Science of Productivity at Home & Work
I’ll work from anywhere: an airplane, my office (yes I do actually have one), sometimes even my fancy Japanese toilet. When I’m in that 2PM post-lunch slump, the biggest motivation is walking the 5 minutes over to my fav coffee spot, firing up the olfactory, and witnessing the buzzing atmosphere of millennials with macbooks & suede boots. I don’t even need a cup. In pandemic land, this is what I’ve missed the most.
My “zoom shirt” for a videocall in my kitchen (a DIY-COVID project).
The trade-off is that only now can we go without pants to a live appearance on tv. Everyone has gotten comfortable being on camera…and sometimes a little too comfortable according to that one Florida judge. Pre-COVID-19 studies, which track 29% of college grads that already worked from home at least some of the time, showed that flexible work patterns provide more work satisfaction and increased productivity.
In our industry, we’ve been doing nothing but work in the time we used to spend traveling or commuting. Low interest rates, large capital infrastructure bills, and resource availability means that we’re saturated with things to do, trying to stay disciplined enough to remember to take breaks. I found no research that was looking into how our industry-wide WFH competency was before COVID, much less anything updated to now. And honestly, all the advice I’ve seen on working from home has been wholly unuseful - mostly targeted towards the white majority, traditional employee in mind, especially those with young children at home. In a universe where France, Spain and Italy have national laws for “right to disconnect” and innovation is the apex of engineering, science and architectural creativity we need to be working with all our managers and employees on how to safely break, refocus, enhance creativity, and avoid burnout.
Let’s use our modern-day understanding of psychology to re-imagine our modern future of work, instead of trying to “go back to work”. Let’s go forward. So I’m going to try to explain some science. (And nope, I have no credentials to be talking psychology.)
This is your brain on work
The brain has different biological, daytime cycles much like the REM sleep cycle. These are called ultradian rhythms. The Basic Rest Activity Cycle (BRAC) is a 80-120 minute rhythm of higher frequency brain patterns. These are broken up by 15-20 minutes of lower-frequency rhythms, but ymmv.
Productivity doesn’t mean performance
The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in an average 8.8 hour workday, less than 3 hours of work was actually done. Which begs the question, with so many things to do, and so little time, how do we become more productive? One answer lies in how smartly you are breaking. If you try to work your brain at high activity levels, pushing through the natural inclination for it to recharge, you’d only be capturing 25% of your productivity, rather than a 90% output. Pushing yourself past your body’s natural inclination is not productivity. It’s fatigue. You’re selling yourself short if you aren’t taking those “rest” breaks.
Cats sleep an average of 15 hours per day, with kittens up to 20 hours.
The afternoon slump
While we don’t need as much sleep as cats do, your body is affected by low energy periods at certain times of the day. Something else is also at play here. The brain is a resource hog. It uses 20% of the energy of your body. After lunch, when you’re digesting and easing into the afternoon, more energy is required for this process.
So use this science to schedule smartly. Anything that requires deep thinking should not be scheduled when your body needs a rest. Not all meetings require the most high functioning brain (you know the ones…) so schedule those meetings during your low energy periods. #thismeetingcouldhavebeenanemail but is actually really important to recharge and potentially kick-start different brain wavelengths.
The daydreaming brain is more active than we thought. Here’s diffuse mode.
Brain-lengths
The reason that people have their greatest ideas while driving (or in the shower), is because your default brain functions and your executive functions work in parallel during times of rest.
There’s a subreddit I enjoy when I’m needing time to break away and let my brain literally browse in diffuse mode. It’s called Shower Thoughts and is dedicated to the daydreaming brain. It has gems such as “you always have teeth stuck between your teeth”.
Contrary to what you might expect, your brain is not lazy when it is unfocused. In fact, it has access to more creativity in those moments. Just as it does when you sleep, your brain processes in a more creative mode as it catalogs information. Which, in the engineering industry, we know is vital to opening up innovation for our projects. Be disciplined about breaks, especially if you are a highly technical person, and build that culture into your teams.
Brain Fatigue
The amygdala is in the emotional center of the brain.
To drive it too far, pushing for more output, the body will react with a stress response (our old friend: fight, flight, freeze). Actually, let’s talk about that for a second. We have our 3 layers of the brain, the reptilian [instinct, reactions], the mammalian [emotions], and the primate [logical]. Of the three layers of the brain, while I’m at work and especially if I’m heading into a meeting with many different personalities and opinions, I’d much rather be responding with my primate brain. That is, the part of my brain that thinks logically and responds instead of reacting emotionally or instinctively. In really high stress times (long projects, world pandemic…), you could have an amygdala hijack when you don’t have access to that third layer.
One of my senior geotechs likes to say “I’ve never worked on a perfect project yet.” And I love that - there’s always lessons to learn and personalities to navigate. We love our jobs because they are challenging. It’s very important for me that if I know the meeting is going to be difficult or that I’ll be working with people who are much different than me, I’ve stopped “getting ready” for meetings by reviewing materials and instead by taking a break. It’s a science to performing at your best, physiologically and emotionally.
I want to be thinking and responding, not reacting. So, I schedule a 20 minute break before difficult meetings.
Ready, Set, Break
For me, it depends on my mood, the weather, my workload, and (seriously) what I had for breakfast to decide how and when I break. If I’ve had a entire pot of coffee by 9AM, I need nothing more than a visit to the gym to work off some energy and think through how I should reply to an email. Or, if I’m feeling like I need to be around people for motivation, I’ll take a break to walk over to the coffee shop and set up there. Each of these options means that I’m better prepared to do more high functioning work by the time I start work again.
The other solid benefit to these times off is that by stepping away from a problem, I get more perspective and can re-evaluate my goals. That means I can worry about only the things that need to be worried about and make sure my time is spent aligned to my strengths and goals.
Types of good breaks
The autonomic nervous system has two parts: the sympathetic (fight/flight) and the parasympathetic (rest/digest). So you can break in two ways: enhance the sympathetic system in a positive way to increase focus; or let the parasympathetic system regain control to refresh your body.
Stationary activities. You can solve brain-teasers, doodle or a study in Japan found that looking at cute animals helped. Anything that puts the brain into diffuse mode will create psychological detachment from the hyper-focused or decision-making activities you do while you’re working.
Exercise. Intense exercise increases your body’s demand for oxygen. Just by taking a stroll you can improve memory and cognitive performance. One of the things I love to do during day-long workshops is to lead a group stretch. Everyone steps out of their comfort zone, you get a little blood flowing, and find some humor. In smaller groups it’s fun to ask people questions while they stretch to help with the creativity and belonging (an important aspect of diversity, equity and inclusivity).
Music. There is tremendous research that goes into music and the brains. It affects your moods, your preferences, and even your creativity. Playing an instrument will improve your motor and reasoning skills. And don’t forget that ambient noise can help improve your creativity while you’re working.
A 20-min break in Salento with a little stroll and a podcast. There has to be a science to fresh air in the gorgeous Andes but I haven’t researched it yet.
Meditation. Some of the greatest thinkers swear by their meditation techniques. Now every time I meditate I think of the diffuse brain image above and the science of calming your mind to make space for new ideas and creativity.
Some wrong breaks. Some unproductive breaks might be online shopping (or anything that your brain thinks of as intense decision making), venting to colleagues (unless that’s how you process and they are cool with it), and apparently scrolling social media (though I feel like it can be inspiring and energizing, too). The jury is still out on coffee & snacking. Basically, select your type of break based on the type of work you just did in the prior 90 min cycle or in the next upcoming 90 min work cycle.
Work Styles
Optimizing productivity
Just as doing things doesn’t necessarily translate to milestones, reducing the hours you work a day does not particularly mean that you lose productivity. It’s all about working with your autonomic nervous system. With highly skilled women and men, those with at least one child performed more than their childless peers throughout their careers. They are motivated people that find ways to better optimize their time spent in the office, can multi-task, and are flexible and empathetic. All necessary for high performance.
Don’t be afraid to lose the time that you were doing work for your breaks. Sometimes putting a little stress on the body will spur your ability to work, just as a deadline is a good way to focus your brain.
The Methods - rebooting your cognitive functions
The most obvious method is the 90 minute block method by taking 20 minute breaks for a healing rest. Take the average BRAC and schedule 90 minute blocks followed by 20-30 minute breaks. I often schedule my day-long meeting agendas in 90 minute segments.
The Pomodoro Cycle also follows this theory but works well for people who tend to follow more standard 30 min work cycles. By taking a short break every 25 minutes, you allow your eyes to rest and it helps to make small decisions faster. Plus, if I’ve been drinking lots of tea, that’s about when I need a restroom break again.
Similarly, the 52-17 method was derived from a study that found that the top 10% of employees work for 52 minutes followed by 17 minutes of break when they were tracked with desktop apps. It makes sense because it’s basically the middle of the previous two methods. Place 20 minute breaks between meetings and be very clear that these meetings are not to bleed over.
I don’t need to google research to tell you that everybody’s brain is different. There’s a few apps you can use to help you figure out yours, and most of them will help to track which projects/clients you are working on, but for me I can just take a look at my calendar and reflect on what’s been working. I fall pretty solidly between 80-90 minute work periods. That is when I start to rustle the papers around and get up for more coffee. Don't work against your natural rhythms. Work with them.
Future of Work
Even for a WFH veteran, I’ve also been forced to try different things during the past two months. I was reminded that I had a completely different way to work in college (cross-legged on my bed with papers spread out in a 360 around me). And then there was my way to work when I was in the office every day (hiding out in an obscured corner to read the news…otherwise I will start talking to someone). Anymore, I find offices distracting and umcomfortable. As a womxn, I need a different temperature (77F is chilly to me), lighting (I prefer daylights…shush architects I know I’m weird), and sound (ambient music is beneficial depending on the type but listening to one-sided phone conversations is more distracting than two-sided conversations). And remember how the average worker does 3 hours of work a day? How much of that is attributed to being an extrovert in the office?
The most important lesson learned from this pandemic is that you will never have it figured out. Being resilient and growing is about being adaptable as life experiences & projects change. Now is the perfect time for everyone to play with their habits.
Figuring it out for managers
The Future of Work is a hot topic right now. Managers are the front-line crew working within the organization’s tool and goals, but creating culture and teams that are diverse. Our pre-COVID professional life was built on a foundation of traditional families with white, male breadwinners. Which, duh, is why it is white males and we still struggle for diversity in engineering. That’s the demographic it is systemically built to support. So now we have a chance to change that paradigm, creating a new work environment that suits diverse people.
My springtime desk - I don’t use it at all in any of the other seasons but during the springtime it gets worn out,
I get a little nervous when managers start talking about returning to normal. It assumes that normal is the dominant, traditional paradigm and that social distancing or “abnormal” is wrong. Not all managers are reverting back to old, or at least they don’t want to. So for those that are unsure how to go forward to new normal, University of Calgary has these tips for managers:
Model breaks and how you are taking breaks to your employees
Build a culture of mindfulness which means redirecting focus to different activities and thought-patterns with intention
Avoid “should” thinking
Use performance-based expectations, not time- or location-based
Understand the chronic stresses of some projects that might require more breaks to avoid burnout
A water engineering small business owner, Rich Cavaganaro, tells The Guardian that “In the engineering community you come to the office. You have blueprints. You have drawings and layouts and you’re marking them up and that’s generally how our business has been conducted,” but goes on to say that the pandemic has taught us that it’s not necessary any more. We can work now with the future in mind, in a hybrid work way, using the science we know now instead of simulating what we had 10 to 20 years ago.
Maybe it’s a Wednesday Workdays in the office or videochat happy hours.
Play around with it. Let me know what you find out.
Listening: Improv and short sketches. I loved Middleditch & Schwartz on Netflix.
Reading: Where the Crawdad Sings by Delia Owens. A bit of an escape to the south for this hot summer.
Working: Setting the stage for the next phase of work on a dam and consulting the client on what they can expect in terms of cost. Which is good old engineering guesstimation with very large numbers.