Working Smarter

The person sitting next to you on the plane is a total stranger, yet after an hour of conversation, you feel like know him/her better than someone you’ve worked with for years. You wind up discussing some family issue or long-ago setback even your friends don’t know. What’s going on here?

Psychologists call it the “Stranger on the Train Effect,” a suspension of the normal rules of revelation, because what you say to a stranger can’t come back to haunt you. It’s a kind of Vulcan mind-meld minus the lobster-like pincer move to the shoulder. We get to the nub quickly when we’re traveling, since there’s limited time and no need to fear blowback from what we say. If you’ve ever experienced this phenomenon, you know it’s possible to get below the surface with folks very quickly, something we all have a need to do.

One of our core needs is “relatedness,” say researchers. We need to have close connections with others. When we do, that’s gratifying. We feel energized. Listened to. Valued by someone. A part of something.

That’s true not just outside the job, but also at work, where strangers can be less so when there are more opportunities to communicate beyond the usual game face and grunts. Granted, the revelation parameters are a lot different at work, where comments do have an afterlife, but the same need to connect exists at the office—and managers who understand this can get a big payoff in the form of engaged staff.

Engaged employees are 28% more productive than their colleagues. Employee engagement means someone is self-generating extra effort and vitality. It doesn’t come from being told to get fired up. Engagement is a two-way street, and requires communication and trust flowing in both directions.

This is a delicate topic at most organizations. People tend to be at their most guarded in a realm that controls their paycheck and promotions. Yet the trust that fuels engagement can only come when people feel they have an opportunity to be heard. Survey scores at most organizations are low when it comes to staff believing they have a voice. That’s another way of saying involvement is low, which means so is engagement.

Without a voice, there’s a sense of exclusion, which doesn’t make people feel valued, the critical factor in engagement. Exclusion promotes the opposite of the proaction necessary for engagement. What does spark self-initiative is inclusion. The research shows that when employees feel a part of the mix, free to contribute and even offer countering views, engagement soars. When more voices are heard, money is saved too. Ernst & Young saved $15 million in one initiative that sought out everyone’s suggestions on better ways to work.

How can more employees find the voice of engagement? It starts with more conversations between leaders and staff; not more meetings, but personal conversations that recognize people for what they’re doing well, asking them to set high goals, and relying on them to self-assess progress. Allow people to express how they feel about a certain task. Even if there’s nothing that can be done to change it, the mere fact of discussion helps build trust.

Being able to talk about what’s working or not keeps resentments from building up and creates a spirit of inclusion. That increases the sense that an employee is valued, and it can help surface better ways of doing things that build employee competence, another core need.

Trust is a reciprocal affair. You don’t get it unless you give it. I see that on my local basketball team, the Los Angeles Lakers. The leader of the team, all-star Kobe Bryant, is inclined to do it all himself, but the stats show that when he doesn’t score as much and shares the ball with teammates, the team has a much better record.

When we give up the ball more, the evidence shows more self-responsibility is taken, more communicating takes place. Research by Harvard’s Leslie Perlow has shown that dialogue within teams can increase productivity and effectiveness, but also something more: commitment. Talent wants to hang around when their voices and issues are heard and occasionally acted upon.

You don’t have to be a Vulcan to be on a better page with colleagues, but getting beneath the usual small talk to promote more relatedness isn’t that hard. Be more interested in others. Ask about their lives, their cycling club, or dance lessons. When we know more about the individual needs and lives of our colleagues, the sharing builds better teams, provides more support when we need it, and promotes better work-life balance for all.

Engaged employees are a part of the solution. If you'd like to find out how an employee engagement program can build involvement in your organization, click the button below.

When a horse, badger, or red panda like the one in the photo above faces a stressful situation, they go into a mode we’re all too familiar with, fight-or-flight. The survival instinct is a powerful force across species. Yet when the danger passes, these animals don’t obsess or replay the event over and over like a broken record. They do something very different from humans—they just drop the whole darn thing like it never happened. 

As we know all too well, we hold on to the stress, and, of course, the stress response and its destructive effects on health—reduced immune system, increased levels of the bad cholesterol, and a host of negative effects, because we insist on clinging to the event after it’s gone. The stress response was designed to be momentary, not chronic, because it weakens health the longer it goes on.

If we could be as smart as a red panda, and drop the stress after the adverse event, it could save a lot of trips to the pharmacy and ER. That's the idea behind my stress management classes, training, and coaching. Reframing stress and disputing it is key to catch ourselves in the act of reacting before we think. We can have a differnet response in a stressful moment, one that our body is already prepared to help us with.

It turns out that our bodies have stress deactivation built into the system. It’s called the parasympathetic nervous system, and its purpose is to bring the body back to equilibrium through rest and maintenance.

THE BUILT-IN STRESS COUNTER

There’s no reason to feel guilty in a moment of stepping back. It’s what we’re designed to do! Parasympathetic activity slows the heart rate and blood pressure from the fight-or-flight state, promotes digestion, and puts the mind in a calmer state where it can see the bigger picture, including the fact that we are not about to die and that the stress response is almost always a false emergency. Our brains don't know how to compute the social stressors of the modern world.

Countering the activation of the automatic stress response with its opposite number, rest and maintenance, is crucial for stress management and any semblance of work-life balance. Since stress activation is so automatic, we have to be able to consciously flip the switch. The goal is psychological detachment from the source of the stress and recovery from a state of activation that makes our system work overtime.

Relaxation is a learned skill. We have to practice shutting off the false alarms and get our bodies and minds used to a state other than hyper-arousal. Tape a photo of a light switch onto your computer or refrigerator and use it to mentally turn your workday off when you leave the office.

MAKING THE BREAK

After the work day is over, try setting aside 30 minutes for an activity that will allow you to shift gears and pressure. It could be yoga, listening to music, the gym, a walk, anything that can put your mind in a relaxing trajectory.

Finding a regular recreational activity to practice is a great switch-flipper. Identify three hobbies or pursuits you would like to try out. It could be anything from dancing to pottery or cooking lessons. Activities like these break the psychological vise grip that work issues can have on our brains. They shift focus to the rules of the game, so there is no room for stressful thoughts. Studies show that active recreation builds positive mood, camaraderie, and self-worth, all of which help counter negative loops.

DETACHING FROM TENSION

Researcher Sabine Sonnentag and others have demonstrated that a break from the work state of mind allows recovery from strain and ends the pattern of negative affect that drives pessimism and chronic stress. Studies show that people who are able to detach from the day's work tensions are more likely to report positive mood in the morning and a reduction in stress. 

Besides activity and exercise, it's also important to make sure to set aside a few minutes here and there to just relax, like the red panda, a pro in this department. When you are relaxing, you are not doing nothing, if I may use that double-negative, as we are led to believe. You are flipping the switch on stress and providing the rest and recuperative services so normal for skillful functioning that they’re built into our physiology.

If you would like to learn more about how to manage stress and end burnout, check out our online stress mangement classes, held every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. or click the button below for a free cocahing consultation. What's your biggest challenge?

Some companies won’t even use the word “stress,” hoping that avoiding the term will make a very toxic problem go away. Meanwhile, many imploding professionals are equally in denial about their stress. “It’s part of the territory.” “Got to suck it up.” Meanwhile, their purses or desk drawers look like pharmacies.

It’s no wonder that unmanaged stress costs American business $344 billion a year in medical bills, absenteeism, and recruiting and retention bills, according to a study at Middle Tennessee State. And no surprise, either, that more than three-quarters of all doctor visits are stress-related. Ostrich-mode is making us sick and unproductive.

Why do so many companies, big and small, ignore the time bomb of stress, the crisis mentality, frenzy, dysfunctional teams, anger, resentment, and panicked thinking that comes with it?  Habit. That habit is to look the other way, because stress is 1) the employee’s problem, a personal issue; 2) not that big of a deal; 3) something that only happens in tyrannical companies; 4) an admission that something’s not working; and last and most importantly, 5) lack of information on what stress is and how it spreads through a company to make everything more difficult and costly.

The reality is that in a time of hyper speed-up and lean staffing, stress—triggered by a perception of not being able to cope with demands—is at epidemic levels, and it’s a threat to every organization. If stress was an infectious disease, it would be the Center for Disease Control’s public enemy number one.

Yet too many believe stress isn’t all that serious, or something only wimps succumb to. Talk to Tom Row, a hard-charging scientist with a 70-hour a week schedule, who one day found himself leaving his office on a stretcher after a massive heart attack. He didn’t even know he was stressed, because the adrenaline flowing through his body made him feel transcendent.

Or hear it from an entrepreneur I spoke to recently who had a heart attack in her twenties. Or from the host of folks whose marriages have disintegrated because of the hair-trigger emotions, fear, and exhaustion set off by stress and burnout. Stress can turn you into someone you’d normally run from.

Contrary to the denial reflex, chronic stress has real health and business consequences. Ignore it, and it won’t go away. It will only get worse. When the stress response is activated, the immune system is suppressed, digestion processes are upended, blood pressure rises. The longer that goes on, the more physical problems erupt. Ignoring stress is like working with one hand behind your back, and one foot at the doctor’s doorstep. The longer we buy the false emergency, the more our thoughts come to believe the distortion of events is real.

If companies knew how damaging stress is to anything the organization is trying to accomplish, they wouldn’t put up with it for a nanosecond, because that would be like burning money. They would make stress management and work-life balance programs as much of a priority as the next quarter’s earnings, because those earnings depend on healthy, engaged minds and bodies.

Stress guts the chief productivity tool, attention, which is hijacked by an ancient part of the brain that can’t see beyond false crises—not good for planning, conversation, innovation, anything that requires concentration and openness. Stress is plenty good, though, for mistakes, rash emails, and disengagement.

The failure to nip stress in the bud means that this toxic cell spreads through the organization. Stress is highly contagious and is transmitted easily through pass-along strain and the mirror neurons that make our bodies echo the emotions of those around us.

Unlike a lot of diseases for which there is no solution, there is a cure for stress. The stress response is set off by a false story that can be shut off, and when it is, the stress stops in four minutes. How valuable would that be, to be able turn off the source fueling anxiety, conflict, and disengagement? More than 40% of employee turnover is due to stress. The cost to recruit and train top talent can range upwards of $100,000.

How much better could work and life be without the vise-grip of fear and anxiety caused by stress? Without the churning stomach, headaches, high blood pressure, and insomnia?

I can tell you, "a lot," because I see it regularly after our work-life or stress management trainings or in my coaching work. Teams go from wits end and overwhelm to a workday they can manage. Individuals move from fear and frenzy to a calm firmness amid chaos. It's day and night when you have the tools to keep stress at bay.

There’s nothing to deny or feel embarrassed about with stress. It’s part of the funky brain architecture we’re stuck with. It’s part of organizations, even the best ones. It’s part of a volatile world. But when it persists, it’s also a very clear signal that something is wrong with the picture.

If your organization or you would like to change that picture, click below for a free consultation and learn how fast you can transform your team and life.

Exhibit number one for the addictive power of technology has to be the text-walking phenomenon, in which pedestrians glued to their screens walk off curbs into traffic accidents, open ditches, off docks, and wind up in ER’s. The urge to text or check email is so powerful it overrides the survival instinct.

It's always amazing to see people, head down in their phones, inching across crosswalks against full-on red lights, oblivious to the fact that they are exposed to cars that could mow them down like bowling pins. 

This kind of death-wish behavior comes courtesy of an urge stronger, apparently, than the one to stay alive. Several deaths in South Korea have been attributable to video gamers ignoring all sustenance in marathon several-day sessions.

HARD TO RESIST

What drives this behavior? Researchers have found that technology obliterates willpower and is the hardest of all urges to resist, harder than alcohol or drugs, according to a German study of 205 adults.

Resisting Facebook, smartphones, and texting is right up there with turning down a margarita for an alcoholic. One of the reasons technology is so addictive is that it plays to one of the social animal’s most powerful needs, the need for positive reinforcement. Send an email and get one back, and you get reinforcement, but it's an ephemeral version, feeding the urge for more validation, because real validation comes from the inside, not external approval.

You can see the hold technology has when you try to engage in a conversation with someone who has a smartphone in hand. Eye contact: zero. Listening abilities: nada. You might as well be talking to a cucumber.

Technology has such a powerful hold on us, because it erodes willpower in several ways. It’s easy to indulge in all day long, the study reports, and unlike alcohol and drugs, it doesn’t have high perceived costs. Yet the damage is being done inside brains, as the constant interruptions and mail-checking erode the self-regulation equipment and drive stress and obliterate work-life balance.

VANISHING IMPULSE CONTROL

The more you check email, the more you have to check it, as any smartphone user knows. You lose impulse control and the ability to regulate impulsivity. The result: It's hard to stay on task or concentrate. The urge to check or text, minus impulse control, sets off a cycle of self-interruption. It also makes it harder to regulate impulsive behavior in other areas of life beyond technology that might be prone to habits you could do without. 

When the devices are in charge of attention, the more job stress there is, since the chimes, bells, pulses, and noisemakers play to the survival instinct of “bottom-up” attention, something we are wired to have no resistance to, since that sound could be a threat to life and limb.

We all pay when technology is unbounded, in the form of shrinking attention spans, more time pressure and stress, fractured concentration, frayed relationships, and text-walkers barging into traffic.

If technology is an addiction harder to resist than drugs, it's time for an intervention. A good email overload program or information management system can save impulse control mechanisms, control email overload, dramatically cut job stress, and cure technology addiction. Manage the devices, instead of the other way around, and you're back in control.

When we set the terms of engagement with devices, not only does it restore willpower, the work gets done faster, with vastly improved stress management, and more attention. And we don’t go off the deep end of curbs and piers.

Most of the research on job stress has looked at men, but a new study of women finds the stress process very democratic in its toll on the old ticker and its supporting systems. The study, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, found that women who report high job demands and stress levels are 67% more likely to have a heart attack and 38% more likely to have a heart problem—stroke, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease—than women with low stress.

It’s another sign that work stress is not a trifling case of nerves, but a health hazard, one that requires stress management skills few of us are taught. The belief is that we can live with stress, that it’s just part of the professional territory—and that we can’t discuss it or try to resolve it or we'll be a wimp.

We do live with a lot of stress. Life is chock full of it, but not all of it is a threat. When demands are low, or high but you have some measure of control over them, events can be perceived as challenging or exciting. But when demands are high and you don’t have control over them, it’s another story—which is why more than two dozen studies show the connection between work stress and heart problems. That’s the kind of stress that is risky to live with.

Chronic high strain triggers the stress response. It creates a sense of not being able to cope, which is misinterpreted by the ancient hub of our emotions, the amygdala, to be a life-and-death threat. Off goes the stress response and a flood of hormones that suppress the immune system, increase blood pressure, and can lead to cardiovascular problems and a host of medical issues, from insomnia to irritable bowel disease.

The study followed 22,000 women in the healthcare field for 10 years and found the high-strain group (including managers, who were high risk) with an elevated risk for heart problems. Lifestyle issues—smoking, weight, etc.—accounted for only one-quarter of the increased risk. The research supports data found in a Finnish study of 48,000 women, which found that job stress can double the risk of cardiovascular disease.

If you or your organization fall into the chronic, elevated strain category, stress management strategies are crucial to prevent the toll on health, decision-making, productivity, and pocketbooks. Since the stress beast runs on knee-jerk reactions and “explanatory style”—what we tell ourselves about stressful events—changing the response to stress can change everything and lead to vastly improved work-life balance.

The stress process is so ingrained it takes a concerted effort to retrain the brain to react differently than autopilot fight-or-flight. Our stress management programs reframe stress so it can be cut off before it spins out of control into chronic activation that takes bodies and businesses down with it.

A two-pronged approach is needed, tools that we can use to put out the fires as stress pops up—both mental and physical techniques—and then stress management strategies outside the job to counter amygdala activation and release the tension. It's part of the body's natural work-life balance system, the parasympathetic system of recovery restoring the body to rest and maintenance.

Study co-author Michelle Albert singled out the importance of having ways to unwind after work. Regular recreational and exercise outlets are essential to relieve work stress, or it continues to fuel anxiety, muscle tension, and cortisol release. That requires planning, a different skill-set than the work mindset, and the right motivational strategy—all of which are part of our training program.

One of the hallmarks of stress is obsessive thinking about the perceived crisis of the moment. Pastimes and aerobic exercise buffer stress as well as increase positive mood and confidence, which helps switch off the false emergency signals in the brain and create the vitality to perform better on the job.

It's all about coping with demands. If they push us beyond our ability to cope and nothing is done to increase coping resources, non-android bodies and performance pay the price. The good news is that coping strategies can become the best parts of the day, from relaxation techniques to recreation after work—if we can override the "I'm too busy" mental block fueled by stress to take care of ourselves, that is.  

A recent study confirmed a missing key to work-life balance in a hyperventilating 24/7 world. It found that constant connectivity—sending, receiving, and checking messages to the exclusion of a moment to think about any of it—makes it hard to remember the incoming or make any complex decisions based on the information. The problem: too much output and no time for brain neurons to absorb the input or its meaning.

We need time to process the work we do and to step back to determine the best course ahead. None of that’s possible when we are in continuous output mode. Our brain neurons need comprehension of the day’s events to process them and incubate the data during sleep to build the associations that lead to solving problems.

There’s a duality to work, as there is in life, a yin-yang dynamic that is essential to balance and the engaged minds that comes from it. Quality input is mandatory for quality output. Without input, time to process what’s coming at us, our output is missing analysis and reflection and driven by mechanical momentum. That, in turn, drives job stress, which thrives on reactivity and emotional frenzy devoid of thought.

Researchers have found that the brain has to step back every 90 minutes, or it fatigues and defaults to rote mode. We make a lot of mistakes when flying on autopilot output, send emails with the wrong names on them, forget to send attachments, plow ahead on projects without knowing what our objectives are. Where are we going? Why are we going there? We have no idea when autopilot output controls all.

We all seem to know instinctively that being unbalanced doesn’t add up. Millennia ago Chinese sages held that we are complimentary, not exclusionary, characters. Yang and yin referred to the dark and sunny sides of a hill, and came to be associated with the positive and negative, male and female, two sides of the same coin.

“The art of life is not seen as holding on to yang and banishing yin, but as keeping the two in balance, because there cannot be one without the other,” wrote philosopher Alan Watts.

When you're all-output, all the time, physical maintenance and stress management are non-existent, and that affects performance. Cumulative fatigue comes out of your hide the next day and the next, lowering productivity as output overrules the input of recharging, researchers tell us.

You can build input into your day by setting aside a few minutes each day to catch up on reading, research, and conversations needed to stay ahead, not behind, the eight-ball. Step back before you take an action and ask what your goal is. What should this task accomplish? Why? Take the time to refuel during the day to allow your brain to reset. Monitor when you are flying on mechanical momentum and being run by commotion, instead of motion.

Input is the engine of productivity, vitality, innovation, and it's the essence of any good work-life balance program. Without it, work and physiologies head down a dark, slippery slope.

We all know that feeling after stuffing ourselves to the point we can barely move. What was I thinking? The eyes often have it when it comes to making decisions stomachs would veto if they could get a word in edgewise. It’s matter over mind, particularly delicious matter that makes mouths water ravenously.

The same default to reflex also keeps us over-estimating our capacity on the work side. We get stuck in reflex-before-thought, a habit that drives exhaustion and stress. It’s highly counter-productive to anything anyone wants to do well. Without presence of mind and energy, the default is to a retaliatory mode that drains performance and feeds presenteeism.

The remedy is a proactive work-life balance strategy that puts the emphasis back on thinking before we act. That is the home of optimal performance and the foundation of work-life balance.

What is work-life balance? It’s a process of constantly checking in with how we are working, bringing informed performance to the table, not simply reacting to things all day. It’s about how more effective work creates better performance and richer lives by eliminating time sinks and bringing more attention to everything we do. The data shows that organizations with the highest employee engagement get big-time results—almost triple the shareholder returns in report by Hewitt Assoc. I have more on the success tool of work-life balance here. 

Quality work-life balance programs are an insurance policy, making sure that the best practices rule, instead of autopilot commotion. They insure that what we do is effective, not knee-jerk, and that we acknowledge that excellent work comes from minds that are refreshed and engaged, which is what employee engagement programs are all about. The more we focus on how we can work more effectively, and operate consciously, not on autopilot, the more it opens up a richer experience on the job and off.

Work-life balance promotes maximum functioning of the key productivity tool, attention. Without that, we are unbalanced characters. 

Here's a tool to manage one of the biggest threats to effective work: stress

Humans are known for their legendary adaptability. We survived Ice Ages, droughts, and the pre-medical care and grocery store eras, even Twinkies. We’re so good at adapting to our circumstances, though, that it can actually be hazardous to our health.

Doctors say that when patients arrive with burnout symptoms, there is always a long prelude to the problem. Heart palpitations, headaches, back pain, insomnia, irritable bowel, hot flashes, exhaustion. All the signals of stress pave the way to burnout, since burnout is the final stage of chronic stress. If we don’t pay attention to the signals leading up to burnout, we can wind up adapting to the stress until our resources are gone, no forwarding.

That’s burnout in a nutshell. After months and years of chronic stress flooding your system with adrenaline and cortisol and suppressing your immune system, you simply run out of coping resources. That’s not something you want to adapt to, since it can lead to stroke, depression and other very serious conditions, not to mention reduce the contribution, achievement, and joy in your life to zero.

Burnout is a three-way shutdown—mind, body, and emotions (see our Burnout page). It marks the depletion of all your energetic and emotional resources, something you can feel in the total exhaustion that saps enjoyment from anything you do, work or life. The result is dramatically lower productivity, guilt, shame, cynicism, falling behind, not caring, confusion, little concern for yourself and the people around you. Overcoming job burnout is critical for all concerned, employee, family, and employer. If you think you might have burnout symptoms, take the Burnout Test here, created by one of the foremost scholars on the subject, Dr. Arie Shirom.

The irony of burnout is that it tends to happen to the hardest workers—the most conscientious, the go-getters, the ones with the most endurance. This makes burnout a serious threat to any organization. Productivity tanks for anyone with burnout, a cause of presenteeism—you’re there physically, but not mentally—and the sick days mount. Burnout creates disengagement, not a prescription for performance.

Preventing burnout takes a vigilant mind, paying attention to the stress signals and doing something about them, not simply adapting to them. You can avoid burnout by dedicating yourself to an ongoing stress management system. Start by identifying the stressors and habits that are driving it—typically, excessive overwork without breaks for recovery, perfectionism, unviable schedules, chronic conflict and giving too much of yourself emotionally without reciprocation.

Then make adjustments to turn down the stress by altering the way you do your tasks and expend yourself emotionally. Everyone needs to develop recovery strategies to buffer stress and chronic exhaustion, which can be the start of the withdrawal from life that marks the burnout downward spiral.

Basic health maintenance is essential to ward off and recover from burnout. Make sure you exercise regularly, get plenty of sleep, and build regular stress relievers, such as recreational and social activities, into your week.

Researchers have found that a brief intervention, such as a six-hour counseling session and courses, can have a dramatic effect in cutting chronic stress, reducing the number of subjects on sick leave in one study from 35% to 6%.

One of the best remedies for burnout is getting support, so don’t hesitate to reach out and send burnout packing. You can start by clicking the button below for a free consultation. Taking care of yourself, so you can take of your family and work, is the real home of the brave.

Stress, we’re led to believe, is something we just have to take. It’s merely a nuisance. The reality is that our bodies are no match for chronic stress.

Nor are our minds. Anxiety subverts the intellect, and, as a result, performance too. By constricting the brain to perceived emergencies (that are false alarms almost all the time), stress reduces complex decision-making and puts emotions on a hair-trigger. That’s not a good basis for informed decisions or rapport with colleagues or clients.

Denial is the usual way we treat stress, but that is precisely what fuels it. When we don't deal with stressors, we think about them. Ruminating on the exaggerated beliefs set off by stress drives the process. The stress response is fed by distorted thoughts that spiral into false beliefs if left uncontested.

Instead of allowing stress to spiral and fester by ignoring it, it's critical to contest the irrational thoughts it kicks up and resolve them. Or your health and performance pay the price.

The smarter policy for every organization is to slash stress, since it undercuts the work of everyone affected by it, is highly contagious, and increases presenteeism, retention problems (40% of employees who leave companies cite stress as the cause), and medical costs.

“Stress isn’t just a nuisance. It’s as much of a risk factor for heart attacks, stroke, and cancer as any of the other known carcinogens,” says Dr. Steven Lamm, of New York University Mount Sinai Medical School.

Few of us are trained to understand the stress-burnout cycle, which is a byproduct of something we can all change, how we frame the stress. Stress management programs have been shown to dramatically cut stress and the problems that come with its irrational thinking.

A stress prevention program in a study by St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance reduced medication errors at one hospital by 50%, and in a separate study cut malpractice claims by 70%.

Think of it this way. Those in chronic stress mode are in a fight-or-flight state. They’re ready to fight or run. Neither lends itself to gold-medal performance on the job or off.

Arm yourself with the tools to defeat stress with a "Managing Crazy Busy Work" productivity training or a Stress Management workshop. Get started with our report on the best case for stress management for your team or organization. 

Growing advances in brain research are giving us a much better picture, literally, of when our command center works and when it doesn’t. Those who peer into the brain through magnetic resonance images say MRI scans of fatigued brains look exactly like ones that are sound asleep.

I’m sure you know that feeling around 4 p.m., when you have to expend double the effort to get something accomplished that you need when you’re fresh. There’s a limited amount of time that the brain can stay focused without fatiguing, spacing, or going into brownout mode.

The traditional approach to fighting mental fatigue has been to press harder and pop those blood vessels to the finish line. Like many of you, I was raised to keep on going till I needed an ambulance. But the evidence shows that brains, and bodies, don’t respond well to the battering-ram approach. Like iPods and cell phones, minds need recharging. And we can get that with a bit more attention to the refueling principle of work-life balance.

One study (Boksem, 2005) found that mental fatigue took hold after three hours of continuous attention. Mistakes and false alarms increased with time on task, and goal-oriented planning decreased. Other studies show that too much time on task reduces the ability to prepare future actions.

As logic would have it, the way around the fatigue factor is to step back and recharge the spent mind, which is the chief productivity tool after all. A survey by the McKinsey Group offers a hint at why refueling works. The company wanted to find out where managers got their best ideas. It turned out the best brainstorms happened, not straining at the desk, but, instead, when people were out running, playing tennis, times when their minds were at rest.

There’s a good reason for this. Most of the time the right side of the brain, which is associated with creative thought, is drowned out by the logical, rational left side. But when we are physically in motion, the left side of the brain has to stay preoccupied with controlling our movement, leaving the right side free to wander into the theta state, where ideas are born.

Give the brain regular breaks throughout the day to reset, process, and get refueled on a strategic pause. Take at least one 10-15-minute strategic pause in the morning and one in the afternoon on which you step away from the desk and the to-do list. Listen to some music you like, take a stroll, look out at the horizon and take a few deep breaths, plan your weekend. Do not be alarmed. It’s only a pause. You will be returning to action shortly, only with an engaged brain.