Healthline: How Silly Distractions at Work Can Boost Your Happiness and Focus

We exert self-control at work and other places where we’re forced to respond in a way that’s different from how we’d spontaneously feel, think, or behave. “Self-control demands are all job demands that require you to inhibit, override, or adapt your urges or automatic responses in order to adequately complete your work,” said Vera Schweitzer, a doctoral student from WHU—Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany, who led the study.

Examples of self-control demands might include:

• controlling your temper when dealing with an unfriendly customer or co-worker

• working on a difficult task

• working on a boring or annoying task

“What is so particularly draining about this is that the exertion of self-control (e.g., when you try to control your temper or overcome inner resistances) is a strongly effortful process that depletes and diminishes employees’ personal resources,” said Schweitzer. These internal resources, also called “regulatory resources,” are required for employees to feel motivated and engaged in their jobs, to think outside the box, or to help other employees, said Schweitzer. When you have to face constant self-control demands without a boost of positivity, it’s actually harmful to your regulatory resources and your overall effectiveness at work.

Experiencing a little dose of positivity — that is, feeling a positive emotion like happiness — helps restore your internal resources.

“This is rooted in a psychological effect called the ‘undoing effect’ of positive emotions, which states that positive emotions enable individuals to detach and recover from previous negative experiences, such as self-control demands,” said Schweitzer. For instance, if you watch a funny video right after several hours of intensive work, the positive emotions will help you restore your regulatory resources without requiring you to actively do anything.

Some Insights From This Article

• A little positivity can go a long way in times of stress that result from high focus situations that require you to exercise high levels of self-control.

• Self-control and discipline is a limited resource that often needs to be recharged. It varies from person to person but each one of us has a limited amount of time in which we are able to keep our minds self-controlled and focused on a difficult task before deterioration of concentration/other negative effects start settling in.

• Researchers say that a little bit of positivity, a laugh from a joke made by a coworker or a funny video, or something endearing like a phone call to your loved ones can help you somewhat “reset” this self-control resource. Of course nothing beats a good night of rest and sleep but a quick fun distraction from the task can help your brain reset and be sharp again on the task at hand.

What are some fun distractions that you like to do on your break time?

Full article is here!

#Distraction #Productivity #Stress