Burnout and Knowledge Workers

Frederick Taylor, the godfather of scientific management, recognized the problem of physical fatigue among laborers.   He was able to demonstrate that laborers are most productive when they work at a steady and comfortable pace, take a break from physical activity about every two hours, and work no more than eight or ten hours a day.  Pushing laborers harder than this causes a permanent depletion of their reserves and, ultimately, lower productivity.

However, the same principles have not been applied to knowledge workers – those whose work is intangible and often defies quantification because their work product is entirely mental.   It may take hours of thought to discover a solution, solve a problem, or create a plan – but the only evidence of this work occurs when the thinking is done and documentation takes place.   That is, the results of many hours of thinking may be expressed in a diagram or report that takes fifteen minutes to execute.

Just as physical exertion fatigues the muscles, so does mental exertion fatigue the mind.  This is most often in work that requires close attention, as errors are evident in the work that are blamed on carelessness, but are actually the result of mental exhaustion.

The evidence of mental fatigue is unnoticed because it is largely unnoticeable.   A physically exhausted person movers more slowly, breathes harder, and shows other visible signs of being overtaxed.   A mentally exhausted person may give no external signs, other than seeming a bit distracted or inattentive.

Meanwhile, the effects of mental exhaustion are far more devastating: a person who is physically tired may still be able to work at 80% of their capacity.  A person who is mentally tired may be unable to work at all – though again, because knowledge work defies quantification, it may not be easy to observe that a solution is only 80% as effective as one that might have been created if the worker was rested.   The most common symptoms – absenteeism and attrition – are usually unnoticed until they have come to crisis.

My personal experience with manual labor (working my way through school) was that management was very attentive to physical exhaustion.  Breaks and lunch were mandatory, and anyone caught working through them would be reprimanded.   The shift went no longer than twelve hours (multiple shifts ensured this).  If a worker handled heavy cargo such as salt or bleach on the first half of his shift, he was moved to handle light cargo such as foam trays or paper towels for the last half.   And if someone showed signs of severe fatigue, they were put on light duty immediately.

I have seen no such vigilance in the white-collar world.   Workers are informally discouraged from taking breaks, meetings and work sessions are scheduled through the lunch hour, and people are encouraged and praised for spending long hours at the office and taking lunch at their desks.    Taking a scheduled break, an hour for lunch, or leaving at a reasonable hour have become so rare as to seem ludicrous.  

And at times I wonder if the performance of companies is quite what it should be, or could be, if the issue of mental fatigue were more thoroughly studied and considered.   Though it is impossible to measure the results that are not being achieved because of it – and what cannot be quantified is very often ignored.