Tag: selfleadership

Some hours are more equal than others

Pulling an all-nighter, doing 80-hour weeks, burning the midnight oil.

There are countless cultural references and expressions of overwork, most of them talk about the number of hours we work.

Emma Vallin, Organizational & Leadership Consultant

The 8-hour workday can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution and was introduced as a way to give workers enough time to rest from heavy manual labor. In a knowledge based society, where many of us mainly work with our brains, what would be the equivalent rule? How should our workdays be structured to optimize and protect our cognitive muscles?

We have all experienced days or meetings that left us completely spent, barely able to hold a conversation with our family at the dinner table. Some tasks are just more cognitively demanding than others. A 30-minute disorganized Teams meeting with conflicts can leave us mentally drained while a whole week of working on a passion project can even add to our energy depot. These insights are particularly important when you’re in a billable hour practice or run your own business.

Or as George Orwell might have put it, had he been writing LinkedIn articles in 2023:

‘All hours are equal, but some hours are more equal than others.’

I find human capacity and performance management fascinating and I’m not surprised that it’s a well researched topic. There are numerous behavioral science studies and psychology papers exploring human endurance and how we maximize performance. From looking at what world record holding athletes have in common to analyzing iconic chess games.

I recently came across Samuele Mancona’s study about how mental and physical fatigue are linked. It was described in Alex Hutchingson’s book Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, which I can really recommend. In the study, Mancona asked volunteers to be part of two time-to-exhaustion tests on a stationary bike. Basically, the participants were asked to cycle until they were too exhausted to continue. Ahead of the first test, the volunteers were asked to spend 90 minutes on a mentally draining computer game that required their full attention. Ahead of the second test, the participants were instead asked to watch a bland and emotionally neutral documentary.

After the mentally draining computer game the volunteers gave up 15,1% earlier on the bike test.

There were no physiological explanations to the time difference – their heart rates, lactate levels etc. were the same. They were similarly motivated in both the tests as the best performance was rewarded with a $50 prize. The difference was that when the participants were mentally fatigued, they reached their perceived point of physical exhaustion quicker.

In the study, they used the Borg scale, after Swedish psychologist Gunnar Borg, to measure perceived exertion. In his view perceived exertion is the best measurement of physical strain since it’s based on signals not only from muscles, joints and the cardiovascular system but from the central nervous system as well.

Here’s more from Orwell:

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

The results of the study might make sense to us instinctively even if I for one can’t explain it. But it does make me wonder why so many workplaces are still organizing work based on hours, as if all hours were indeed created equally. Surprisingly often I meet managers who expect their team to clock 40, 60 or 80 hours per week, regardless of the kind of work the employees have done or the results generated.

Our jobs are more cognitively demanding today than ever before. The value we add, as simpler tasks are AI’ed out, is often about solving complex problems, managing change or generating ideas – mentally expensive work. Add to that all the distractions we expose our brains to every day.

I believe managing our cognitive resources will be a critical skill going forward, both for achieving meaningful work goals and for important social interactions.

So how would we organize and measure work if LinkedIn-Orwell had a say in it?

    1. USE COGNITIVE RESOURCES WISELY. Since attention is a scarce resources, be mindful what you spend or waste it on. Do a cost benefit analysis for the things you spend a lot of time on, like meetings and emails. A study published in MIT Sloan Management Review 2022 found that by implementing just one meeting free day per week companies improved autonomy by 62%, cooperation with 15% and engagement with 28%. Avoid powering through when you feel exhausted, it’s counterproductive.
    2. AUTOMATE. We make thousands of decisions every day and each decision uses a part of our cognitive capacity. To focus your decision-making energy on the things that really matter we need to automate as many decisions as possible. Barack Obama allegedly only had one type of suits to eliminate that decision every morning.
    3. HAVE STRIPED DAYS. Mix more challenging tasks with easier throughout day. Balance physical and cognitive tasks. Take frequent breaks and longer breaks. Change the environment you’re in – go work in the office canteen for an hour. Avoid de-prioritizing rest, exercise or sleep. Avoid back-to-back meetings and tasks.
    4. LEAD THE WAY. As leaders, you need to role model this way of viewing work. Be open about what you need to do your best work and what boundaries you have. As organizations we need to start rewarding and promoting responsible energy management. In business planning or when resourcing projects, make sure you are crystal on the cognitive capacity you have and how to prioritize it. Call out ways of working that misuse people’s energy.

Over to you:

How can you organize your work to get the highest ‘ROCI – return on cognitive investment’ or ‘bang for the mental energy buck?’

An unexpected cure for ‘Hurry Sickness’

Are you the kind of person who cleans the bathroom while brushing your teeth? Move from one check-out line to another when shopping? Sit at the back of the room during work presentations so that you can finish that budget sheet? Chances are you’re suffering from ‘hurry sickness’.

People with ‘hurry sickness’ are multitasking masters, they think, walk and speak fast

What Is Hurry Sickness?

Two American cardiologist first came up with the term when they found a correlation between typical type A behavior and heart disease. People with ‘hurry sickness’ are multitasking masters, they think, speak and even walk fast and get very impatient with anyone or anything wasting their time. Sounds familiar? You’re not alone – a London Business School study found that 95 percent of the managers in a study suffer from the condition.

Is it really that bad for you?

Being busy is often seen as a virtue but when it becomes a constant time urgency you lose your ability to stop and think, and as a result become less effective. You lose sight of the “big picture,” and risk alienating people around you. Not to mention the physiological and mental health risks that come with constant stress.

Quitting the hurry game is really about finding a dimmer for your ‘get-shit-done’ superpower

 

Why is it so hard to quit the hurry game?

From an early age we are rewarded for doing, achieving and winning. In high paced industries and corporate environments, it’s often a prerequisite for success, as many of us can relate to. Getting lots done is a kind of superpower that has likely made you pretty successful in your career. So why doesn’t it take you further or make you happier? Think of it as running a marathon at sprint pace. It might give you a lead early on in your life or career, but it certainly won’t make you either successful or indeed, alive as the race goes on. It’s less about quitting the hurry game and more about finding a dimmer for your ‘get-shit-done’ superpower. You need to learn how to dial up and down your hurriedness. Of course, it’s great to be able to switch it on for that big deadline or when you’re trying to get 2 small children out the door. But the default setting in your life needs to be less rushed and you need to learn how to dim the light completely.

The unexpected cure – being pregnant!

I’m a classic hurry sick person who have spent my life chasing efficiencies and trying to do things faster and better. From doing my Kegel exercises in the lift to conference calls in the gym. It wasn’t until I got pregnant with my first child that I learnt how to live slow. I suffered from severe pelvic girdle pain and could hardly walk. From being someone who would always walk /run up the tube escalator, I suddenly missed my bus every day for being to slow. I even found myself being overtaken by seniors in the slowest lane in the swimming pool. I have often thought it was natures cruel way to cure me from my hurry sickness before having children. I have to admit the relief was temporary, as a mother of 2 children under 3 years of age I often find myself multitasking in the most ridiculous ways. But I am now a sober hurry addict and I can dial up and down my busyness and speed. I finally have a dimmer!

Other ways to cure hurry sickness

If pregnancy with pelvic girdle pain doesn’t sound temping or just isn’t in the cards for you, here are some tips on how to fight hurry sickness:

    1. Practice doing one everyday thing slowly – it could be the dishes or walking to work. How does that make you feel?
    2. Question the value of your urgency – What difference will it make if you answer that email tonight? How important is it in the grand scheme of thing?
    3. Write down the flip side of your hurrying. What are you missing out on when you rush around? What effects on your health do you see? Who are you hurting?
    4. Trick the system with breathing right. When you’re feeling particularly flushed, take some deep breaths (inhale for 3 counts, exhale for 5). This activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the break system) and reduces the stress hormone cortisol.

Let’s make 2020 a slow year!