Your brain cannot tell the difference between a bear chasing you or a high stress work environment.
The chemicals are the same. Cortisol. Adrenaline.
In small bursts, that’s good stress. The kind that sharpens your mind and gives you energy to perform. It brings more blood flow to your prefrontal cortex - the part of your brain that makes smart decisions and connects ideas.
In longer bursts though, your prefrontal cortex actually gets less blood flow. This means even the simplest of things can be hard to do.
Think of it like this: your brain is a muscle and like any muscle, when you go to the gym you do your workout and then you have recovery time and that recovery is what actually builds your muscles in this process. It’s essential.
Your brain is no different and needs recovery if your going to expect yourself to be in peak thinking condition.
So here’s the question: why do so many businesses think it’s optimal to create an environment of constant high stress?
Proven science says people cannot function for long in that state.
So, essentially businesses push high stress so their employees get to a state where they are not making good decisions anymore.
Then the businesses blame the employees when it’s the business and the leadership that is at fault for the outcomes.
Add AI into the mix, and now we’re accelerating even more towards stress burnout. I worry about this, which is why I don’t think “speed” is the value of AI, critical thinking and strategy is.
Businesses need to be including recovery and reflection into their processes.
I see very few businesses make time for these. Instead, the mindset is if they don’t do everything now, they’ll fail as a business. And that “now list” is infinite..
This last year I’ve been learning a lot about the brain to better understand my own, and to get more insight into how we can do business better. I believe if we were to incorporate more ideas from how elite athletes train, we achieve the best of both worlds.
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