Mental Fatigue Explained: How to Stay Focused When Your Brain is Running on Empty
What is Mental Fatigue?
We’ve probably all been there; it’s the end of a particularly challenging work day and your brain feels like soup. It’s almost impossible to keep your attention on your screen and, although you might have the motivation, you just don’t have the mental capacity to handle another task. There is a term for this; Mental Fatigue; and it’s a phenomenon that can be seen on a brain scan.
New brain imaging studies have shown that – similarly to our muscles – the brain can get overexerted, experiencing fatigue after significant effort1. As such, the more mentally fatigued you are, the more sluggish your brain function. Tasks feel harder, executive functions – e.g. planning behaviours or assessment of potential risk – are diminished, and paying sustained attention is almost impossible. In this week’s article, we explore the ways in which you can stave off the effects of mental fatigue.
Causes
Strategies to Avoid Mental Fatigue
Frequent breaks
This is the most effective way to minimise mental fatigue; by releasing the load on your mental resources, you allow your brain’s cells to replenish their energy stores. In order to have the most restorative breaks possible, you could go for a walk – getting more blood going around the body (and to the brain) -, eat something nutritious, or drink some water. Most importantly – get away from the screen! Shorter breaks can also be crucial; as little as looking away from your work for 5 seconds every couple of minutes has been shown to improve performance by a significant margin3.
Limit intense work
Overloading your day with high-effort tasks will also overload your brain, no matter how many breaks you take. Of course, every now and then it’s unavoidable, but if you are regularly burning out due to handling multiple mentally taxing tasks every day, you won’t be of any use to anyone. Try to limit intense work such as this to 4 hours a day, further split into 90-minute blocks.
Understand what motivates you
Unfortunately, some days, you simply have to power through. You can use rewards that you know are high-value to you to sustain mental effort. Engineer an incentive – e.g. buying yourself a snack you know you like, and waiting to eat it until a specific task is completed, or watching a movie you have been wanting to see after a long work day. By giving yourself these things to look forward to, you can give yourself one last small push to complete the day’s work.
It’s important to note, mental fatigue isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Feeling tired after an engaging, complex day of work is completely normal – and a positive sign that you are pushing yourself. However, if you are experiencing this fatigue regularly, it may be your body telling you that it’s time for a longer break. Once your brain is exhausted, there is no quick-fix cure for mental fatigue – only rest and sleep. If you can recognise the signs of oncoming mental fatigue, you can avoid/delay it until such point you can rest and recharge.
