Newsletter #132: Controlling Stress and Staying Focused 🍅
Welcome to the latest edition of the humanOS newsletter!
This week was pretty much all about productivity. We learned that being interrupted with text messages while working elevates levels of stress hormones (which might not impair your work output but certainly isn’t great for your long-term health); relatively minor disruptions to the routine like missing your morning cup of coffee can screw up your workday; and if you want to maximize your work performance, you should start with the hardest task on your list.
Scroll down for more info, and stay safe everyone. 👇
This Week’s Research Highlights
📲 Workplace interruptions produce increases in physiological stress.
Researchers transformed their lab into a group office environment and assigned 90 participants to workstations equipped with desks and computers. These participants were asked to perform typical office tasks, such as typing up information from hand-written forms and arranging appointments with clients. While they did so, the researchers measured their heartbeat and took saliva samples to measure levels of cortisol at various points. The researchers then divided the subjects into two groups and had them compete for a fictional promotion. In one group, the participants only stopped work to have saliva samples taken. But the participants in the second stress group had to contend with additional interruptions in the form of chat messages from superiors urgently requesting information. Both groups showed elevations in their heart rate and cortisol levels, but participants in the stress group who were interrupted with text messages released almost twice the level of cortisol as those in the first stress group. Previous research, as we discussed in this podcast with Gloria Mark, has shown that workplace interruptions can negatively impact performance and productivity, but this is the first to show that they can also affect the release of stress hormones.
☕ Minor disruptions of morning routines can make workers significantly less focused and less productive.
Researchers conducted two studies among employees at a large university. They surveyed participants three times per day over a three-week period about their adherence to usual morning practices, as well as their mental energy, calmness, and engagement throughout the workday. The researchers determined that people were less calm and more mentally depleted on days when their morning routines were disrupted compared to other days, even after taking into account factors like quality of sleep. Relatively small disruptions like missing a morning cup of coffee made subjects less engaged with their work and caused them to make less progress toward their goals. How can something so trivial be so critical to our success? "Because routines automate basic elements of daily life, they help conserve energy to dedicate toward achieving goals during the day," the researchers wrote. "But when a routine is disrupted, what was previously automated requires conscious thought." And a single disruption can readily snowball into lower productivity across the workday.
🐸 When you are planning your day, you should start with the hardest item on your list.
A popular aphorism, often attributed to Mark Twain, states: “If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.” However, past research has shown that people prefer to start with easier tasks and delay the more difficult stuff, expecting that working up to the hardest task will lead to greater success. So, what is actually the best approach? In a series of experiments, researchers first asked participants to predict whether performing tasks in order of increasing difficulty or decreasing difficulty would increase their self-efficacy. As hypothesized, subjects indicated that they thought that they would do better if they started with the easiest tasks and worked their way up to the hardest work, seemingly because they fixate on the struggle of completing the hardest task at the start. However, in corresponding experiments in which the participants actually completed said tasks, completing the tasks in that order reduced self-efficacy. To build efficacy, we should eat the frog first - even if it doesn’t feel like the best approach.
Question of the Week
What aspects of your current work/study routine are holding you back, and what can you change to get the most out of your day?
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Alan Flanagan: Calorie Confusion – (Mis)Understanding Energy Balance. Via Sigma Nutrition Radio.
- Yasmin Tayag: Worried About Fading COVID-19 Antibodies? Not So Fast. Via Science Friday.
Products We Are Enjoying
Focus Keeper
The Pomodoro technique is a time-management method that divides your work time into 25-minute blocks, separated with 3-5 minutes of rest time in between each bout. The goal of this system is to prevent internal and external interruptions from disrupting focus and flow, while also avoiding risk of fatigue and burnout.
This was traditionally achieved using a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (hence the name - pomodoro is Italian for tomato), but the technique has also inspired a number of apps for various platforms, including Focus Keeper. It’s a very simple app with a beautiful interface, and the paid version ($1.99) enables you to customize your work and rest intervals which is nice). If you are having a hard time concentrating on projects and would like to structure your time better, this is worth a shot.