Recognizing and limiting mental fatigue through cognitive science
If you are reading this article, it may be because you have chosen to stop working to give yourself a few minutes of break... or simply because you are looking for a solution to regulate this phenomenon of mental fatigue that you experience on a daily basis without really knowing how to deal with it. “I can't get enough of this day”, “I'm tired”, “this meeting exhausted me!” ”... we are all regularly confronted with the feeling that we no longer have sufficient resources to continue working. It is therefore essential to understand the causes in order to identify the best practices to adopt and thus limit these effects.
When you feel tired, have heavy eyelids and regular yawning, it is easy to realize that we are sleepy and that we need to sleep. But mental fatigue is a very different phenomenon from sleepiness, the signs of which are more subtle and therefore more difficult to avoid.
Mental fatigue corresponds to a temporary inability to achieve or maintain peak cognitive performance as a result of prolonged mental activity (Laurent, 2010). In other words, it takes longer to read, to think, and nothing interferes with our attention. All you have to do is do an activity a little too long for mental fatigue to set in. Curiously, it is primarily related to the duration of the activity, and not to the nature of the activity itself. Whether you're dealing with a complex case, learning a course, writing a report, writing a report, writing lines of code, or watching television, the same struggle: the longer the task goes on, the more fatigue sets in.
On the other hand, we feel it differently when we do something we like (for example, playing video games), and when, conversely, we are working on a subject that we do not like. Several factors explain this modulation; among them, motivation (read our article on this subject) Motivation, concentration, attention: 3 essential levers for successful learning). In our hobbies but sometimes also at work, we sometimes have the feeling of not seeing the time pass, of being efficient and focused. This feeling of satisfaction with the task itself and with our ability to do it properly activates our reward circuit (Boksem & Tops, 2008) and temporarily compensates for the effects of mental fatigue.
As a mental task lasts longer, mental fatigue occurs and results in a change in the activity of our brain. In particular, we observe that the prefrontal cortex, our “control tower” (in particular involved in our memory of work and our concentration) decreases its activity (Persson et al., 2013). The major consequence of this is a difficulty in concentrating. Our ability to select information that is relevant to our goals and to ignore information that is not relevant to the task at hand, called “attentional filtering,” deteriorates with mental fatigue. Unable to maintain our focus on a task, we therefore become less efficient.
This effect is all the more amplified as the demands are numerous in our work environment and our digital environment. Our attention can quickly get caught up in a conversation or a notification, and the effort to get back to the task at hand contributes to mental fatigue. Then a vicious circle begins. The more fatigue sets in, the more our attention deteriorates and the more likely we are to be disturbed by solicitations, thus promoting the increase of mental fatigue.
Finally, the decrease in brain activity in our prefrontal cortex due to Mental fatigue also makes it difficult to make good decisions. After several hours of mental activity, we are more impulsive in our decisions: we choose short-term benefits rather than greater benefits in the medium term (Blain et al., 2016). This can sometimes have serious consequences...
So, what can we do to avoid mental fatigue when we don't stop all day and there's never enough 24 hours to do everything? As an individual, you must first take a step back on our own functioning. This faculty is called the”metacognition“, and describes thinking about your own mental processes (Cf. the article Learning to learn, a metacognition story). During the day it is then possible to challenge yourself: “I am no longer efficient, I should have already taken a break several minutes ago”. Better managing your rhythms, adapting the nature and frequency of your breaks to remain effective then becomes key to avoid the onset of fatigue and maintain your effectiveness.
But this awareness must be accompanied by a favorable climate in the company itself. For businesses, it is therefore a question of design spaces and work rhythms that allow employees to maintain their effectiveness over the long term : encourage teams to respect real times to recharge their batteries, in the evenings and at weekends, but also during the day through regular and adapted breaks. In this context where work is accelerating and where each break tends to turn into an inbox treatment, it is essential to find a rhythm favorable to the efficiency and well-being of individuals in the long term.
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