Post by account_disabled on Mar 5, 2024 6:58:12 GMT 2
Dr. Sahar Yousef is a cognitive neuroscientist and leading expert on productivity, as well as a faculty member at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She teaches a popular MBA class, “The Science of Productivity and Performance,” and has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Business Insider. Outside of the academic world, Sahar co-runs “Becoming Superhuman,” a training and consulting firm that teaches busy professionals who think for a living how to get their most important work done, in less time, with less neurological stress. Burnout is on the rise. If you haven’t felt it yourself recently, I’m sure you’ve seen it in your team. In Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index—research which I helped analyze—the rising prevalence of burnout was one of the most alarming findings, with 71% of respondents saying they’ve experienced burnout at least once in the last year.
The number is even more stark for workers in the US—89%. Unfortunately, burnout Germany Phone Number has been steadily rising since May 2020 and we have now hit a critical threshold. As it currently stands, people and organizations are being set up for failure, since high burnout leads to lower morale, more mistakes, and a lack of engagement with work. So, why are knowledge workers burning out and what can we do about it? Let’s look at three major causes of burnout and how you and your team can combat them. 1. Being overworked Knowledge workers have been working longer hours at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Anatomy of Work Index confirms that, with 87% of respondents saying they work nearly 2 hours later every day—or 455 hours every year, compared to 242 hours in 2019. As unhealthy as longer working hours can be, that’s not the type of “overwork” I want to focus on here.
Instead, I want to address cognitive overload. In other words—what happens when our brains are forced to process more information than usual and get tired as a result. And one of the biggest culprits of cognitive overload in this new remote world is video meetings. Video conference fatigue is real—and not just in the sense that we’re tired of communicating with so many people only through video chat. Video conferencing is actually physiologically more draining and requires more neurological effort to stay alert and maintain attention. At the end of the day, when your body is tired and your attention is completely sapped, it isn’t your fault—your brain is overloaded. Here are two solutions for how to combat video fatigue: 30 is the new 60 (for minutes in meetings): When scheduling meetings, you need to have a really good reason to schedule a block of time longer than 30 minutes. In a study conducted by Microsoft, we discovered that after the 30-minute mark of a video call, the brain experiences excess fatigue, making it very difficult to concentrate.
The number is even more stark for workers in the US—89%. Unfortunately, burnout Germany Phone Number has been steadily rising since May 2020 and we have now hit a critical threshold. As it currently stands, people and organizations are being set up for failure, since high burnout leads to lower morale, more mistakes, and a lack of engagement with work. So, why are knowledge workers burning out and what can we do about it? Let’s look at three major causes of burnout and how you and your team can combat them. 1. Being overworked Knowledge workers have been working longer hours at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Anatomy of Work Index confirms that, with 87% of respondents saying they work nearly 2 hours later every day—or 455 hours every year, compared to 242 hours in 2019. As unhealthy as longer working hours can be, that’s not the type of “overwork” I want to focus on here.
Instead, I want to address cognitive overload. In other words—what happens when our brains are forced to process more information than usual and get tired as a result. And one of the biggest culprits of cognitive overload in this new remote world is video meetings. Video conference fatigue is real—and not just in the sense that we’re tired of communicating with so many people only through video chat. Video conferencing is actually physiologically more draining and requires more neurological effort to stay alert and maintain attention. At the end of the day, when your body is tired and your attention is completely sapped, it isn’t your fault—your brain is overloaded. Here are two solutions for how to combat video fatigue: 30 is the new 60 (for minutes in meetings): When scheduling meetings, you need to have a really good reason to schedule a block of time longer than 30 minutes. In a study conducted by Microsoft, we discovered that after the 30-minute mark of a video call, the brain experiences excess fatigue, making it very difficult to concentrate.