention into tiny chunks so we can't get anything done.

While you have 2 standups/day, you can still explain honestly what you did during the day: I'm guessing a lot of it is attending meetings, ad-hoc conversations, replying to pings, etc. If you notice this as a trend among people in the standup, that gives you more credibility to make a change.

BTW, I made a YouTube video about standups that I'd recommend going through: https://youtu.be/NmoNIkF6xOA

Hmm, a standup in the morning (say 9am) and end of the day (say 4:30pm) is a little bit extreme because if you call your workday at 5pm, you basically only have 30 minutes of work that you can report on for the next day's morning standup.

It sounds like you'll always have something to say during the morning standup if you work early in the morning or later at night. I'm guessing that you are doing a lot of "unblocking" activity (meetings, writing, etc) between lunch and the end-of-day standup. It's okay to include a note about what you were working on during this time.

During your performance review cycle, your whole body of work during that period will be evaluated (or at least I hope!), not just whether you had something to say for your standups, so continue to focus on the long-term.