When you can’t seem to stop

If you read my blog, Being busy is overrated, a couple of weeks ago, you may have thought, “Well that’s all well and good, but how do I stop being busy?”

You’re probably aware that your day feels like a race against time, trying to keep on top of everything whilst unexpected meetings appear in your diary and new problems demand your attention. 

But you feel a bit like a runaway truck : the brakes don’t seem to work. You want to be able to slow down, pause, be more calm and considered, but you don’t know how.

Even when you get home, you can’t seem to switch off and relax. You just feel stuck in “doing” mode.

What’s going on?

When we’re rushing around trying to keep on top of things, we’re essentially in fight/fight mode. You might notice you’re feeling stressed – your heart is beating faster, your mind is racing, your breath is shallow, you feel tense.

That’s because multitasking increases our stress level as our mind uses working memory to try to keep track of multiple things at once and meet lots of different demands. Our body brain sees these competing demands as potential threats and wires us for action.  

Whereas our early human ancestors would have run off the stress as they escaped a sabre-toothed tiger, our stress accumulates like a pressure cooker with a faulty valve. 

The more we’re in this agitated, action-oriented state, the more sensitive we are to external stressors. For example, you might interpret someone’s facial expression as angry when they’re just preoccupied, or react to an email because it feels like an attack when it’s just a suggestion.

It’s a bit like you’re an oversensitive smoke alarm, set off my someone lighting a candle.

So what can you do about it?

Here are three strategies to break the busy cycle. 

1) Emergency stop

Going back to the runaway truck, you may have noticed there’s an escape lane on some long steep hills for vehicles where their brakes have got too hot or failed completely.

The equivalent when you feel out of control is to create your own escape lane so you can make an emergency stop. Step away from your desk/office/meeting. Ideally, go outside, walk round the block, take some breaths. If you can’t do that, go to the loo – or anywhere that doesn’t include your laptop/phone/other people who want a piece of you.

Breathe, scream and/or shake yourself out and ask yourself, “What do I need right now?” 

As well as forcing you to reset, changing your environment makes your brain shift its predictions about what’s going to happen next, a pattern interrupt. 

2) Feather your brakes

Unlike my husband, I can’t ride my bike down a hill without braking, so I have to use a technique called feathering to stop the brakes overheating. It’s basically touching the brakes little and often to decrease speed. 

Microbreaks are a bit like feathering, a technique originating from the 1980s with decades of research showing positive effects on stress, energy, focus and mood. A microbreak involves taking a break from what you’re doing for a few minutes every hour or so.

The important thing is that they need to be analogue not digital – for example, stretching, breathing, staring out of the window rather than checking your phone or surfing the net.

One study from Korea found that it was on the most demanding days of all that these tiny breaks had the greatest impact on people’s moods.

3) Stop yourself speeding up to start with

This is the important but hard bit, improving your stress response by rebalancing your nervous system through daily practices. You can experience immediate benefits, and it’s a long game.

Key interventions are breathing and movement, particularly vigorous exercise that improves your body’s capacity to recover from stress, as well as optimising other key pillars of health such as sleep and nutrition, what neuroscientist Lisa Feldman-Barrett calls managing our body budget. 

There is a lot more to be said on this, some of which I’m exploring in the book I’m working on helping leaders stay calm and lead well under pressure. I’m currently reading an excellent book called Heal Your Nervous System by Dr Linnea Passaler

Awareness first

However, the fundamental starting point for these three suggestions is awareness. If you’re not aware of how you’re feeling, thinking or acting, there is no catalyst to change.

So if there’s only one thing you take from this blog, consider setting an alarm or reminder a few times a day to check in with your body/brain and ask yourself, “How am I feeling? What is the impact of that? What do I need right now to be my best self?”