3457: Is Fatigue Making it Harder For You to Do Your Best by Dr. Jenny Brockis on Sustainable Productivity

[00:00:00] Überlass Deine gesunde Ernährung und die Gains nicht nur Deinem Bauchgefühl. Denn bei der Ernährung gaukelt uns unser innerer Schweinehund manchmal ganz schön was vor. Sag stattdessen Hallo zu Deinem neuen Coach, Yasio. Yasio ist die meistgenutzte Ernährungs-App Europas, made in Germany. Egal ob Massephase oder ein bisschen Abnehmen, tracke Kalorien, Proteine, Carbs, Fette, Bewegung und Intervallfasten. Und mit den Tasty-Rezepten bist Du ready für Deine Ziele. Let's go! Lade die Yasio-App jetzt herunter.

[00:00:29] Before we start, please check out our new podcast, Good Sleep. Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:55] So press play on Good Sleep Tonight, because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app, and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Living Daily. Is fatigue making it harder for you to do your best? By Dr. Jenny Brockes of drjennybrockes.com. And I'm Justin Mollick, your personal narrator, usually. Every day, really.

[00:01:21] But on Sundays, I share an extra episode from another podcast in the Optimal Living Daily Network. And today's comes from my brother show, Optimal Health Daily. Fun fact, he does the same thing that I do here, reading an article every day of the week to help you optimize your life.

[00:01:36] But he also answers listener questions on Fridays. And if you send a relevant question in, you'll get a copy of our Optimal Living Daily workbook, digital if you're outside of the U.S., or a physical hard copy personally shipped to you by me if you're inside the United States. You can send a health-related question to health at oldpodcast.com, and then listen in to that show on Fridays. Again, that's Optimal Health Daily.

[00:02:04] But with that, let's get right to the bonus episode as we optimize your life. Is fatigue making it harder for you to do your best? By Dr. Jenny Brockes of drjennybrockes.com. Feeling tired, pooped, or just plain exhausted? Maybe your brain is trying to tell you something.

[00:02:26] Mental fatigue is a cognitive menace. When we're tired, it's harder to concentrate. Our speed of processing slows down. We make more mistakes, and sometimes some terrible decisions. It makes us, how can I say this nicely, a bit crabby, and generally a bit bleh. All you want is a hasty exit to crawl home, plock down in front of the television, or disappear under the comfort of your favorite blanket.

[00:02:53] But it's only 10.30 a.m., and the day is still young. How will you find the energy to get through the day, solve all of those challenging problems, and come up with some brilliant new ideas? High-performance thinking starts with recognizing our limits, and then choosing to adhere to them. The problem is, we've gotten used to attacking each day at full speed, thinking that this is the only way we can create a reasonable inroad into everything that has to be done.

[00:03:20] Again, it's time to press pause, and look where we are headed. Fatigue and Cognitive Health When yet another senior executive or politician tenders their unexpected resignation citing personal reasons, or wanting to spend more time with the family, it's often an indicator that those limits were broached, and that the choice was made to keep on keeping on, long after the closed sign was hung up on the cognition door.

[00:03:48] Positions of leadership place an additional burden of expectation, which can be self-inflicted, because you want to do whatever it takes to succeed. Sometimes others who see your potential and capabilities will demand their pound of flesh to ensure you deliver. Open all hours is a concept best kept for convenience stores and gas stations. Working with the brain in mind goes back to the basics of ensuring the hardware in our skull is set up for optimal health and fitness through engaging in those lifestyle choices.

[00:04:18] Healthy nutrition, sufficient physical activity, quality uninterrupted sleep, and time out to relax and recuperate. While physical and mental health matter, adding in cognitive health completes the triumvirate for complete well-being and enhanced performance. How to prevent mental fatigue Mental fatigue sets in when we adopt poor thinking or working practices that might suffice in an emergency, but are not sustainable in the longer term.

[00:04:47] In the working environment, it's important to recognize our limits at the individual and collective level. This means planning sufficient downtime is a must to enable tired brains to refuel, refresh, and re-energize. It's about taking some brain breaks during the day. Time out to uncouple from our focus and give the mighty subconscious the time it deserves to allow our imaginations to soar, come up with new insights, and reboot our conscious thinking systems.

[00:05:16] It's about taking time out to differentiate between work and non-work. If all we ever do is work, work, work, it's boring, counterproductive, and exhausting, meaning we have less energy to devote to those other aspects of our lives that give us pleasure and meaning. It's no longer fashionable to talk about work-life balance. So, we pontificate about work-life integration or harmony. Give me a break. I'm not worried though,

[00:05:44] because just like bell-bottom jeans and big hair, fashions have a tendency to reinvent themselves. Granting ourselves permission, especially as the leader, to not always be expected to get in early, to play work catch-up, or stay late to complete work is a good way to start. What the culture dictates, whether spoken or unspoken, is what leads behavior. The country of Sweden, meanwhile, is continuing to broaden its adoption of the six-hour working day,

[00:06:13] following in the footsteps of Henry Ford. The concept of a shorter working day to boost workplace efficiency is not new. It was back on May 1st, 1926, that the Ford factory workers were given a 40-hour working week to increase productivity. It worked. Whether this is the true ideal for the optimal operation of the human mind remains debatable. Who can say that because of all of our new technology and gadgetry designed to make our lives easier, that we should be looking at further reductions

[00:06:42] in our applied working time? That would be some interesting research to undertake. No, I'm not volunteering to do it. Last but not least, plugging in time for regular vacations to take a complete break from work has shown that cutting the umbilical cord of telepressure, like being attached to emails on our mobile phones, reduces stress levels, promotes creativity, and revitalizes attention. This is about taking regular vacations, because let's face it,

[00:07:12] taking two weeks off every 18 months is grossly insufficient, and any benefit gained from the short break is quickly lost. Have you booked your holidays for the next 12 months? The question is, what's right for you, in your position, in your working environment? What steps, if any, has your organization made to ensure that working limits are monitored to keep brains safe from overwork and cognitive fatigue? We simply cannot afford to waste human potential.

[00:07:40] It costs the individual, business, and society as a whole, and in the light of our current understanding about how the brain works, it's a cost that should not be tolerated. You just listened to the post titled, Is Fatigue Making It Harder for You to Do Your Best? by Dr. Jenny Brockes of drjennybrockes.com. I know we've all been there studying those ambitious New Year's resolutions. By mid-January, most of us have already given up.

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[00:09:09] Look, I talk about the importance of getting adequate rest all the time, but I am guilty of pushing myself to the mental breaking point. I definitely get my eight hours of sleep a night. That's not what I'm talking about. But I'll share something with you that happened to me just a little while ago, in fact. This past year, I was applying for a job promotion. I wanted to make the strongest case possible that I deserved this promotion. I wanted to make sure that there was no doubt in any of the promotion committee's minds that I deserved this.

[00:09:38] So, I made sure I worked my you-know-what off for the past three years. Anytime someone asked me to collaborate on a research project, to serve as an editor, to be a presenter, to serve as a coordinator, I said, without any hesitation, yes, sign me up. Then, right around four weeks ago to the day, I hit a wall. It was like I couldn't function. I couldn't think straight. I couldn't remember things. I wasn't sleeping well. My workouts were terrible.

[00:10:08] No, it wasn't COVID-19. In fact, it was my mental fatigue setting in. Now, luckily, the following week was our campus' spring break, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I did take the week to plan little mini vacations. That immediately made me feel better, just knowing that I had little mini vacations coming up. I felt more energized. I was able to take naps during the day. I scheduled a massage. After spring break, I came back feeling

[00:10:38] a lot better, but still not completely healed. I did end up getting my promotion. I actually just found out a couple of weeks ago. Yay! So we could say the hard work paid off. Or maybe I would have gotten the promotion anyway, even if I had backed off on the gas pedal a bit. But I'll tell you something else that happened. After I received my promotion, my department chair called me into his office. He congratulated me and then said, Listen, I'm not trying to lecture you or take away your accomplishments in any way, but you've got

[00:11:08] to slow down. If you keep this pace, you're going to burn yourself out, and that's the last thing any of us want. I told him the story I shared with you about hitting the wall about a month ago and promised him that I will take his advice and slow down. But the one good thing that did happen from all of this, well besides my promotion, is that I learned something about myself. I now know my limits. And I hope you don't have to push yourself to that point. Alright, that'll do it for today. I hope you have

[00:11:37] a great rest of your weekend if you're listening in real time. And don't forget, I'll see you back here tomorrow for the Sunday show and where your optimal life awaits.