Seventeen days of work
Seventeen days in a row without a day off. Problems with an elderly parent’s health. Combining stress and fatigue has serious implications for workplace safety, risk, problem solving, and social skills. What happens when we use up our emotional and physical resources?
Usually I write about a client’s problem or question. This week, it was my own experience that got me thinking about the impact of fatigue and stress.
Because of an unusual confluence of events and poor planning, I ended up with a schedule that included teaching in a coach training program, heavy client meetings, and two intense two day work meetings in a row. Seventeen days without more than a few hours down time.
At the same time, my mother’s health has been failing and in those seventeen days she moved into temporary assisted living, then into permanent assisted living, then back to the hospital then back to assisted living. I’m the only relative nearby to help.
So I pushed on. But at what cost? I know what I felt, but as I wrote this, I wondered what the research said.
I Googled articles on workplace fatigue and stress. Most of what I found was on shift workers, healthcare professionals, pilots, etc. A lot of focus was on physical fatigue, physical risk, sleepiness, attentiveness, and response time. Here are some links if you want to read more:
http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5349783_fatigue-affect-health.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110817120226.htm
http://life-engineering.com/2052/sleep-deprivation-like-being-legally-drunk/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tough-choices-how-making&page=2
What I did find was research on problem solving and mental fatigue that included a study on how resisting temptation significantly exhausted the capacity to work on difficult problems. Turns out that being told not to eat those delicious looking chocolate chip cookies on a plate in front of you significantly impairs your persistence in solving challenging math problems.
In my personal experience, I found that as I got progressively more tired and stressed, I lost resilience and choice. Instead of being aware and intentional about my responses to interactions, I just reacted. I didn’t have any internal discipline. My tolerance for irritation was far lower. Sadly, I said some things I regretted, in work and at home. I paid less attention to the impact of my presence. I had less compassion for others and I had less forgiveness for myself. I had no optimism. I ate and drank stuff I didn’t really want or need. (No resistance to those chocolate chip cookies.)
In addition, my cognitive skills diminished. Although my brain felt like it was running too fast, I couldn’t remember authors’ names or book references. I had limited energy and capacity for solving people’s problems. It took me longer to analyze data and I would guess there were some mistakes made. And finally, I had zero creativity. The one good decision I made was not to make any major decisions.
Finally, it took me quite a few days to restore any sense of normalcy, physically or emotionally. I needed to find my feet squarely under me and my head fully balanced on my head and that took time.
In retrospect, what seemed possible was clearly an unfortunate choice. I suffered and people around me suffered. So what would I do differently in retrospect?
I’d prioritize activities – the must-do, the should-do, and the nice-to-do. I’d withdraw my name from at least one of the work sessions. I’d skip the social dinners that accompanied the teaching assignment. I’d shift some of the client meetings.
In order to make those choices, however, I would have had to be more aware of the toll my mother’s illness was taking on me. Worry, fear, grief, anger, resentment. Powerful emotions take up energy and brain power. We tend to forget that. We also forget we have a limited supply available to us. We need to attend to where we use those limited resources – seeing them as finite, with choices required as to how they are allocated.
I also had an opportunity to manage my time and energy more effectively in advance, and should have blocked off days on my calendar before and after the six day teaching assignment that extended through a weekend. Intentional calendar management would have been in order.
All I can do now is be more attentive in the future.
It's Summer!
So what about you?
- If you are feeling overload, take a good hard look at your own calendar. What do you need to do? What can you let go of?
- Pay attention to the impact your fatigue or stress may be having on you personally and professionally.
- Take some time to breathe deeply, exercise, or meditate.
- Ask those around you to clue you in, because one of the sneaky impacts of fatigue and stress is that the more we feel, the less we may have the good judgment to see it.
- It’s summer. Take your vacation, away from email and phone connection to work. Your energy, creativity, and problem solving muscles will thank you for it.