The perils of productivity paranoia

In 2022, the concept of productivity paranoia was introduced by Microsoft to describe the concerns managers had about remote workers not operating at peak efficiency. Now, the term has been widened and is commonly used to explain employees’ feelings of fear or anxiety to constantly prove their productivity. This state of heightened anxiety about their productivity levels and fear of falling short of expectations can lead to overwork, a striving for perfectionism, a lack of downtime, and neglect of self-care activities. These can all increase feelings of stress or overwhelm which in the longer-term lead to chronic stress and eventually burnout.

Eliminating this toxic mindset requires a collective effort from an organisation. Leaders and managers should model healthy work habits and demonstrate that productivity is not synonymous with constant busyness by encouraging employees to prioritise tasks effectively and delegate when necessary. A positive, supportive, and collaborative work environment with a culture of open communication where employees feel comfortable seeking help and sharing concerns can also help alleviate productivity-related stress and anxiety.

Goals need to be realistic, with an employee’s efforts and achievements recognised and rewarded. Resources and training need to be in place and a healthy work-life balance promoted with access to mental health resources such as counselling, mentorship, or stress management programmes. Regular check-ins with employees to discuss their workload, progress, and any challenges they may be facing provides an opportunity to address concerns and adjust as needed to support productivity and well-being.

Being productive doesn't mean being busy all the time; it's about finding a healthy balance that allows employees to achieve their goals while taking care of their well-being. No one can be constantly focused and productive throughout a typical working day. Research has suggested that the ideal working time for maximum productivity is 52 minutes followed by a 17-minute break so taking a screen break, time away from the desk and getting fresh air are most definitely important elements of the working day.

Reducing performance anxiety.

We’ve all been there. The increased heart rate, racing thoughts, feelings of dread or even panic attacks we get before our workplace skills, knowledge and performance are put to the test. The apprehension, nervousness, and fear that can arise in response to the demands and expectations of our working lives is referred to as performance anxiety and it’s a phenomenon that many people experience in their professional lives. It occurs when people feel pressure to meet high expectations, perform perfectly, or fear negative consequences for mistakes or workplace performance. In this situation anxiety can develop which manifests in various ways and can have a significant impact on an individual's overall well-being and job performance.

Workplace performance anxiety can hinder an employee's ability to perform at their best. The fear of making mistakes or being judged can lead to cautious, risk-averse behaviour and make it difficult for them to communicate their concerns or ask for feedback. Their creativity can become stifled, and collaboration reduced as they become reluctant to share new ideas or take risks. It can also negatively impact their mental and physical health, leading to burnout and decreased job satisfaction.

A psychologically safe work environment where employees feel they can share their thoughts or concerns without negative consequences and feel comfortable being themselves, leads to employees being more engaged and motivated. They are more able to openly discuss their challenges, seek help and learn from their mistakes, and are confident seeking feedback and discussing areas for improvement. Because they are happy to share ideas and work collaboratively, a more innovative and productive work environment develops. With employees feeling better supported, there is a reduction in stress and a sense of belonging and wellbeing is promoted.

Whilst a certain level of stress in the workplace is normal and can even be motivating, when anxiety becomes overwhelming and chronic, it can have detrimental effects on both mental and physical health. Building a psychologically safe workplace and addressing performance anxiety can make a significant difference in improving overall job satisfaction and productivity and provide a work environment where employees can thrive and contribute their best.

Make anxiety your friend

Keywords

Resilience – Anxiety – Mental Health – Emotions – Anxiety Toolkit

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Dr David Rosmarin, the founder of the Centre for Anxiety (New York, Boston, Princeton), associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the McLean Hospital Spirituality and Mental Health Programme talks about anxiety and how to make it your friend. Often, people who suffer from anxiety either exhaust themselves trying to cure it or resign themselves to a lifetime of fear and worry but Dr Rosmarin suggests that instead of fighting their anxiety, people can turn it into a strength. 

Dr Rosmarin defines anxiety as a response similar to fear but triggered by uncertain or future events rather than immediate danger. He emphasises that anxiety can be a normal and potentially positive emotion if managed correctly, challenging the notion that it is always negative or pathological.  He also discusses exposure therapy as a technique to deal with anxiety and how leaning into anxiety can be liberating.

 Main topics

• Tools for managing anxiety.

• The importance of spirituality in mental health and how it often gets ignored in psychiatric treatment.

• The concept of increasing tolerance of uncertainty as a way to cope with anxiety.

• The role of community and social connections in managing anxiety and improving mental health.

• How exposure therapy can be used to manage anxiety.

 Action items

Find out more about Dr Rosmarin at https://dhrosmarin.com/
His book Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You is published in October 2023.
Connect with Dr. Rosmarin on LinkedIn for further engagement and updates.

    You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Speed skiing, engineering and mindset The road to the Olympics

Speed skiing is an extreme sport where skiers reach speeds of up to 200 kms an hour. Each competitor skis in a straight line, in a tuck position as fast as possible to the finish line with the skier with the fastest time winning.

It was a demonstration sport at the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1992 but has not been part of the Games since then however there is a likelihood of it returning in the 2026 or 2030 Games and Jacob is on a mission to see that happen. 

Like all high level sport speed skiing is about failure, rectification, incremental gains and constant evolution. It’s an extremely tough sport mentally and physically – you know you will have crashes but you have to have a long-term vision and know where you’re tying to go. You have to put goals in place that are incremental – you’re not going to get to your end goal of skiing at 200 kms an hour on your first run but you can set goals to get towards it and look at it with a long term perspective.

It needs a lot of confidence to go that fast. The starts can be extremely difficult because the tracks are very steep – sometimes it can be like looking out the window of a plane! Starting points can be between 400 and 800 metres or 2000 feet tall and even getting to the start can be problematical. Often you have to use ropes or climbing gear to get in position and it’s even more of a challenge with super long skis of 240cms. Once you get in position and set up for the run you then just jump off a platform or push off the side of the track.

At the start you run though your check-list – the position, what you’re going to do on this run, is all your equipment correct. You focus on things systematically because it then makes you feel as if you have a game plan which in turn gives you a lot of confidence when you’re about to start. Then you put on your aerodynamic helmet (which has an inner helmet which stays on in a crash and an outer helmet that breaks off) and you’re ready for the run. The last thing you should be thinking about at that point are the potential consequences, the ‘what if’ or the ‘what will happen if I crash’. 

With the helmet on the field of vision is very small. You can only see a couple of feet in front of you especially when you are at high speed in a tuck but once they say go you’re totally focused. The run is over in 20 seconds so sometimes the hype before the run is more of a rush than the run itself. You focus intensely for 20 seconds or so. You’re travelling at 100mph and can see the undulations in the snow, you can feel the speed and the wind and then its over. Before you know it you’re at the bottom.

Jacob is also a Manufacturing Engineering team lead for Amatrol Inc., a global leader in technical education and training for industry, community colleges, and technical colleges. He finds it a very rewarding job transforming the global workforce and feels there is renewed interest in trade schools and in developing skills for various aspects of industry. He also finds that the engineering principals he uses and has learned can be applied to the speed skiing side of his life. Speed skiing is heavily involved in equipment so having a background in design engineering and manufacturing engineering allows him to provide product input on the different components of equipment and also to design various pieces of equipment set up.

Jacob found his way to speed skiing by chance. He competed in alpine ski racing, particularly slalom and giant slalom, as a junior and had some success but at the same time he was playing tennis in high school. He wound up playing Division 1 tennis for Wright State University and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and competed on ITF and UTR Pro Tennis circuit.

Whilst he was focused on tennis he took a break from skiing competitively. The career span in alpine ski racing is not very long with most racers retiring around 30. By time Jacob came out of college he was 25 years old so it didn't leave a lot of time to complete. He started looking for ways to get involved in competitive skiing again but in a way that would provide a longer opportunity to build, compete and develop. He looked at different disciplines such as cross country and ski jumping but then came across the speed skiing which he thought looked really cool.

Jacob started reaching out to people in the US and in different organisations in Europe and found out more about the sport. The speed skiing community is there to help everybody. You are competing but somehow are on the same team and everyone wants to get more people interested in the sport. People were helping him to understand the equipment needs and how to get into competitions and at that point he realised this was what he wanted to do. The first year he didn't have any sponsors so was using used equipment in the feeder category for World Cup Competitions which is called S2. He did really well and last year was his first year on the World Cup category itself and he hopes to continue from there.

Managing anxiety is important. When he started out Jacob didn't have much anxiety but last year he had a crash at over a 100 mph. He walked away from it with just bruising but it wasn't the physically side that took a long time to get over. Ever since then when he’s training or even just working on equipment he relives the crash or gets anxiety about it. The biggest thing for him to deal with it was to understand why he crashed and then understand how to prevent it. Once he had figured this out then he could finally let go of that experience. He feels that if you can’t put a reason to why you are doing it or what the causes are then that's what creates anxiety – its the unknown.

Many engineers are very rational thinkers who are not prone to massive flights of imagination and Jacob thinks this can sometimes help because you can logically think through problems but sometimes it works against you because you start to overthink problems - you start to ask too many questions when in reality you should simplify the problem but you make more out of it than it is.

Jacob feels that his engineering and skiing careers overlap. There are always challenges and problems in manufacturing, meeting goals, using resources efficiently, increasing production and improving quality. These things go hand in hand with speed skiing, not just from a technical side but from a mental side as well.

You can find out more about Jacob at https://www.jacobperkins.org/ or to find out more about speed skiing visit speedski.com or fis-ski.com

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Afraid of change?

Generally, when leaders want to introduce radical change to their organisation, it’s to respond to new threats or opportunities. Large numbers of business transformations still fail though and, although many reasons can be put forward for these failures, one of the major ones is simply a fear of change.

The possibility of change can create a huge amount of uncertainty for the people who are going to be affected. They are taking a leap into the unknown with no certainty that the grass will be greener on the other side. They aren’t sure they will still have a job or that their existing skills will still be needed. This can make people anxious and even question the entire purpose of the organisation.

The reality is that most people find it easier and safer to stay exactly where they are and intentionally or unintentionally resist change. Leaders therefore need to ensure there is transparency and that the change is communicated widely, frequently and to as many people as possible. If conditions of safety and trust are created and the resources needed to cope with any uncertainty provided, employees will feel supported, the fear of change minimised and the change itself embraced by more people.

No matter how extensive the consultation and communication strategy is there will always be some level of uncertainty but developing a relationship of trust can provide employees with the resources to help them cope during times of uncertainty.

Escaping the box. Breaking free from anxiety.

years and built her career despite suffering from anxiety, panic attacks and OCD for 40 years. Over the last few years through she has done a lot of work to try to find freedom from the disorders that have disabled many areas of her life.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety-related disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting more than 40 million adults aged 18 and older. Anxiety disorders also affect more than 25 percent of teenagers ages 13 to 18.

Wendy considers anxiety as being the feeling of being in a constant fight of flight mode. She grew up in chaotic household with untreated, generational mental health issues. She took on ideas and thoughts about her safety, the safety of other people and the safety of the world - things a child is not equipped to deal with. From the age of six she suffered from panic attacks and the feeling that she needed to control her surroundings to try to calm down her anxiety.

By achieving things externally Wendy felt it would cure her from what was going on internally but she reached rock bottom with her mental health issues when she had had achieved all the things she thought she needed. Although she had a house, a husband and a career she loved, inside the box she was still struggling.

Wendy now realises that she tried to mask her anxiety by adopting perfectionism and people pleasing traits.  Her role as an attorney involved a huge amount of work and it’s something she was, and is, proud of. It provides a sense of achievement and makes her feel that she is helping people but now she thinks it was also another way of trying to make her parents proud of her and to make her feel better about herself.

Finally though Wendy realised that no physical sensation comes without a thought preceeding it. That you need to cultivate awareness and recognise where your anxiety is being stimulated and what thoughts are behind it. The roadmap to change is to find the thoughts behind it, understand that these thoughts are optional and then choose new ones that serve you better. Thoughts create an emotion or feeling which stimulates an action that creates the result that you live with. You’re reacting based on an emotion.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Wendy here. Our previous podcasts, upcoming guest list and previous blogs are also available.

You can find out more about Wendy at www.WendyTamisRobbins.com Wendy is also the author of The Box: An Invitation to Freedom from Anxiety,

Solutions for anxiety and chronic-pain

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled – Solutions for anxiety and chronic-pain.

In this episode, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Dr David Hanscom who is based in Oakland, California. Dr Hanscom was an orthopedic complex spinal deformity surgeon in Seattle WA for over 32 years. He quit practicing surgery in 2018 to focus on teaching people how to deal with chronic pain.

For the first eight years of his career David was part of a team surgically solving low back pain with lumbar fusions. Then research came out that showed the success rate of the intervention was only 22%. David had thought that the success rate was over 90%. This surgery is a major intervention so David immediately stopped performing them.  

As a top-level surgeon, David had always suppressed stress and didn’t know what anxiety was but around this point he started suffering from chronic anxiety, panic attacks and a obsessive-compulsive disorder. He thought anxiety was a psychological issue and sought help but found it just kept getting worse. David tried a number of different approaches but found the one that helped him the most was expressive writing. Studies have shown that this can help people with physical health conditions but David found it made it easier to separate and regulate his emotions

David feels that anxiety is the result of the body’s reaction to a threat or stress and that chronic pain is generated from sustained exposure to a threat. When we’re threatened for any reason, our body releases stress chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol. We then experience a flight, fight or freeze response, with an increased heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, muscle tension and anxiety. If this continues for a protracted time, we become ill.

As well as being something physical, a threat can also be can be intrusive thoughts, repressed thoughts or emotions which are processed in the brain in the same way as a physical threat.  Mental threats are the bigger problem because we can’t escape their consciousness. The body’s response with stress chemicals and inflammation is the same whether the source of the threat is mental or physical. If the threat is sustained, ongoing exposure to this inflammatory reaction destroys tissues and causes chronic disease.

To deal with pain we need to be aware of the neurochemical nature of chronic pain and the principles behind calming the threat response. We also need to address all the factors that are affecting our pain and, as chronic pain is complex and each individual is unique, the only person who can solve the pain is the patient who must take control of their care. Every symptom is created by our body’s response to our surroundings so cues of safety create a sense of contentment and well-being. Threats have the opposite effect, including elevated stress hormones, increased metabolism, and inflammation. Sustained and prolonged threats (including thoughts and emotions) cause illness and disease. David feels the solution lies in increasing the capacity to cope with stress and also learning to process it so it has less of an impact.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Dr Hanscom here. Our previous podcast episodes, upcoming guest list and full blog archive is also available.

You can find out more about Dr Hanscom at his website BackInControl.com or his program The Doc Journey His latest book is available from Amazon.

What we want, not what we need. Technology and self-awareness.

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled – What we want, not what we need. Technology and self-awareness.

In this episode, Dr. Russell Thackeray talks to Daniel Jenkins whom he met when he guested on his podcast The Freelance Entrepreneur. Daniel is also a consultant solicitor, working for two London law firms and specialising in civil and construction litigation, something that can be both contentious and stressful!

Daniel set up his podcast to help younger people with the practical and mental health elements found in starting up a business. He feels many younger people suffer from stress and anxiety when they start their own business and his podcast aims to provide them with tools he would have found useful when he was starting up his own business.

Every generation faces it’s own set of challenges. What Daniel feels is facing the younger generation now, is the advancement of technology and the pressures that come with it. Using the legal profession as an example, clients used to contact solicitors by telephone and letter so work could be done reasonably slowly because there were days to respond. Now, most people can access their work emails on their phone so expect a response in minutes and hours rather than days. This brings the expectation that responses have to be provided quickly and at any time because potential clients will go somewhere else if their requests are not answered straight away.

It is possible that generational attitudes to technology may not be as straightforward as people tend to think. Because they grew up without it, many older people now see the introduction of technology as an enabling toolkit whilst to some younger people it is enslaving with increased expectations. Daniel grew up in a world where work contact has always been by email and mobile so its difficult for him to image a world where you can’t be contacted immediately.  Because he didn't know the world beforehand, technology doesn’t seem liberational or transformational as it might to someone older.

Some professions have embraced technology whilst others have been slower. Daniel feels the legal profession usually lags a little behind and is not moving as quickly as it could. Technology is available but isn’t utilised fully.  If systems that improve time efficiency and keep costs down for clients aren’t updated, firms will quickly get left behind.

Introducing new technology can also mean that roles become soulless and lacking in meaning and purpose. Pigeon holing people so they deal with the same thing over and over again can be the most efficient way to run a business but its not good for the people doing the work. They become a cog in a machine and miss the challenge of doing something different, something that's not just a tick box exercise. When a job becomes a simple transaction process, it loses any sense of purpose, which in turn affects mental wellbeing.

Millenials in particular have had a pretty tough time. Their parents brought them up to expect that they will have a job with meaning and purpose but the gig economy, highly computerised, low value, low brainpower jobs means their expectations for a better life have not been met. They also have to deal with the ideal portrayed by social media and the idea that ‘if they can have it I can and if I don't get it I’m doing something wrong’. As a society we’re not keeping up with technological advances. We don't understand the impact on people of being exposed to social media 24/7 – the pressure to fit in, to be instantly contactable and constantly ‘on’ - so its no wonder people exhibit anxiety.

Younger people need to be given the tools to deal with social media at an early age so that they have a choice and know that access should be limited to ‘as much as you want but not what you need’.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Daniel here. Our previous podcast episodes and upcoming guest list are also available. Our full blog archive is also available.

You can get in touch with Daniel at The Freelance Entrepreneur.co.uk or through LinkedIn