Adrenalizing

Guiding Principle: Slowing down is the foundation of Restful Work

Slowing down is the foundation of restful work because it reduces adrenaline. To adrenalize is to stir into action or excite, to be tense or highly charged. When adrenalized, we are filled with a sudden rush of energy or excitement. Feeling adrenalized is great when we’re on a rollercoaster, bungee jumping, or surfing–it is the feeling of being alive. However, adrenalizing also occurs when we feel that our lives are in danger, when we sense an overwhelming risk of harm, injury, or even death.

What happens when we normalize adrenaline in our lives? This often translates into feeling less adrenalized because we develop a tolerance. We don’t often recognize this normalization of adrenaline. Instead, we notice the struggle to slow down and rest, and the increase of a crashing feeling.

Adrenalizing is a deeply purposeful survival response in which our brain fires a series of signals that ultimately release adrenaline into our bloodstream. Once adrenaline is in our bloodstream, our heart rate, perspiration, and breathing increase, and blood vessels contract to direct flow to our muscles, inhibiting our pancreas from producing insulin–an essential hormone for our very health and survival.

Furthermore, the effects of adrenalizing stay with us long after the episode has passed, which can lead to irritability, nervousness, insomnia, and heart damage. Therefore, long exposure to adrenaline, such as 8 hours a day for several consecutive days, is not a place we want to get comfortable. Adrenalizing by doing too much, moving at a high speed, and working excessive hours is not only unsustainable but ultimately, has a life-threatening impact on our health.

This can seem counterintuitive and cause a strong sense of cognitive dissonance. When we’re going! and going! and going! We feel that we’re working at our highest level of productivity. We feel capable, reliable, efficient, intelligent, trustworthy. We’re blowing everyone out of the water, exceeding expectations, and becoming a top performer. Our minds manage to escape the feeling of imposter syndrome, and we now see ourselves as a great hire and an asset to the company. Our bosses are lucky to have us on their team! And they tell us that! They praise our work, maybe put us up for an award. And we think, “Today was a great day! A productive day! I’ve hacked my work rhythm. If I do this every day my results are going to be undeniable. Future promotions/raises/benefits/time off/recognition are mine for the taking.” We are Olympians of our domain.

But in the same way Olympians can’t sustain a daily rhythm of breaking records and winning titles, we cannot sustain this Olympic-level of output. Our excitement for work, completing tasks, and achieving what others cannot, begins to morph into something different. We feel our productivity sliding, we’re not closing tasks or striking off to-do’s as quickly. Questions arise in our minds: What’s different today than before? Is something distracting me? Why can’t I seem to focus?

An email from our boss shows up in our inbox:
“Apologies for the last-minute invite, but can you join our meeting this afternoon?”
We think, What?? No! That was my time to work on the new feature request! We respond, “Of course! See you later today!”

Resentment simmers through the day, we arrive at the meeting our team needs us for and everyone can tell we don’t want to be there. Our colleagues begin to ask us for advice. Our responses are biting. We think, this is what they needed me for? They can’t figure this out on their own? These people are useless! At this point everyone is choosing their words very carefully. Tiptoeing around our potential reactions while still trying to extract what they need from us to have a productive meeting and move forward with their work.

A text from our partner flashes on our phone: “Do you wanna go to dinner with my mom tonight?” We think, Absolutely not! How can I even think about this right now? We respond, “It would’ve been nice to know about this more in advance, I can’t even think about this right now. Everyone’s distracting me! Honestly, I’ll probably work late since I can’t seem to get anything done. Just go without me.”

We go home late, tired, tense, sad, stressed. We eat the cold, softened leftovers from dinner. Our partner is talking about their mom, their day… our mind is elsewhere, ruminating obsessively over the last 10 hours. Their story is trivial and unimportant. Maybe we’ve checked out and we don’t respond to a single word. Maybe we wait for them to pause so we can turn the conversation towards venting. Again. For the fourth night this week, the third week in a row.

Instead of going! And going! And going! We’re just going and going and going. It’s not the same, the magic is gone. It feels exhausting. And stressful. And overwhelming. And unfair. When will it stop? Why does everyone expect so much from me?

We snap.
We break down.
We collapse.
We withdraw, looking for respite, searching for a retreat, an escape, isolation. We burn out.

We return to work.
”I’m taking PTO starting next week."
"I’m switching teams."
"I’m changing jobs."
"I’m going on sabbatical.”
We take back control. But from whom? Who ever took it away?

In the beginning, adrenalizing while working feels superhuman and rewarding, but it’s unsustainable. After attempting to maintain this pace for prolonged periods of time, this pace can lead to feelings of resentment towards the people around us. Towards colleagues for not doing as much. Towards leaders/bosses/managers for encouraging and praising this behavior. Towards our friends and family members for interfering with our productivity. We feel stuck and feel that we must continue this pace because we’ve set a new standard we have to maintain. We can’t pull back now because we’ll look lazy.

And while we’re in this hyperactive mode, there’s a fallacy and blindness to the quality of work we’re really doing. Looking back on the quarter, or the last six months, or the entire year of working in this heightened state, we can see that much of it was wasteful. We were just spinning plates. We were picking up the first things we saw, doing them to get them done, checking the boxes, closing the tasks, and generating a data point to be dropped into a report that would validate our worth. We weren’t leaving time to work on something well or allowing space for much more meaningful work to present itself to us.

Slowing down is the foundation of restful work. If we’re always working at a sprint, overdoing it, working too many hours, and time stuffing, then we’re essentially running from ourselves. We’re losing ourselves in work rather than enjoying our work, unhurried and free from stress in our bodies. We aren’t allowing ourselves to experience what truly matters. Slowing down creates a way to work and be productive in a way previously impossible, in a way that’s healthier for us, better for our companies, and better for everyone around us.

When we slow down, we stop running from ourselves, we start loving ourselves, and we start loving ourselves and others better. When we start truly loving ourselves, this leaves room for a different relationship with work. We no longer work purely focused on titles, levels, and weekly accomplishments. We work for a cause. We ask, “How can I advance this cause that I am serving? How can I serve others? How can I serve others without sacrificing or overburdening myself?

In general, the word “slow” is treated as a pejorative. And in tech, the word “slow” is treated as a death sentence.

Restful work redeems the word slow. Slow is beautiful, it’s a gift, it’s radical. Slow stands radically opposed to what society, and tech specifically, has impressed upon us as worthy, important, and aspirational. Slow allows us to start doing what we love most and what we’re best at. Slow is saying “no” more often. Slow is contributing through others and through communities. Slow is caring for others, it’s caring for ourselves, and it’s achieving more than we ever thought possible.

The following sections of the Developer Health OS correspond to Cerebral Calisthenics #3 Burnout Recovery in the DHOS Workbook