Don't Endure. Recharge (Lesson in Emotional Intelligence)

    
As constant travelers and parents of a two-year-old, we sometimes fantasize about how much work we could do if we could just get on a plane, undistracted by phones, friends, or Finding Nemo. And so in advance of a trip, we race to get all our groundwork done: packing, going through TSA, doing a last-minute work call, calling each other, boarding. But then when we try to have that amazing in-fl ight work session, we fi nd that we get nothing done. Even worse, after refreshing our email or reading the same studies over and over, we are too exhausted when we land to soldier on with the emails that have inevitably still piled up.

Why can’t we be tougher—more resilient and determined in our work—so we can accomplish all of the goals we set for ourselves? Through our current research, we have come to realize that the problem comes from a cultural misunderstanding of what it means to be resilient, and the resulting impact of overworking.
As a society, we often associate “resilience” and “grit” with a militaristic, “tough” approach to our work. We imagine a Marine slogging through the mud, a boxer going one more round, or a football player picking himself up off the turf for one more play. We believe that the longer we tough it out, the tougher we are, and therefore the more successful we will be.
However, this entire conception is scientifi cally inaccurate.
In fact what’s holding back our ability to be resilient and successful is the lack of any kind of recovery period. Resilience is defined as the ability to quickly bounce back from stressful situations—no matter what problems are thrown at us, we continually get back up, ready for the next one. But even for the most resilient person, getting ready doesn’t happen instantly. It is a process—and an important one. Research has found that there is a direct correlation between lack of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems.
And lack of recovery—whether it disrupts our sleep with thoughts of work or keeps us in continuous cognitive arousal as we obsessively watch our phones—is costing our companies $62 billion a year (that’s billion, not million) in lost productivity. [1]
Misconceptions about resilience as nonstop activity and energy are often bred into us from an early age.

For instance, parents might praise the resilience of their high school student who stays up until 3 a.m. to finish a science fair project. But when that exhausted student drives to school, his impaired driving poses risks for himself and others; at school, he doesn’t have the cognitive resources to do well on his English test and has lower self-control with his friends; and at home, he is moody with his parents.
The bad habits we learn when we’re young only magnify when we hit the workforce. In a study released last month, researchers from Norway found that 7.8% of Norwegians have become workaholics, where workaholism is defi ned as “being overly concerned about work, driven by an uncontrollable work motivation, and investing so much time and effort to work that it impairs other important life areas.” [2] And in fact that drive can backfire in the very area for which we’re sacrifi cing ourselves: In her excellent book 'The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time', Arianna Huffington wrote, “We sacrifi ce sleep in the name of productivity, but ironically our loss of sleep, despite the extra hours we spend at work, adds up to 11 days of lost productivity per year per worker, or about $2,280.” [3]
The key to resilience is not working really hard all the time. It is actually found in the time that we stop working and recover. Ideally, we need to create cycles for ourselves in which we work hard, then stop and recover, and then work again.
This conclusion is based on biology. Homeostasis, a fundamental biological concept, is the ability of the body to continuously restore and sustain its own well-being.

When the body is out of alignment and therefore in a state of stress or exhaustion from overworking, we waste a vast amount of mental and physical resources trying to return to balance before we can move forward. As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz have written in The Power of Full Engagement, the more time you spend in the performance zone, the more time you need in the recovery zone; otherwise you risk burnout.
And if, instead of taking a break, you muster your resources to continue to “try hard,” you need to burn ever more energy in order to overcome your currently low arousal level, which only exacerbates your exhaustion.
It’s a vicious downward spiral.
But the more imbalanced we become due to overworking, the more value there is in activities that allow us to return to a state of balance.
So what are those activities that allow us to return to homeostasis and thereby increase our resilience? Most people assume that if you stop doing a task like answering emails or writing a paper, that your brain will naturally recover, so that when you start again later in the day or the next morning, you’ll have your energy back. But stopping work doesn’t mean you’re actually recovering: If after work you lie around on the couch and check your phone and get riled up by political commentary, or get stressed thinking about decisions about how to renovate your home, your brain has not received a break from high mental arousal states. And surely everyone reading this has occasionally lain in bed for hours, unable to fall asleep because their brain is thinking about work, even if they don’t have a device in hand. If you’re in bed for eight hours, you may have rested, but you can still feel exhausted the next day. That’s because rest and recovery are not the same thing. If you’re trying to build resilience at work, you need adequate internal and external recovery periods. As researchers F. R. H. Zijlstra, M. Cropley, and L. W. Rydstedt wrote in a 2014 paper: “Internal recovery refers to the shorter periods of relaxation that take place within the frames of the workday or the work setting in the form of short scheduled or unscheduled breaks, by shifting attention or changing to other work tasks when the mental or physical resources required for the initial task are temporarily depleted or exhausted. External recovery refers to actions that take place outside of work—e.g., in the free time between the workdays, and during weekends, holidays or vacations.” [4]
There are four main researched ways to increase your resilience. First, start by deliberately opening a space for recovery to happen. We’ve worked with several companies that tout the benefi ts of investing in employee wellbeing, but fail to create tangible results because they don’t carve out time for their workers to devote part of their workday to those rejuvenating activities. Adding more activities to an already full plate of work increases the stress load.
Second, it is crucial that you take all of your paid time off. As we described in a previous HBR article entitled “The Data-Driven Case for Vacation,” taking your days off not only gives you recovery periods to recharge, but in fact signifi cantly raises your productivity and the likelihood of promotion.

Third, while it might sound counterintuitive, it is possible to use technology to limit tech use while building internal recovery periods into your daily routine. The average person turns on their phone 150 times every day. [5]
If every distraction took only 1 minute (which would be seriously optimistic), that would account for 2.5 hours of every day. In her upcoming book The Future of Happiness, based on her work at Yale Business School, Amy Blankson suggests downloading the Instant or Moment apps to see how many times you turn on your phone each day; using the app reminds you to make a choice in those moments when you grab your phone—and choose to stay away. You can also use apps like Offtime or Unplugged to create tech-free zones by strategically scheduling automatic airplane modes. In addition, you can take a cognitive break every 90 minutes to recharge your batteries. Try to not have lunch at your desk, but instead spend time outside or with your friends—not talking about work.
Fourth, now that you have carved out time for rejuvenation, it’s time to engage in an activity or two that make you feel happy and replenished. Take the pressure off and just do something for the fun of it! Go on a walk or run, call and old friend, meditate by watching your breath go in and out for fi ve minutes, try a new recipe, or do something nice for someone else. Choose to do something that makes you feel alive, gives you a mental break from work, and keeps you fully engaged the whole time.
Not only does spending your time this way help you come back stronger, oftentimes these activities are more memorable in the long run.

As for us, we’ve started using our plane time as a work-free zone, and thus as time to dip into the recovery phase. The results have been fantastic. We are usually tired already by the time we get on a plane, and the cramped space and spotty internet connection make work more challenging. Now, instead of swimming upstream, we relax, meditate, sleep, watch movies, journal, or listen to entertaining podcasts. And when we get off the plane, instead of being depleted, we feel rejuvenated and ready to return to the performance zone.

About the author 

Shawn Achor is New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. His TED talk is one of the most popular, with over 14 million views. He has lectured or researched at over a third of the Fortune 100 and in 50 countries, as well as for the NFL, NASA, and the White House. He is leading a series of courses on “21 Days to Inspire Positive Change” with the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Michelle Gielan, a national CBS News anchor turned UPenn positive psychology researcher, is the best-selling author of Broadcasting Happiness. She is partnered with Arianna Huffington to research how a solution-focused mindset fuels success, and shares her research at organizations including Google, American Express, and Boston Children’s Hospital. Michelle is the host of the Inspire Happiness program on PBS.

NOTES

1. J. K. Sluiter, “The Influence of Work Characteristics on the Need for Recovery and Experienced Health: A Study on Coach Drivers,” Ergonomics 42, no. 4 (1999): 573–583; and American Academy of Sleep Medicine, “Insomnia Costing U.S. Workforce $63.2 Billion a Year in Lost Productivity,” ScienceDaily, September 2, 2011.

2. C. S. Andreassen et al., “The Relationships Between Workaholism and Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorders: A Large-Scale Cross-Sectional Study,” PLoS One 11, no. 5 (2016): e0152978.

3. Ronald C. Kessler et al., “Insomnia and the Performance of US Workers: Results from the America Insomnia Survey,” Sleep 34, no. 9 (2011): 1161–1171.

4. F. R. H. Zijlstra et al., “From Recovery to Regulation: An Attempt to Reconceptualize ‘Recovery from Work’” (special issue paper) (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 244.

5. J. Stern, “Cellphone Users Check Phones 150x/Day and Other Internet Fun Facts,” Good Morning America, May 29, 2013.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 24, 2016, as “Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure” (product #H02Z3O)