Do You Feel Burned Out? The Quality of Your Free Time Could Be Part of the Problem

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Dr. Mavi Ruiz-Blondet

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Have you ever wondered “how much energy do we need for the tasks we do at work, at home, or to generally enjoy the things that we like?” What about “how much energy does it take to remember something, to have clarity of mind?” We’re going to break down how we get this energy, where it comes from, and how to best take breaks so we’re keeping our energy.

People spend a lot of their free time watching TV, playing video games, or browsing social media. However from a physiological standpoint: do they drain us or rather refill our energy tanks?

To understand this, we’ll need to know how our bodies manage energy expenditure and recovery. The autonomic nervous system — the system that helps us unconsciously regulate bodily functions — drives this. It tells us when to eat, to sleep, and so on. If we listen to it, we will feel refreshed every day. But if we ignore it for too long, we will start feeling the effects of burnout.

We have two branches of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic branch, which is in charge of energy expenditure (related to the fight or flight response, but more generally to activities that require energy, like following a movie plot), and the parasympathetic branch, which is in charge of energy restoration (activities that occur without us consciously engaging such as sleep and digestion).

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Image source: https://medium.com/@kateworld/breathing-patterns-and-emotional-intelligence-1ab9fa483bb2

To operate at optimal performance, our bodies should be given opportunities to switch between both branches of the autonomic nervous system throughout the day as sort of an ebb and flow of activity. Doing work should kick the sympathetic system into action while taking a break should allow the parasympathetic system to restore us. However, there are many leisure activities that are highly stimulating (Fortnight, I am looking at you, and don’t tell me Black Mirror or doom-scrolling is relaxing). These “breaks” can inadvertently keep us “on” (i.e. sympathetic state) when our intentions are to turn “off” and unwind (i.e. parasympathetic state).

So how can we tell if we’re effectively resting or unintentionally stressing our bodies? A methodology called Heart Rate Variability (HRV), or the variance in time between heart beats, can actually help us know if we are in the sympathetic or the parasympathetic branch. One measurement often used is Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and it measures how variable our heartbeats are.

How is HRV related to our autonomic nervous system? When the parasympathetic system is active, our heart rate has greater variability, tending to beat faster when we inhale and slower when we exhale (figure 1.1), thus HRV goes up when we are resting effectively.

**Figure 1.1**
Source: Liu, H., Allen, J., Zheng, D., & Chen, F. (2019). Recent development of respiratory rate measurement technologies. *Physiological measurement*, 40(7), 07TR01.

Conversely, if our heart rate is very regular regardless of whether we are inhaling or exhaling, then that is a sign that we are in energy expenditure mode, which is normal for activities such as work, but if we are in this state during what should be “restful activities”, it might lead to burnout. If we plot HRV (measured as R-R intervals) over time, we can clearly see whether we are spending energy or restoring it:

Source: adapted from: https://www.marcoaltini.com/blog/a-look-at-a-few-months-of-hr-and-hrv-measurements see also: http://www.mindfio.com/science.html

So, what to do? It’s simple! One way is to use a respiratory band and a heart rate sensor, which would enable you to measure your HRV every time you take a break to see if it is restoring or draining your energy. This post from Harvard Health Blog has a few good options to get more into depth on it.

A more practical option is to put aside time each day to activate your parasympathetic nervous system with known restorative activities Some well known activities are: spending time in nature, meditating, practicing yoga, breathing exercises and more! You can even put your hand on your heart to see if it goes faster when you inhale and slower when you exhale. Like many other things — you’re not likely to see an immediate effect, your heart rate will drop after a few deep breaths.

Why is this important? Low HRV relates to impairments across the whole body, from high blood sugar (a risk factor for diabetes) to low memory and attention, and general inflammation (a risk factor for some forms of cancer).¹ The reason for the wide array of symptoms is because the autonomic nervous system innervates every organ and works with the body as a whole system, instead of a collection of independent parts.

If you are constantly feeling drained, have an array of symptoms, such as indigestion (news flash!: we only digest when the parasympathetic system is active!), poor sleep, and/or anxiety, then you might want to spare some time each day to take good quality breaks. After trying that for a month, (systemic changes are slow!), I bet you will feel a difference!

Neurable has conducted several studies that demonstrate that the MW75 Neuro headphones can measure pulse and therefore HRV, from the sensors around the ear. We are planning to include an HRV metric to our pipeline in the future. Stay tuned!

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¹ (Sources: Thayer, J. F., & Sternberg, E. (2006). Beyond heart rate variability: vagal regulation of allostatic systems. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1088(1), 361-372., Thayer, J. F., Hansen, A. L., Saus-Rose, E., & Johnsen, B. H. (2009). Heart rate variability, prefrontal neural function, and cognitive performance: the neurovisceral integration perspective on self-regulation, adaptation, and health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 37(2), 141-153.)

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‍²Distraction Stroop Tasks experiment: The Stroop Effect (also known as cognitive interference) is a psychological phenomenon describing the difficulty people have naming a color when it's used to spell the name of a different color. During each trial of this experiment, we flashed the words “Red” or “Yellow” on a screen. Participants were asked to respond to the color of the words and ignore their meaning by pressing four keys on the keyboard –– “D”, “F”, “J”, and “K,” -- which were mapped to “Red,” “Green,” “Blue,” and “Yellow” colors, respectively. Trials in the Stroop task were categorized into congruent, when the text content matched the text color (e.g. Red), and incongruent, when the text content did not match the text color (e.g., Red). The incongruent case was counter-intuitive and more difficult. We expected to see lower accuracy, higher response times, and a drop in Alpha band power in incongruent trials. To mimic the chaotic distraction environment of in-person office life, we added an additional layer of complexity by floating the words on different visual backgrounds (a calm river, a roller coaster, a calm beach, and a busy marketplace). Both the behavioral and neural data we collected showed consistently different results in incongruent tasks, such as longer reaction times and lower Alpha waves, particularly when the words appeared on top of the marketplace background, the most distracting scene.

‍Interruption by Notification: It’s widely known that push notifications decrease focus level. In our three Interruption by Notification experiments, participants performed the Stroop Tasks, above, with and without push notifications, which consisted of a sound played at random time followed by a prompt to complete an activity. Our behavioral analysis and focus metrics showed that, on average, participants presented slower reaction times and were less accurate during blocks of time with distractions compared to those without them.

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