Yes, there is such thing as getting up on the wrong side of the bed. Research has shown that how you wake up is one of the most important factors in deciding the course of your day.
A new study published in The Journals of Gerontology found that waking up anticipating a stressful day does more than just put you in a crabby mood — it affects your working memory, too. Even if stressful events do not occur, the mental preparation for them will slow your ability to learn and retain information for the rest of the day.
Two-hundred-forty adult participants were questioned via smartphone every morning for two weeks about the stress they anticipated for the day. They were questioned five more times throughout the day to track their stress levels, and once before bed about tomorrow’s stress anticipation. Five working memory tests were also administered throughout the day
Results showed that those with higher stress anticipation levels in the morning performed poorly on the working memory tasks in comparison to those reporting lower stress anticipation levels.
While your long-term memory will be just fine, a decreased working memory will cause you to be more distracted and prone to making mistakes — potentially even life-threatening ones.
“Looking at this research in the context of healthy aging, there are certain high stakes cognitive errors that older adults can make. Taking the wrong pill or making a mistake while driving can all have catastrophic impacts,” warns Martin Sliwinski, one of the authors of the study and director of the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State. Take a chill pill, so you won’t accidentally take the wrong pill.
But don’t stress about stressing there’s good news. Stress anticipation the night before had no effect on working memory performance the following day, so you can just sleep it off.
If you’re prone to hopping on your phone first thing in the morning, Sliwinski recommends you use it to your advantage. “Your phone can remind you to do some deep breathing relaxation before you start your day,” he says. There are plenty of apps, including Headspace and Calm, that will put you in the right mindset and make your day more productive than those early morning emails would.
Everyone who has ever held a job has, at some point, felt the pressure of work-related stress. Any job can have stressful elements, even if you love what you do. In the short-term, you may experience pressure to meet a deadline or to fulfill a challenging obligation. But when work stress becomes chronic, it can be overwhelming — and harmful to both physical and emotional health.
You can’t always avoid the tensions that occur on the job. Yet you can take steps to manage work-related stress.
- Get some support. Accepting help from trusted friends and family members can improve your ability to manage stress. Your employer may also have stress management resources available through an employee assistance program (EAP), including online information, available counseling and referral to mental health professionals, if needed. If you continue to feel overwhelmed by work stress, you may want to talk to a psychologist, who can help you better manage stress and change unhealthy behavior.
- Talk to your supervisor. Healthy employees are typically more productive, so your boss has an incentive to create a work environment that promotes employee well-being. Start by having an open conversation with your supervisor. The purpose of this isn’t to lay out a list of complaints, but rather to come up with an effective plan for managing the stressors you’ve identified, so you can perform at your best on the job. While some parts of the plan may be designed to help you improve your skills in areas such as time management, other elements might include identifying employer-sponsored wellness resources you can tap into, clarifying what’s expected of you, getting necessary resources or support from colleagues, enriching your job to include more challenging or meaningful tasks, or making changes to your physical workspace to make it more comfortable and reduce strain.
- Develop healthy responses. Instead of attempting to fight stress with fast food or alcohol, do your best to make healthy choices when you feel the tension rise. Exercise is a great stress-buster. Yoga can be an excellent choice, but any form of physical activity is beneficial. Also make time for hobbies and favorite activities. Whether it’s reading a novel, going to concerts or playing games with your family, make sure to set aside time for the things that bring you pleasure. Getting enough good-quality sleep is also important for effective stress management. Build healthy sleep habits by limiting your caffeine intake late in the day and minimizing stimulating activities, such as computer and television use, at night.
- Establish boundaries. In today’s digital world, it’s easy to feel pressure to be available 24 hours a day. Establish some work-life boundaries for yourself. That might mean making a rule not to check email from home in the evening, or not answering the phone during dinner. Although people have different preferences when it comes to how much they blend their work and home life, creating some clear boundaries between these realms can reduce the potential for work-life conflict and the stress that goes with it.
- Track your stressors. Keep a journal for a week or two to identify which situations create the most stress and how you respond to them. Record your thoughts, feelings and information about the environment, including the people and circumstances involved, the physical setting and how you reacted. Did you raise your voice? Get a snack from the vending machine? Go for a walk? Taking notes can help you find patterns among your stressors and your reactions to them.
- Learn how to relax. Techniques such as meditation, deep breathing exercises and mindfulness (a state in which you actively observe present experiences and thoughts without judging them) can help melt away stress. Start by taking a few minutes each day to focus on a simple activity like breathing, walking or enjoying a meal. The skill of being able to focus purposefully on a single activity without distraction will get stronger with practice and you’ll find that you can apply it to many different aspects of your life.