Why defocus is key for transforming stress and accomplish more at work

We’re all familiar with being more tired than we'd like at work.

Think of how you feel after a meeting marathon, completing a challenging session of focus work, or the "slump" you experience after having a too-hearty meal at noon (or consuming caffeine too early in the morning).

As it turns out, alternating between being less and more alert throughout the day is perfectly normal. Pioneered by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in the 19th century, chronobiologists have found that our mental energy isn't static, but very dynamic throughout the day.

As Daniel Pink describes in his excellent book "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing”, this body of research has produced three key conclusions. First, our mental energy changes not randomly, but systematically throughout our waking lives.

Second, these daily fluctuations significantly affect our ability to accomplish things. According to Oxford neuroscientist Russell Foster, these changes are "equivalent to the effect on performance of drinking the legal limit of alcohol."

Third, what we're doing when impacts how we do it. As British psychologist Simon Folkard writes, "[…] the main conclusion to be drawn from studies on the effects of time of day on performance is that the best time to perform a particular task depends on the nature of that task."

Against this background, today's post is all about defocus. As I will show, balancing work and defocus strategically is vital for transforming stress and accomplishing more.

Chess and Tai Chi world champion Josh Waitzkin probably put it best in his book “The Art of Learning”: "In virtually every discipline, one of the most telling features of a dominant performer is the routine use of recovery periods."

Most people go about their days as if they were a machine – by grinding for hours and hours on end without giving much thought to taking breaks. A better way, however, is to approach our days in line with two rhythms deeply rooted in our physiology.

The first is our so-called ultradian rhythm. It takes 90 minutes and not only sets us apart from machines, but from all other animals. Let's delve right in.

The 90-minute rhythm that governs our nights and days

In the 1960s, pioneering sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that we cycle through different stages of sleep – notably light sleep, REM sleep and deep sleep – throughout the night in 90-minute cycles. Kleitman termed that phenomenon the “basic rest-activity cycle”. In the following decades, he found that these cycles not only govern our sleep, but also our waking life – effectively sending us from higher to lower alertness and vice versa in cycles of 90 minutes. 

Today, these 90-minute cycles are known as ultradian rhythms. Other animals also have ultradian rhythms of shorter or longer durations. Every 90 minutes, humans reach a low point in our mental energy and focus, known as the ultradian trough.

Whenever we hit an ultradian trough, trying to push through won’t help. This only prolongs that trough — and leaves us increasingly exhausted as the day progresses. Similar to the principle of diminishing marginal productivity in economics, we then get less and less out of the time we put in. 

Instead, it’s much better to replenish our mental energy and focus strategically. By taking breaks from your work repeatedly throughout the day, you’ll replenish your pool of mental energy in line with your ultradian rhythm, and thus optimize your focus and productivity.

Performance expert Tony Schwartz summarizes these findings as follows: “The counterintuitive secret to sustainable great performance is to live like a sprinter”, since “[…] the human body is hard-wired to pulse. To operate at our best, we need to renew our energy at 90-minute intervals”. 

That’s why top performers in many domains tend to work for approximately 90 minutes before taking a break. As it turns out, one of the best ways to go about doing that involves vision.

As captured in the proverb “out of sight, out of mind”, our mental focus follows our visual focus. When we’re working hard on something, we’re in focal vision: Our pupils dilate, our field of vision narrows, and we see things in sharper relief. Focal vision is associated with higher activation of our alertness system. 

As it turns out, we can use that association the other way around: By shifting ourselves to “panoramic vision” or “optic flow”, we can activate our calmness system to not only destress, but also replenish our mental energy and focus. 

So whenever you feel overwhelmed, stressed, or tired at work, get into “panoramic vision” or “optic flow” for a minute or two. Here are two highly effective ways to pull that off, depending on how much time you have:

1. Stare at something 20 feet away for at least 20 to 60 seconds
   This simple practice will reliably and quickly get you into “panoramic vision”. It was inspired by Drs Gazzaley and Rosen, who recommend a similar technique for alleviating eye strain and fatigue in their excellent book “The Distracted Mind”.

2. Take a walk around the block for a minute or two
   Walking outside gets you into self-generated forward motion and puts you into what researchers call “optic flow” – meaning visual images passing you by as you wander along. The associated eye movements, in turn, produce “panoramic vision”.

The most important meal of the day

On top of working in line with your ultradian rhythm by strategically taking short (visual) defocus breaks about every 90 minutes, lunch breaks can make or break the second half of our day.

Research shows that how we habitually go about our lunch break significantly impacts our energy levels. Great lunch breaks lead to less stress and exhaustion — not only during the remainder of the day, but also a full year later!

The researchers also explored what exactly makes a great lunch break. They found that there are two ingredients: autonomy and detachment:

1. Maintain autonomy
   Whether you can decide freely on when, where and with whom you have lunch makes a huge difference. Intriguingly, a lack of autonomy over your lunch break will even leave you more exhausted when returning to work.That's why having lunch "your way" – by deciding for yourself on the time, place and company – will let you replenish your energy and focus (and allow you to better deal with stress) throughout the rest of the day.

2. Ensure detachment
   Similar to a lack of autonomy, associating lunch with work can lead to exhaustion instead of replenishment. Shifting your attention away from work, in turn, is key for replenishing your energy and focus. To do that, try to detach both physically and psychologically. For one, it's a bad idea to have your lunch break at your desk, because your brain associates your desk with – you guessed it – work. The remedy is simple. Have your lunch somewhere else. In addition to physical detachment, the psychological sort also matters: After a productive morning, not talking about work throughout lunch will give your mind some much-needed opportunity to wind down in the middle of the day.

How to leverage your circadian trough

Chances are you are familiar with the afternoon trough, the slump in mental energy that is especially severe after having too much caffeine in the morning or a too-hearty lunch at noon.

However, we experience that trough to some degree no matter what we do during the first half of our day. The reason is the second rhythm deeply rooted in our physiology that I alluded to earlier in this post: our circadian rhythm. While our ultradian rhythm governs our mental energy in 90-minute cycles, our circadian rhythm governs our alertness and sleepiness over 24 hours.

As it turns out, that circadian rhythm not only determines when we tend to feel tired at night and alert in the morning, but also how our alertness rises and falls throughout the day. Surprisingly, we evolved to sleep two times throughout the 24-hour cycle: Once during the night and once during the day. 

That's why we all reach a "circadian trough" at some point in the afternoon, usually between 1 pm and 3 pm. When that happens, taking a nap (ideally for 26 minutes) or doing a non-sleep deep rest protocol (for 10-30 minutes) are two of the most effective ways to replenish your energy and focus for the rest of the day. If that's not feasible, another way to leverage your circadian trough is to get into what I call "creative defocus".

Although creativity often comes across as a vague term, it's vital when finding innovative solutions to complex problems. It entails taking things we already know and rearranging them in novel ways. And it comes in two modes: a discovery mode and an implementation mode. 

The discovery mode is what most of us regard as "being creative": coming up with new ideas. Examples include rough drafts of a concept, presentation, or design. Colloquially called "brainstorming", doing that works both individually and with co-workers. 

The implementation mode is about taking the rough draft (of that concept, presentation or design, say) and refining it into a more concrete form. Being a "deep work" task, the implementation mode requires us to keep out distractions. As I explained last week, we're best at that during an Ultrafocus session.

Conversely, discovery mode works best when our alertness is somewhat lower. Scientists call this the inspiration paradox. The reason: when we're drowsy, our brain is less able to exert top-down control, and due to this looser mindset, we're better at "thinking outside the box". In short, lower mental energy is a curse for creative implementation, but a blessing for creative discovery. 

So, conceiving of new ideas works best by leveraging phases of structurally lower alertness for creative discovery. That's why the slump you're likely to experience between 1 pm and 3 pm is an excellent opportunity for getting into discovery mode and coming up with rough drafts, for example of a concept, presentation, or design.

TL;DR

Humans are designed to pulse. Throughout the day, our mental energy and focus alternate between peaks and troughs, both along our ultradian (90-minute) and circadian (24-hour) rhythms. Three kinds of defocus breaks help us deal with the troughs.

1) Every 90 minutes, take a “visual defocus” break by getting into panoramic vision. Do so by staring at something 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds, or by taking a walk for some minutes.

2) Once a day, take a longer lunch break. Ensure both autonomy and distance to recharge your battery. Have your lunch break at times, places and with colleagues you like; get away from your desk; and try not to talk about work throughout lunch.

3) If you need to come up with new ideas at work, leverage the circadian trough by "creative defocus" – and spend episodes of structurally lower energy coming up with rough drafts, for example of a concept, presentation, or design.

Here's a challenge for you: 

Put three "defocus" breaks on the calendar for your next workday. Include one visual defocus break in the morning and another in the afternoon; and try to have a lunch break in between that includes both autonomy and detachment. 

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Until next week,
Christian