Wellbeing

We’re all familiar with the importance of budgeting our money - tracking what we spend, saving for big occasions, and avoiding that expensive overdraft. Our energy deserves the same careful consideration. Just like financial overspending, regularly exceeding our energy capacity leads to serious consequences: burnout, anxiety, and poor decision-making. This is crucial for neurodivergent people and those managing chronic health conditions. Activities that seem straightforward to others can leave us exhausted. It’s hard both to recognise our own limits and to communicate them clearly to others - especially when we’re already tired. ...

Devised by Dr Peter Nixon, the Human Function Curve shows the relationship between pressure and performance. If there’s minimal pressure, we don’t perform; we’re just bored and understimulated.With a little more pressure, we enter our Comfort Zone. Although, as the name suggests, this feels nice, researchers won’t find new ideas by staying here too long. As the pressure mounts, we enter the Stretch Zone. This is where we want to be most of the time: it’s the sweet spot between pressure and performance. ...

There’s a lot of focus on making ourselves as efficient as possible: cramming our days with conspicuous activities, multitasking, and listening to podcasts at double speed. This might make sense during the good times, but we come unstuck when everything gets a bit squirrely – during a pandemic or a recession, for instance – then we suddenly realise our regime isn’t really serving us. As Andrew J. Scott and Lynda Gratton explain in The New Long Life, if we’re too focused and efficient – what they refer to as tunnelling – we can end up in a place of scarcity. With few options to choose from, we make bad decisions. Furthermore, those decisions made with a scarcity mindset are both limiting and often short-term. For the basis of this idea, see Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means so Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. What we need instead is slack, a pool of personal resources that gives us more options. This could be savings, protected blocks of time for experimentation, or regularly learning new skills. The point is not to plan for exactly when we’ll need to deploy these resources, but to have them in reserve if they’re needed. And they will be at some point. ...

In 1861, Charles Darwin wrote in a letter: “But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.” Ever had a Darwin Day? Yep, me too. It’s frustrating when we’ve put aside some time for deep work, then our brain refuses to cooperate. There are a few options to consider, though: Do you need a rest? If our bodies and brains go completely floppy, perhaps they’re trying to tell us something. Taking a day off allows us to recover and then attack our thesis with renewed vigour. Obviously, it becomes problematic if we designate every day a Darwin Day. We need to stay in tune with ourselves and learn to recognise whether this is exhaustion or just procrastination. You can only tune in once you’ve slowed down. Could you work through some easier tasks? Although they’re not desperately exciting, these jobs get you closer to the finish line without requiring too much brainpower. This is precisely the stuff you don’t want to be bothered with when you’re in flow, so they’re best saved for low-powered sessions. If you’re lacking in motivation, is there a trigger that would get you back in the mood? Amitoze, a PhD student in AI, told me that he watches videos on machine learning to rekindle his enthusiasm. This gives him some context for his writing and inspires him to get going. Other students teach themselves a new skill, do some exploratory reading, or try writing more creatively. ACTIVITY Create a list of activities for Darwin Days. What could you still achieve, even when everything feels rubbish?Ideas include: ...

When we want to quit a destructive habit, it’s common to be hard on ourselves. We don’t just start with a gentle 20-minute canter around the block, it has to be a 5k run before breakfast. Every day. There’s nobility in suffering and, of course, we crave fast results. This punishing schedule proves unsustainable and we’re confronted with yet more evidence of our flakiness. Nevertheless, many self-help books urge us to pursue dramatic change. ...