STRESS CYCLE: Hacking back external triggers

“The entire earth and creation’s wellbeing guarantees flourishing from human behaviour or reverse.” – Joshua Awesome

Researchers from around the globe gathered in South Africa as part of a global academic researchers’ conference which I had been privileged to host as co-chair, alongside my team; making welcome, thirty-six (36) research fellows.

February 2020 was the month and year. And one week after that, the Minister of Health, held a press conference saying;

“Fellow South Africans. This morning, Thursday March 5, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases confirmed that a suspected case of COVID-19 has tested positive.”

Discovery Health, which is the largest open medical scheme in South Africa, with an open market share of 56.7 percent (according to council for medical schemes Quarterly Report, and covering 2, 808, 106 beneficiaries as at 31st December 2019) reached out to me to design and deploy a “Group Stress Management/Coaching Engagement” that required an Executive Briefing/Pre-engagement session with HR Leader & Director, amidst the lockdown in the country. The Army, alongside South African Police Services (SAPS) mounted road blocks across South Africa’s national highways enforcing lockdown, leaving only essential services professionals, verifiable through government permits, to commute or drive to and from work, a permit which I had the privilege to have as an essential services professional.

Now, there is a survey of over 1,200 UK workers conducted to understand the impact of lockdown on work and the expectations of workers for the return to the workplace conducted by Deloitte. These insights are very pertinent right now as organisations continue to open up and workers return to the workplace and they plan their longer-term future of work strategy.

Some 59 percent of the respondents in that survey think that technology has been essential in enabling them to continue to work during the pandemic, while a quarter of workers feel overwhelmed by all the different technologies they need to use for work.

Thanks to technology and social media, our attention spans have drastically shortened.  A decade ago, according to research, humans shifted focus every three minutes. Today, the shift sits at 45 seconds, almost in competition with the attention of a goldfish.

How many times do you think most workers check their email every day? If you thought twenty times, multiply by three and add ten (over 70 times) a day; and they also switch between tasks on their computers or devices some five hundred and sixty (560) times! 

Succumbing to distractions isn’t just bad for productivity; it also impacts your creativity, mental health, and overall happiness.

So, our very first step after receiving the brief to take their team towards flow state – enhancing productivity and keeping it at the peak – is to bring each top performer into a state of awareness about the stress levels through our “stress assessment”, thereby enabling everyone to deepen their consciousness, so as to de-escalate stress, reset equilibrium and also recharge their energies.

You will recall I highlighted that; “succumbing to our distractions dips success – creativity, productivity, mental health and one’s overall happiness.” When we unpack it, this means: Distraction is action that moves you, me, every one of us, away from what we really want. 

Traction on the other hand are actions that move us towards what you, me, every one of us, really wants. 

If I were your executive or team enhancement Coaching Psychologist at this point, I will ask you a reflective question requiring you to ink your thoughts around this question in your Journal: 

What would you invest your focus on now if you had the power to tune out every distraction ?

No one who’s ever taken the stress assessment remains stressed as much; having invested time inwards so as to be self-aware is the starting point towards decrease in cortisol production, not to mention carrying out a “Stress-O-Meter” test, using a multipurpose instrument that could pick up measures of depression and anxiety (both of which are layers of stress).

We will wrap up this week’s piece around hacking back external triggers or otherwise referred to as “attention hacking”. 

Let’s say you’re driving to me at my Sandton City office for a “Coaching Contact Session” and your car breaks down on the November One highway (N1). Luckily, you experience kind assistance as another driver pulls over offering to help. He fiddles around in the engine, and voila! your car is ready to go the distance! You’ll still need to get it to the mechanic where it will be properly looked at. However, the quick fix made it possible to arrive at your Coaching psychology appointment.

The moral of the story is this: you, me, we cannot always solve every problem immediately. However, having some kind offer opens us towards short-term solutions, which do the trick; and when it is a lack of focus, productivity and energy, your short-term solutions are called attention hacks or hacking back external triggers, which is the very first step to your success.

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