How to Recover Effectively to Improve Performance at Work and Avoid Burnout
How to Flourish #1, 10th Jan 2025 | drjonbeale.com
Highlights:
Two conditions for a recovery strategy to be effective.
A six-step method for implementing effective recovery strategies.
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Many of us enter the new year with heightened motivation, replenished energy, and ambitious goals for the year ahead. During January, people tend to knuckle down to focus on work, health and self-improvement. These three categories capture the most common New Year’s Resolutions. This year, over a quarter of American adults surveyed about their resolutions are committing to saving more money, while around one in five are resolving to improve their physical health, exercise more, be happy or eat healthier. Half of UK adults surveyed are resolving to eat healthier, over 40% are aiming to be fitter or lose weight, and almost a third are focusing on their finances or prioritizing their mental health.
Americans’ New Year’s Resolutions, 2025 (YouGov US, Dec 13, 2024)
Unfortunately, most New Year’s Resolutions don’t last long: one study found that 23% of people quit by the end of the first week of January, and 43% by the end of the month. A more recent survey inspires a little more optimism, finding that the average resolution lasts 3.74 months.
How long Americans’ New Year’s Resolutions last (Forbes Health / One Poll, 2023)
As we enter the new year with big ambitions, we need to implement effective habits for maintaining productivity and motivation long-term. Without these, our laudable aims for 2025 risk quickly collapsing like most New Year’s Resolutions.
Improving fitness and exercising more are among the most common New Year’s Resolutions (credit: Jacob Lund)
Arguably the most important habit to build for long-term productivity and motivation is recovery. This refers to practices that clear your mind, help you de-stress, and replenish your energy and motivation after experiencing stress. Without effective recovery, we reduce our ability to maintain high performance long-term, and increase our risk of burnout.
What makes a recovery strategy effective?
There are two conditions for a recovery strategy to be effective:
It engages the parasympathetic nervous system.
It takes your mind off the things stressing you out.
1. The parasympathetic nervous system
Our autonomic nervous system controls involuntary bodily processes, such as our breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. It contains three components, two of which are the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. These regulate how our bodies respond to stress.
The sympathetic nervous system (‘SNS’), also known as the ‘fight or flight’ response, becomes activated in response to perceived dangers. Our heart rate and blood pressure increase, and we experience a surge of energy.
The parasympathetic nervous system (‘PNS’), also known as the ‘rest and digest’ response, becomes activated once we’ve perceived the danger has passed. Our heart rate and blood pressure decrease, and we experience calmness and relaxation.
The SNS can be triggered by anything we perceive to be highly stressful. This ranges from genuine dangers, such as a car speeding towards us, to something highly stressful but not dangerous, such as that big presentation you’re giving tomorrow or that difficult conversation you’re having with your spouse tonight. We can even trigger our SNS just by thinking about something we find highly stressful.
High stress has many sources (credit: Dr. Marcia Lindsey)
Stress isn’t problematic when it’s manageable – indeed, a moderate amount of stress can be beneficial, providing us with the energy, motivation and focus we need to push ourselves to our limits and achieve our goals. For stress to be managed, it needs to be followed by effective recovery.
In our busy working lives we experience many things that activate our SNS, but comparatively fewer that activate our PNS. This can lead to chronic stress, which can negatively impact our health in many ways, such as increasing our risk of burnout and heart disease.
So, the first condition for a recovery strategy to be effective is that it engages the PNS. Ask yourself, what activities really help me relax? Particularly good ones are meditation, breathwork, yoga, getting a massage, taking a hot bath, relaxing in a sauna or steam room, reading a novel and taking a walk in nature.
However, even the most optimal activities for engaging the PNS will only be effective for recovery if the second condition is also met.
2. Taking your mind off stress
The second condition is that the activity takes your mind off the things stressing you out.
I recently discussed this with Daniel Goleman, psychologist and the world’s leading expert on emotional intelligence. Goleman described what is perhaps the most important rule for effective recovery:
For a recovery strategy to be effective, it needs to enable you to switch off from whatever is causing you stress.
Artwork by Kelly Malka
This applies even to those activities mentioned above which are great for engaging the PNS. In Goleman’s words:
‘Here’s the key: it doesn’t matter what the activity is, but for it to work for you, it has to get your mind off the thing that’s preoccupying you. When we’re stressed, the primitive brain treats that as a threat or an emergency. One of the things it does is fixate attention on what’s troubling you. You want to stop that cycle of ruminating … What’s going to get your mind off that? That’s the key to what’s really going to relax you.’
From this, Goleman identified an important hazard to keep in mind when we implement recovery strategies. This is the inverse of the above rule for effective recovery, and gives us a second rule, now for identifying ineffective recovery strategies:
A recovery strategy is ineffective if it doesn’t enable you to switch off from whatever is causing you stress.
For instance, after work you might love going to a yoga class followed by taking a long, hot bath. On paper, that sounds like an optimal recovery strategy which will engage the PNS. But if you spend much of that time ruminating over the things stressing you out, and continue to feel stressed afterwards, this won’t function as effective recovery.
Recovering, ineffectively (credit: Getty Images Pro)
For example, if your mind keeps running through how you’ll navigate a difficult conversation with your boss tomorrow morning or a high-stakes meeting with clients tomorrow afternoon, you’re not recovering, because you’re not switching off from your sources of stress. You’re actually continuing to work: mentally rehearsing for what you’ll do at work the following day. ‘Mental rehearsal’ is an effective form of learning, but not an effective form of recovery.
Combining the two conditions for effective recovery
Combining these two conditions for effective recovery draws attention to an important point: an effective recovery strategy doesn’t need to engage your PNS for the entire duration of the time you schedule for recovery.
You can pair an activity that enables you to switch off from stress but doesn’t engage the PNS with one that engages the PNS, and this pairing can function as an effective recovery strategy overall. The former activity can even be something physically or cognitively demanding that engages the SNS, as long as it fulfils the second condition, of taking your mind off whatever is causing you stress.
For instance, say you love high intensity training (“HIIT”) and playing chess, the former of which is physically demanding and the latter cognitively demanding. You find that either helps you completely take your mind off the sources of stress you experience even on your most intense days at work. So either activity is excellent at fulfilling the second condition. Either of these could function as part of an effective recovery strategy as long as you pair them with activities that engage the PNS. For example, you could follow the former with meditating in the sauna and the latter with a walk in nature. The activity as a whole now meets both conditions.
If you lead a high-stress lifestyle and intense physical exercise is your go-to choice of exercise, it’s particularly important that you follow this with an activity that engages the PNS. For example, if you work long hours in a demanding job and your go-to exercise is a HIIT class at lunchtime or the end of the day, it’s important that you pair this with an activity that engages the PNS. Leading a stressful lifestyle combined with only high intensity exercise and not doing activities that engage the PNS can lead to elevated, chronic physiological stress (as I recently discussed with nutrition expert Federica Amati).
Artwork by Kelly Malka
A six-step method for implementing effective recovery
Here’s a method for finding and implementing effective recovery strategies for the year ahead:
Write down activities that really help you relax.
Write down activities that take your mind off the stressful things in your life.
Some of your responses to (1) and (2) will be the same. That’s great: those are likely to be effective recovery strategies, since these questions concern the two conditions for effective recovery. Some of your responses might be different, though. If it helps, you could answer using a Venn diagram, looking for correlations between your two answers – where the answer is the same, put it in the intersection between the two circles:
Answers to (1) in the left circle, answers to (2) in the right, and where the answer is the same for both, write it in the middle (credit: Miro)
If any of the activities in your answer to (2) aren’t included in (1), answer the next question (if your answers to (1) and (2) are the same, skip this):
For any activities you wrote in response to (2) which you didn’t include in response to (1), pair the activity from (2) with an activity from (1) you could do after the activity from (2).
For example, in your answer to (2) you might have written playing tennis. Ask yourself, which activity you wrote in response to (1) could you do after this? For example, could you take a hot bath when you get home from tennis?
You should now have a list of effective recovery activities. Next:
Rank the activities (or pairs of activities) based on how effective they are at (1) and (2) (that is, how effective they are at helping you relax and taking your mind off the stressful things in your life).
My top activities would be ranked as:
i. meditating in the sauna;
ii. pickleball (followed by (i));
iii. HIIT classes (followed by (i));
iv. ice skating (followed by (i)); and
v. reading novels.
Note that (ii), (iii) and (iv) are paired with (i) to ensure the activity as a whole is effective recovery.
Pickleballing in London, 2024
Pick the one (or ones) you most want to do this year.
I recommend prioritizing those you ranked highest. But if you most want to do ones that aren’t ranked at the top, that’s fine – you’ve identified all these as effective recovery strategies. Motivation to do the activity is vital. And it’s fine to pick them all!
Build that (or those) into your daily schedule after you finish your working day.
There’s no strict limit to the number of activities you choose here or how often you do them. The only rule is that you schedule at least one of them after you finish your working day. This way, the activity helps take your mind off the things from work that may be causing you stress, and thereby helps you wind down for the most important of all recovery practices, sleep. Stress often negatively impacts sleep, which leads to a vicious cycle, the ‘sleep-stress cycle’, since poor sleep in turn exacerbates stress. I’ll post a blog soon on strategies for optimizing sleep.
From my list, I meditate in the sauna or read a novel most days, play pickleball 2-3 times a week, go to HIIT classes once or twice a week, and go ice skating once a week.
There’s also no rule on how long you do each recovery activity – even five minutes of meditation a day has been shown to significantly reduce stress and anxiety. The general principle I recommend is that you schedule at least enough time doing the activity that it takes your mind off whatever is stressing you out.
This may vary based on how stressful your day was. But you can gauge a reasonably accurate amount of time you’d generally need to do the activity by trying and testing different durations. You might find that 30 minutes of swimming or reading fiction always takes your mind off sources of stress, but only 15 minutes isn’t long enough. Try, test and track.
Most importantly: have fun!
Beyond the steps above, you can have fun deciding when else you’d like to do them. A ceramics class on Saturday? Sunday brunch with friends? A spa next month?
My sister, Liz, teaching ceramics (credit: Make Bristol)
I recommend picking your top two or three activities to do regularly. But if you’ve only picked one, that’s fine, just do that.
The takeaway
For a recovery strategy to be effective, two conditions need to be met:
It engages the parasympathetic nervous system.
It takes your mind off the things stressing you out.
There are many excellent recovery practices that fulfil the first condition. But fulfilling that condition might not be sufficient for helping us recover – it also needs to enable us to switch off from sources of stress.
Try the six-step method above for implementing effective recovery strategies.
Which recovery strategies do you find most effective? What’s a new recovery strategy you’re trying this year? What strategy did you discover following the method above?
I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments, or any other thoughts you have about effective recovery!
drjonbeale.com | @drjonbeale
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Recommended resources
Books:
Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss, Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day (HarperCollins, 2024) (review)
Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (Simon & Schuster, 2003) (review)
Peer-reviewed articles:
Melis Balban et al., ‘Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal’ (Cell Reports Medicine, 2023)
Guy Fincham et al., ‘Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials’ (Scientific Reports, 2023)
Dylan Gee & B. J. Casey, ‘The impact of developmental timing for stress and recovery’ (Neurobiol Stress, 2015)
Markus Gerber et al., ‘Perceived recovery and stress states as predictors of depressive, burnout, and insomnia symptoms among adolescent elite athletes’ (Sports Psychiatry, 2023)
A. Lam et al., ‘Effects of Five-Minute Mindfulness Meditation on Mental Health Care Professionals’ (Psychology, 2015)
Julian Lim et al., ‘The Effects of Varying Break Length on Attention and Time on Task’ (Neuroergonomics, 2016)
Hylco Nijp et al., ‘Systematic review on the association between employee worktime control and work-non-work balance, health and well-being, and job-related outcomes’ (Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 2012)
Martin Oscarsson et al., ‘A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals’ (PLoS One, 2020)
Sabine Sonnetag et al., ‘Recovery from Work: Advancing the Field Toward the Future’ (Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2022)
V. Wagner at al., ‘How to Implement an Effective Intervention for Breaks during Working Days – A Field Study’ (Psychology, 2017)
Joshua Waxenbaum et al., ‘Anatomy, Autonomic Nervous System’ (StatPearls, 2023)
Research reports:
Lark Allen, ‘New Year’s Resolutions Statistics and Trends [2024]’, Drive Research (18 Nov 2024)
Tony Schwartz, ‘The Human Era @ Work: Findings from the Energy Project and Harvard Business Review’ (The Energy Project, 2014)
Media articles:
Ralph Robert, ‘How long do New Year’s Resolutions actually last?’, The Inquirer, 3 Jan 2025
Graham Russell, ‘Burnout – A modern epidemic of occupational stress’, The Psychologist, 31 March 2023
Podcasts:
‘Emotional Intelligence and Resilience with “EI” Pioneer, Dr. Daniel Goleman’, Flourish FM, 12 Nov 2024
‘What Every Body Should Know About Nutrition and Flourishing, with Dr. Federica Amati’, Flourish FM, 1 Oct 2024