This will be a 2-part piece which lays out the 2 pillars of a better workplace: physiology as the foundation of behavior and functioning (this piece), and adjusting the “system” so that behavior follows actual, predictable feedback loops… similar to dog training (Gasp!)--- this is the next piece.
In Cheyenne’s right hand is a 32-ounce Dunkin’ Donuts cup adorned with a bitten-in-several-places straw. It sweats from the outside, leaving droplets onto the table directly beside her MacBook Air. With each wrist flick, Cheyenne swirls caramel-coated-Oreo-shrapnel through a hurricane of heavily-syruped, watered-down iced coffee. “Ugh, I’m like so anxious this morning,” she says to nobody in particular.
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Nobody responds by suggesting, “You don’t think that mocha-drizzle-Oreo-orgy Caramelicious drink has anything to do with that?”
The modern workplace is more than an adult daycare. It is a sociological experiment in how extremely poor diet and lifestyle habits, paired with chronically unclear expectations and indirect, avoidant communication, impact our ability to derive meaning from our day to day lives.
Even more eerie? We think this is normal. We believe our Paxil prescriptions are benign conversation starters, about as banal as, apparently, our psychiatric diagnoses and the irregularity of our bowel movements. These bodily changes, which directly affect our cognitive functioning without our recognition, become lazy arguments for the 4-day work-week, remote work, and increased “mental health days.”
But what if these issues aren’t motivation problems at all? What if it has less to do with the supposed “burnout epidemic” or our nation’s mental health crisis… but is actually just a training failure?
A large portion of what we call anxiety, burnout, and dysfunction is not just caused by “the system”. It’s amplified by poor physiological health, weak habits, and a lack of training in core behavioral skills (I name them below). Burnout, simply stated, is a state of mind more often than the product of a poorly run-and-managed workplace.
This is not a denial of very clear workplace changes and modern problems: I’m wholly aware that we’re forced to treat our phones like additional limbs, that we’re ensnared with political rage-bait until we go to sleep via Slack notifications and passive-aggressive gentle reminders, and that we can, at any moment, watch someone set themselves on fire on YouTube with little more than a “holy shit” on our part. What have we done?
Constraints and stressors of modern life are legitimate. I actually do think the world being far more psychologically demanding contributes to increasing rates of mental illness. But we are also over-attributing dysfunction to these external systems while under-examining our own capacity to manage them. It’s a simple problem of disproportion!
We can acknowledge that, yes, life is more difficult now (in some ways) than it ever has been, specifically from a financial and emotional standpoint--- but it remains our responsibility to figure out how to contend with these ever-increasing challenges. The government is not your friend or your savior.
If modern environments integrated physiology and behavior science into their operating systems, we’d see far less “burn out”, job-hopping, and workplace dissatisfaction. Instead, we ignore the human brain, we willfully dismiss the role of health in our behavior, and we wedge our thumb into our ass while pathologizing very predictable outcomes of this ignorance. We’re undertrained intellectually and physically!
When I say “undertrained” throughout this piece, I’m pointing directly to the following core behavioral deficits:
1) Distress tolerance
2) Sustained attention
3) Task initiation without reminders or even “motivation”
4) Recovery and repair after failure/mistakes
5) Ability to receive feedback without escalation
6) Ability to deliver clear, respectful feedback
7) Using clear, direct communication with others
8) Following-through on low-reward tasks
While some of these skills come easier to others for reasons largely genetic/temperament-based (i.e., personality traits), the majority are entirely learned. This is good news! It means that, despite a steep learning curve for many of these core skills (we’re not born good communicators or pre-packaged to accept feedback), they’re trainable behaviors. They’re cemented in our day-to-day functioning through repetition and through systems which allow these skills to multiply and mature over time.
So here’s the workplace I propose, one which rests on two pillars:
1. Physiology as the foundation of behavior and functioning
2. Behavior following actual contingencies (i.e., feedback loops” instead of “intentions” and “impacts” and emotional slop)
You cannot think clearly after drinking 32 ounces of refined sugars across the course of 3 hours sitting, slouched over a computer, pushing mindless emails back and forth.
And you also cannot expect consistent, desirable behavior of people around you in a system which is highly inconsistent in how it manages human behavior.
The Physiology-First Workplace
Sedentary but also cognitively demanding environments make for a “nervous system” toggling between two states: extreme under-arousal and overstimulation. Now, I used to scoff at terms like “nervous system” and “overstimulation” in the context of humans, namely children, because they were so overly used in justifying obscene, disgusting, and unacceptable behavior. As it relates to adults, though, these terms hit the mark.
On even a primitive level, our brains need a certain degree of arousal/challenge to stay engaged. This is best illustrated through the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which states, in plain language, that too much challenge makes us shut down, but so does too little challenge. Being told to complete monotonous tasks far below our ability level, for example, is what can result in that feeling of “checking out.” It’s boring, and appears completely unrelated to what we will use in everyday life!!! Being told to complete a series of trigonometry equations for math-idiots like me, though? Also leads to checking out.
Your workplace usually keeps you in a low-alertness state at the very beginning of the day and throughout the day, with only spurts of stimulation; these spurts often come in the form of aggravation or some other annoyance. Slouching over your computer to type your 17th email, or submit the 9th revision on a meaningless report? Your brain activity is low, which means your functioning stays “offline”, which looks like procrastination, mental fog, and poor ability to focus. Sound familiar? That was my entire last job! And my boss wondered why, with that dopey look of smug bewilderment on her face, “I wasn’t meeting expectations.”
We cannot demand focus, patience, and emotional control in environments like these. And mental health “awareness” days, or sending emails about the importance of “wellness walks”, are not going to increase cognitive preparation. This is why I propose the mandatory mile.
The mandatory daily mile (a walk or a run) should be considered a non-negotiable form of preparation for the day ahead versus an adorably-optional brand of self-care. Framed this way, exercise can be adopted as a daily practice crucial to everyday performance, a pre-requisite to all the outcomes upper-management wish to see.
Sure, injury and disability would require modified participation. But the mandatory mile is less about the mile or even about improving one’s fitness, and more about participation. Completion becomes the new expectation.
The Daily Shift Proposal
1. The First Hour: The Mandatory Mile
a. Zero tasks, emails, or demands before completion of the mile
b. Purpose: to simply shift arousal and “turn your brain on”
c. Naperville North High School implemented “The Zero Hour” PE class for their students, and saw remarkable results in their reported energy levels, their mental acuity, and, yes--- their grades! See details here:https://physednhealth.com/zero-hour-pe/
2. Shorter Work Blocks: 60-90 Minutes, Then Move
a. Not “if you have time” or “if you need to stretch your legs”---treat this as a required aspect of the work block
b. Designed to sustain blood flow and attention versus constantly recover from emotional/intellectual collapsing behind your computer screen
3. Reduced Expectation of Urgency & Constant Responsiveness
a. This is more the workplace behavioral layer, which we’ll discuss in part two, but it’s crucial for our “nervous system” to remain adaptive
b. Unless you’re an ER nurse or paramedic, there is literally zero reason anything you do on a daily basis at work needs to be an emergency
c. Other peoples’ neuroticism is 100% not your emergency
4. Walking Meetings
a. Getting moving and walking parallel can actually reduce some of the nerves people may feel about sharing their truest feelings.
b. This is a slippery slope, as it’s crucial we teach people to face their fears by taking action… however, the increased attention to physiological performance may be the kickstart people need to say what’s on their mind, free of disclaimers!
The Physiology-First Workplace is not about “optimizing performance” and tracking metrics only relevant to elite athletes. As mentioned, it has very little to do with working our way to the top of a physical performance leaderboard. Its emphasis lies in the mismatch between cognitively and emotionally demanding work completion in people with bodily functions barely prepared and trained.
We begin the day sugared and sedentary and remain sedentary, puzzled as to the outcome: poor performance reviews, increased errors, why nobody has the energy or will to speak face to face to one another.
The Physiology-First workplace rejects the framing which sees very predictable outcomes like above as mysterious conditions. It treats health as the starting point, versus a luxurious act of “self-love” or “self-care” only afforded to those with flexible schedules. The framework refuses to separate the body and the mind.
Sound extreme? That’s only because we’ve “normalized” utter dysfunction as “how things are.”
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