Out Of The Blue

Making stress your enemy

Having worked over the years with several aviation psychologists it is worth considering some of the key factors they have identified that contribute to further making stress your enemy. They include the following:
– Bottling things up.
– Working longer hours.
– Not delegating.
– Never saying ‘no’.
– Taking work home.
– Being a perfectionist.
– Procrastinating and avoiding.
– Not taking breaks.
– Not talking about it.
– Squeezing out hobbies.

In the case of aircrew, there are a few traits that with increased flight schedules and workload make the outcomes worse. For many, performing to the standards required to be truly professional tends to breed traits of perfectionism. Near enough in our business may not be good enough, particularly if confronted with an emergency scenario that requires the crew to deliver precision to survive. It’s also what the fare paying public expect: high professional standards.

The regular travel can lead to a loss of energy due to the disrupted sleep patterns and changes to time zones. This can result in a loss of time for hobbies, choosing instead to spend more time in front of a television or laptop to rest rather than taking a run or walk outside. Once-regular exercise seems to be getting more sporadic. Furthermore, given a partner who regularly acts as a single parent while you’re away, you feel compelled when home to put all your time into the family – desperately trying to be a supportive parent while tending to household chores that have built up. With the longer flight hours and work schedules hobbies have fallen away, squeezed out of your life.

Before the children arrived, you seemed to have more time to catch up with close friends, but they, too, seem distant. When you do make contact it’s often followed by “I can’t believe it’s been that long”. And what little time you get tends to be as couples where the façade displayed is “life is good, we’re a happy family”, while below the surface the feeling lingers: “why can’t our family be more like them”.

You’re tired, at times emotionally exhausted, feeling a little sad. You’re also in denial when your partner suggests you may need to get some professional help to better understand what’s going on.

Ultimately, if this cycle is leading you to the point that the self-talk in your own head is becoming quite negative: “I’m a hopeless parent”, “I’m useless”, “My wife deserves better than me”, then it’s time to consult a professional to realign your thought processes and lifestyle to get things back on track.

It is also important to understand that excessive time with electronic applications is the last habit pattern you need if you want to begin a process to correct these traits.

The impact of technology

Not only is it necessary to carefully manage the needs of yourself and your family but the aviation workplace also requires an ability to stay focused on a job that at times can be repetitive, routine and sometimes boring. While technology (smartphones) have many advantages, overuse of addictive applications and devices is contributing to an erosion of attentional focus.

Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World has identified several outcomes from the overuse and exposure to constant distractions.

‘You’re in denial when your partner suggests you may need help’

Cal states: “The use of a distracting service does not by itself reduce the brain’s ability to focus; it is instead the constant switching from low stimuli, high value activities to high stimuli, low value activities at the slightest hint of boredom or cognitive challenge that teaches your mind to never tolerate an absence of novelty.”

Take a look around society at how often you’re walking down the street and someone nearly walks into you due to their apparent need to remain focused on their smartphone. How often do you catch up with someone or attend meetings where it’s ok to take a call or to be interrupted? It’s an outcome of this new ‘busyness’ culture of society. It’s no longer normal to just be in the moment – to sit at a café and observe the world around you. For many, simply sitting at a café without a smartphone no longer feels ok and causes stress through not having the façade of the smartphone to hide behind.

Cal also says: “In the knowledge work sector we are making a massive investment in a highly tuned human brain that is going to produce value. and then subject it to constant attention switching, context switching and attention fragmentation – it’s like putting sand in the gears of high precision machinery.”

In the business of aviation, attentional focus and the traits of sports psychology 101 (staying focused in the moment) are critical. But, the impact of technology for many is resulting in a decrease in their ability to remain focused on a task and degrading their self-awareness regarding lapses in their attentional focus. Cal states: “The key to living well in a high-tech world is to spend much less time using technology.”

They engineer for addiction

Tristan Harris, co-founder and executive director of Humanetech (humanetech.com) has been called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience”. Tristan, a former design ethicist at Google and a world expert on how technology steers us all, left Google to engage the issue publicly. He’s spent over a decade understanding subtle psychological forces associated with technology.

Humanetech states: “Today’s tech platforms are caught in a race to the bottom of the brain stem to extract human attention. It’s a race we’re all losing. The result: addiction, social isolation, outrage, misinformation, and political polarisation.”

Tristan has found that these aren’t disconnected issues. They are part of human downgrading. While companies have been upgrading technology, they’ve been downgrading humans: shortening attention spans, rewarding outrage over dialogue, and turning life into a competition for likes and shares.

Even a local experiment found the impact of addictive technology is alarming. A social media detox experiment found the average Australian teenager spends almost 44 hours on their screens every single week. That is more hours per week than a full-time job.

This is occurring because social media and gaming, which constitutes most screen time, gives users a dopamine hit – a reward signal in the brain that is also activated by drugs including cocaine, nicotine, and heroin.

You might not have heard the word technoference but you’re definitely familiar with the phenomenon it captures. Psychologists coined the term several years ago to describe how our use of technology, specifically our smartphones, is interfering with our relationships and our everyday habits.

While technology is having a considerable impact on our lives, the basics of sports psychology, attentional focus and high performance remain relatively unchanged. Dr David Rock, a psychologist and author of Your Brain at Work has found that:
– Switching between tasks uses energy.
– If accuracy is important you should not unnecessarily divide your attention.
– The brain is easily distracted and distractions have a big energy cost.
– When you need to focus you should remove all unnecessary distractions completely.
– Switch off all communication devices during any thinking work.

The reality is many people in the aviation industry, through overuse and reliance on addictive applications are re-wiring their brains to constantly seek novelty. This further reinforces the negative impact of constantly switching between devices, for example checking your smartphone any time there is a short break. These devices have been developed to seek your attention and if not carefully managed are taking you away from the habit patterns necessary to be a truly professional aviator. Worse still, for many they’re having a negative impact on your social lives and are making you feel unhappy.

So what can you do as a member of the aviation community, including the need to role model and shape good behaviours for the next generations including your children?

Well, it is not as simple as throwing devices in the bin. The more practical cure is withdrawal and conscious control to practice the recommendations of David Rock – removing unnecessary distractions. While it takes about three months for the biochemistry in the brain to reset, every day we spend less time on our screens is beneficial. A simple technique to develop habit patterns for high performance is to switch off to switch on.

Switching off to switch on

One area to focus on a journey for increased happiness and increased attentional focus is to regain conscious control over distracting devices. I’ve read many aviation accident reports citing an inability to remain focused for short to medium periods of time (for example, breaching the sterile cockpit rule) during critical phases of flight.

Many airlines have a rule (sterile cockpit) to keep all conversations and attention focused on the task at hand, particularly for busier and more critical phases of flight such as descending for landing. This helps breed disciplined, attention-focused workplace practices to avoid engaging in unnecessary conversations. For many airlines the time required to adhere to this policy is as short as 15-20mins (depending on the aircraft performance). Is 15-20mins too much to ask of today’s aviation community to stay focused on the job? The reality is some can no longer achieve this outcome. So let’s have a look at an example of developing new habit patterns for high performance.

I recognised that I was spending way too much time on distracting devices to the detriment of other things that were important to me. In my case the journey started at my child’s 30-minute swim class, when it dawned on me that I wasn’t paying much attention. I set about practising being in the moment and consciously removing distracting devices to stay focused on the class and my son.

On arrival at the swim class my mobile phone was left in the car. I quickly found how easily my attention span started to wander, looking at the clock, amazed the class was only a few minutes into the full 30 minutes, clearly highlighting how quickly my brain was seeking novelty. I also noticed the behaviour of the other parents, the majority head down staring at their own screens for the duration.

My son made direct eye contact over 35 times during the 30 minutes, the beaming smile and positive emotional engagement remained active throughout. For the other children whose parents were heads down on their screens, they stopped making eye contact after a few attempts and focused their attention on other children.

With commitment and genuine intent, it only took three weeks to create a new habit pattern, which I’ve made a regular part of my week. Not only has it significantly improved my relationship with my son at swimming, but I now regularly leave my smartphone at home when playing with my children on the weekend. I’ve also noticed that my self-awareness has improved around unnecessary distractions in general, for example noticing how often personnel in work meetings are looking at their devices. And it’s becoming a habit I now apply when catching up with other important people including my wife and close friends.

Anything you do to redirect conscious control towards “being in the moment”, particularly if it also enhances face-to-face social interactions, is the key to shaping new habit patterns for enhanced attentional focus and the ongoing release of the positive, feel-good chemicals our brains need for longer-term health.

All you need to identify is one activity a week for 20-30 minutes to start this journey. It could be having a breakfast and coffee on your own without your mobile phone. Whatever it is, start now. You might get an initial shock in the realisation of how short your attention span has become, all easily corrected through new habits and practice.

Over the next couple of months I will focus on how to enhance expectation management regarding the transition back into your homes and communities after trips away, as well as some further insights into the emerging science regarding the impact of disrupted sleep and nutrition.

Until then switch off your phones and keep catching up with close friends to discuss what’s really going on in your life!

‘It is not as simple as throwing devices into the bin’