ELKE GERAERTS
B ET T ER M I ND S How Insourcing Strengthens Resilience and Empowers Your Brain
To all those who have encouraged, challenged and strengthened my mental resilience
Contents
Introduction Outsourcing is out, insourcing is in The brain crisis . .
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The dangers of outsourcing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Burnout is no longer a taboo . . Growing through crisis .
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The quest for better minds . .
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PART I A way through the brain crisis Portrait of a burnout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Laurent’s story . .
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Shared responsibility . . Burned-out volunteers
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Technology and role stress . .
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Personality as a predictive factor
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The importance of mental flexibility .
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Resilience, or the law of the stimulative arrears . .
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From Zero to Zara
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Post-traumatic growth
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The Herald Research Team
Resilience gives you wings . .
Resilience brings engagement . Creating engagement . .
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Flow through engagement . . On top of the pyramid
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Happiness in the scanner .
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The scientific search for happiness . .
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PART II Profiting from resilience Don’t think about the marshmallow: The value of self-control . . . . . . . . . . . . What makes a genius tick . . Grit makes the difference . Predictor of success . .
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The first Sunday in January .
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The marshmallows of success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Self-control can be learned . . Delayed gratification . In a velvet box . .
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Four principles for self-control . .
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Principle 1. Delayed gratification . . Principle 2. Intrinsic motivation
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Principle 3. Self-regulation through distraction Principle 4. The limits of ego depletion . .
Control yourself consciously . .
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Why Archimedes ran naked through the streets: Consciously engaging your consciousness . . . . . .
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The narrow door to our consciousness
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Outings of the mind
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Every 80 seconds . .
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Three techniques for a more conscious consciousness . . Technique 1. Mindfulness . .
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Technique 2. Thinking about thinking . .
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Technique 3. Conscious mind wandering
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How you really play “I’m going on a trip and I’m taking ... ”: The importance of focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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What Epke Zonderland can teach us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 The attention economy . What focus really is . .
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The magic number seven (plus or minus two) . Finding your focus .
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Retaining your focus .
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The explanation for everything: The power of optimism . .
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The cancer quintet . Innate optimism .
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Learned optimism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Smile or die . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 The ur-instinct . .
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Explanatory styles .
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The answer to stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 How Martin Seligman engendered change
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The PERMA model
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PART III Four ways to arrive at a better brain strategy The 47-percent rule: Investing in present and absent time .
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Doing more in your present time . . Investing in focus time .
Technique 1. Make it short
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Technique 2. Work with time goals .
Invest in distraction
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Technique 1. Make time for boredom
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Divide space and conquer: Choose focus in an infinite space . . Putting a stop to infobesity
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Technique 2. Be unreachable for a while .
Invest in a good night’s sleep
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Technique 3. Ask yourself the sitting question .
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Dividing space: The importance of physical and mental doors
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Using space: A plea for singletasking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Technique 1. Stop multitasking
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Technique 2. First the elephants, then the rabbits . . Technique 3. Create screen-free time . .
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Singletasking versus burnout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
It’s not at all lonely at the top: Motivation in connection . . Stimulating cooperation
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To Y or not to Y? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Brain-friendly communication . . Rewarding without rewards . .
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Engaged motivation . .
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Why you can’t consider motivation apart from flow
Our optimal brain: A strategy for better minds . .
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A brain-friendly strategy versus a brain strategy . . Awareness building . .
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The brain in education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Making the brain accessible .
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Conclusion Growing through crisis Panic in Mexico
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High Reliability Organization . Step 1. Interpretation .
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Step 2. Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Step 3. Creating an open mind . Step 4. Mental preparation . .
Relevant literature . Index . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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part I
A WAY THROUGH THE BRAIN CRISIS
Portrait of a burnout
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ot a month goes by when we don’t hear about burnout in the news. Each time with harder facts and
figures, more confrontational analyses. Still, the col-
umn that Laurent Winnock, director of communication
and corporate responsibility at insurer AXA Belgium, wrote about his experience with burnout is one of the most striking I’ve ever read. Because his column still echoes in my mind, I’d like to share it with you.
Laurent’s Story Exactly one year ago, I dropped out with a case of burnout. I still see myself sitting in the car, rocked by crying fits because I was “burned out,” until the light literally went out at the doctor’s office. However bad that period may have been, I still think of it as my greatest opportunity. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to make a new start at the age of 35 after suffering from depression. How did it get to this point? Let me call it a combination of structural professional excess and an emotional violation of important professional values, sanctioned by me. In addition, I neglected my body and mind for years in a continuous cycle of neglect and adrenaline-fueled excess. In retrospect, it’s easy to ask why I didn’t realize that I couldn’t sleep, suffered from back pain and never managed to shake that constant cough. That I abandoned friends and hobbies. That my long days at work, where I was hyper-irritable
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with those around me, weren’t normal. I know that now, and also that no one tried to stop me. The first days of burnout are hell. All those repressed physical ailments come to the surface and you’re exhausted after walking half a block. But it’s the mental emptiness that is most painful of all. It was only after those first few weeks that my brain became active again, but I still wasn’t healed. No, in my eyes, the external world was the culprit: it was all the fault of somebody else. In my case, that was partly true, but it was only when I realized that the cause of my burnout was a shared responsibility could I begin my mental healing process. I was guided the whole time by my wonderful physician and fantastic therapist. I still see the latter every month to talk about how I’m progressing and how I approach things differently. I will continue to do so, and I recommend it to everyone. In addition, I received so much loving care from my immediate environment, and I could count on a lot of understanding and support from my professional environment and my CEO. But this is only the starting point. The most difficult part is maintaining the daily discipline needed to organize my work better and in ways that are more healthy, to enjoy my work and especially to enjoy what happens outside of work. Initiating a process of change had its ups and downs, but gradually it began to work. I ditched the agenda parasites; now I’m very selective about meetings and only attend those where my presence brings added value. I take time to take distance, to reflect and to be inspired. I set aside time to be with my teams and just hang out. During intense work periods I plan energizing projects. I put work away to spend time with my loved ones and take regular walks during periods when there’s not much on the
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calendar. “What a life of luxury,” I hear you thinking. I prefer to call it a sustainable life. Because make no mistake, I still have to perform for my company and achieve daily objectives with essential cost savings. And since I’ve started working differently, I do that more successfully than before. Why am I saying this now? Because I had to discover the hard way that we all perform like top athletes every day, but without the necessary preparation. A top athlete takes into account the balance between mental and physical rest and performance, says no to things that don’t fit in his or her program, and talks to the trainer if the latter isn’t showing the way to top performance. In the sports world, this is quite normal. How does the business world differ? In many organizations, the mental well-being of human capital still doesn’t get the attention it deserves. But we as individuals are often not aware of what a healthy work ethic involves. How often have I heard colleagues and bosses say that they’re too busy, have lost control of their agenda, and are under so much pressure ... but that they can’t say no? What really gets to me are the testimonies of courageous fellow human beings who openly admit that they suffer constant abdominal or back pain because of stress, but don’t know how to deal with it differently. It all sounds so familiar. Unfortunately, many, many more don’t dare speak up for fear of being viewed as weak in an organizational culture that is not open to the idea. They’re the ones who really need help. Ten percent of the workforce is at home with burnout; five percent are in the critical zone. I’ve been lucky enough to have an employer that gave me lots of support and has been working on a structural approach to wellness. I hope my testimony
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motivates many others to take action. And for those who cling stubbornly to old ways: a sick employee costs more than a healthy one. And now for a bit of recovery.
Shared responsibility For me, what makes Winnock’s column so powerful is that he writes without blame. Ever since burnout was recognized as an occupational illness, employers have often felt like scapegoats, even though this is not always true. In some cases the blame is formulated explicitly. In France, the former CEO of France Telecom was summoned to court after more than 30 employees attempted to commit suicide in one year. He was accused of promoting a corporate culture that drove employees over the edge. In Japan, too, employers run serious risks if their employees commit suicide, particularly if the latter regularly did overtime in the months leading up to their death. In that case, the death falls under the category “karoshi,” or “death by burnout,” in which both the government and the company executives have to pay damages to the family. In China, there is also a term for “death by burnout” (guolaosi), and companies are considered responsible for the well-being of their personnel. Without denying that executives have a responsibility and that they can influence corporate culture positively or negatively, I think we cannot get around the fact that the burnout epidemic comes from a broader context that companies do not always comprehend. Moreover, the burnout epidemic is not exclusively limited to employees. Several studies show that freelance entrepreneurs run an even greater risk of burnout than people with paid employment. Business
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leaders form another important risk group. When we look at burnout among senior management, recent research from the Harvard Business School shows that 96 percent of senior managers feel “a little burned out.” One in three describes the feeling as “extremely burned out.” In corporate life, a director might be the loneliest person there is. He or she is always expected to be alert and never to have a bad day. The same characteristics that drive executives to the top, such as their stamina, help hide the fact that something is wrong – even from themselves. People can continue on autopilot for a long time, but the crash will eventually occur, even for executives. When it does, the company often suffers from a domino effect. The workload falls on the shoulders of others, they have more work on their plates and are in turn more susceptible to burnout. And so on. In this way, a company can find itself in a dangerous vicious circle.
Burned-out volunteers The risks for those with burnout are considerable. Among others, Wilmar Schaufeli, a world authority on burnout research at the University of Utrecht, has shown that people with burnout run a greater risk of developing chronic fatigue, alcoholism, sleep disorders, neck pain and other physical health problems. In a study spread out over ten years, Finnish professor Kirsi Ahola showed that burnout was linked to a 35-percent higher chance of death among employees who were younger than 45 when the study began. Whenever I disclose these figures, people are surprised and disbelieving. “If burnout is such a big problem, why are we only hearing about it now?” I’ve heard that a lot. But it’s
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not quite correct. The term “burnout” might sound new, but we’ve actually been confronted with the problem for years. Only, it was called “stress” until very recently. Stress in and of itself is not necessarily a problem; a limited amount of stress can have a positive effect. For example, a small peak in stress just before I give a lecture ensures that I’m more alert, that I reach a certain level of focus, and that I can concentrate fully on my lecture and interaction with the public. Researcher Kelly McGonigal of Stanford University has even proposed that stress is your friend as long as you learn how to handle it well and use it in order to perform. Stress becomes a problem, however, when the burden (the amount of stress or seriousness of the stressful situation) is greater than our capacity to bear it (the resources we have for dealing with the situation). Chronic stress can undermine a person and eventually lead to burnout. For the psychologists who warned us for so many years that stress levels in society were too high, the burnout crisis certainly comes as no surprise. Likewise, the term “burnout” is not so new. The concept was launched around 40 years ago by the psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, who advised volunteers in New York in the 1970s. Freudenberger noticed that these people, who were at first full of enthusiasm and dedication to their work, began to show serious symptoms of emotional exhaustion and loss of motivation after a few months. One of his respondents described feeling “burned out.” All mental and physical energy was gone, all desire to continue was lost, all job satisfaction extinguished. Around the same time, on the other side of the United States, in California, similar symptoms were discovered
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among social workers. Psychologists Christina Maslach and Susan Jackson first described “burnout” as “emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and the disappearance of the feeling of accomplishment.” Their description of burnout as a combination of these three phenomena is now generally accepted. Thanks to the pioneering work of these psychologists, the phenomenon of burnout is known to researchers around the world and has been studied extensively. Since then, many thousands have been diagnosed with the condition, but there has been an increase in recent years. Until around a decade ago, burnout was mainly known as a typical illness among welfare workers, but it has now penetrated all levels of society. As a consequence, “burnout” has also become a buzzword. Many people use it colloquially when they experience periods of stress. Recently someone said to me: “Last week I had a little burnout because that deadline was just too stressful.” The danger is that burnout will no longer be taken seriously. I once heard an employee sigh: “Nowadays everyone has burnout when they have too much going on in their private life.” The reality, of course, is somewhere in the middle: people all too readily proclaim “I have burnout!” – but this does not mean that real burnout is less problematic.
Technology and role stress Burnout may have first turned up officially among volunteers in the 1970s, but today it is no longer limited to the edges of the welfare sector. What is it about our labor market that has changed substantially? Why do thousands of
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timeboxing 141
willpower exhaustion
time goals 140, 142
see ego depletion
Tough, Paul 182
Winnock, Laurent 25, 28
van Gogh, Vincent 40
Woodley, Michael 103
Veenhoven, Ruut 53
working at home 146-148, 154,
Voltaire 117
164, 182
Wanmaker, Sabine 113
working memory 108, 111-113, 187
Wegner, Daniel 80
work-life balance 146, 147
Weick, Karl 192
worrying 80, 81, 87, 97, 113, 116, 145
willpower 59, 66, 81-84, 97, 141,
Zonderland, Epke 101-103, 107
143, 161
www.lannoo.com www.elkegeraerts.com Translation Irene Schaudies Cover design Studio Jan de Boer Author photo Liesbet Peremans © Uitgeverij Lannoo nv and Elke Geraerts, 2017 D/2017/45/675 – ISBN 978 94 014 4894 9 – NUR 770 All rights reserved. Nothing in this edition may be reproduced, stored in an automated data file and/or published in any way or form, whether electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without prior written approval of the publisher.