Tales from the Crypt: Workplace Culture

Cryptkeepers: Pseudo-Productivity

What happens when you imagine joining a garden in blossom, but in fact, what you see is a pseudo-productivity culture under high-pressure and a lack of human connection?

When you enter such an environment, you can literally sense it. Due to the relational nature of the mind you immediately read an invisible atmosphere of suffering. There’s no warmth of flowers – there’s a creepy cold.

And I know that directly from my own experience. I know how such a culture sucks the juiciness out of life.

Later, supported by research, I came to the conclusion that such cultures are driven by fear and a lack of knowledge about how humans actually function. Fear of getting punished for making errors, or fear of the idea of employees not working at all. It works in both ways. 

Anyone can fall into this trap, especially companies that started small and then grew rapidly. All of a sudden, it becomes difficult to navigate the increasing complexity.

Taking a break for workouts, while still on the clock? If they see evidence that you’re doing something — in fact, anything, really — work-related, then they can be sure it’s not the case that you’re not working at all. 

It is called a lack of trust. And trust is a building block for a healthy connection on every scale. 

So, in defending against this negative possibility for you doing something while the clock is ticking, pseudo-productivity caps the ability to do something notably positive.

One of the easiest and most consistent ways to demonstrate visible effort is to engage in rapid back-and-forth digital communication or to spend extra-hours just filling the seat with your body. However, it blocks the ability to produce meaningful results.

Here’s why. 

A Timeless Road to Burnout: Biological Underpinnings

Let’s explore how such a culture affects your cognitive functioning and is related to what you actually do and how you do it.

The common sense is that the costs are high.

Stressors: The Killers of Curiosity

Activating stressors such as answering unpleasant emails, can feel overwhelming, bringing you to a level of extreme “alertness” or so-called excessive hyperarousal.

In other instances, daily stressors may cause the system to shut down into extreme “calmness” or so-called excessive hypoarousal, which is also referred to in the literature as the parasympathetic faint/freeze response.

Over time, chronic stress (or trauma in some cases) activation can cause someone to be stuck in a chronic state of hyperarousal (sympathetic fight or flight responses), a state of chronic hypoarousal (parasympathetic shutdown), or to fluctuate between these two states.

This creates physiological dysregulation within the nervous system.

It biases you toward impulsive actions, impairs immunity, and mental and health outcomes become poorer. Because of its impact on sleep, you aren’t able to reinforce learning, heal wounds, or restore mental and physical well-being.

Stress and anxiety are killers of curiosity; they activate systems for seeking safety, not for driving innovation. They block your access to higher cognitive abilities.

With regular exposure to stress, like an angry boss’s face, it can modify an epigenetic process called methylation. This can interfere with your body’s ability to read your genes and alter your gene expression.

Focus: The Precious Currency

Second, your ability to maintain focus is limited by the brain’s neurochemicals.

If you spend time answering endless emails, you are wasting your precious ability to truly concentrate. The greater the number of sources among which attention is divided, the less attention there is to devote to any of them.

Focus is your currency for life. It enables you to do your work and connect with the people who matter to you. For all these things, it’s not just about time; it’s your trained ability to focus and give your full attention.

The brain is the number one consumer of resources to support its functionality, and those resources, at any given moment, are limited. I hope that’s obvious. Part of your task is to realize that the brain will consume resources anyway, but you can use them wisely.

So, beloved multitasking is no more than just a myth supporting pseudo-productivity cultures. It has nothing to do with what is really going on in the brain.

Optimization: Secretly Striving for Perfection

You are not the same person throughout the different hours of the day, as science suggests, at least neurochemically. This variation also occurs across different days. The secret here is to leverage your natural biology toward the best type of work for the biological state you are in.

So, it’s important to divide your day into three different phases that align with your circadian rhythms, allowing you to act appropriately and apply scientific findings.

Briefly, the first phase of the day is a period of high alertness and focus. Be aware that, because of this, we are also more susceptible to distraction and reflexive multitasking. Don’t buy into that.

The second phase of the day is characterized by a higher serotonin state, which is less focused and more abstract.

The third phase, as you might have guessed already, is when we reset our working mode to prepare for a good sleep.

Made simple.

Reawakening the Garden: A Symphony of Renewal

Until you are in the garden full of flowers in blossom, what can you do for yourself to support your well-being? 

Get control over your NOW.

If you find yourself in such an environment the very first thing to do is to acknowledge that for yourself. And be honest.

After that realization, you have three options:

1. Leave.
2. Stay and accept the things you can’t change while changing what is in your control.
3. Keep things as they are by doing nothing.

By default, option three is installed. It’s obvious that it’s not a viable option for experiencing the juiciness of life.

Option number one isn’t available in every case, especially when the whole world is on fire.

But no matter what, you always have access to option number two.

Rules: An Invisible Influence