This unlikely 10-minute trick is key to being productive & excelling at work
updated the 26 July 2018 à 18:04Thought ‘staying positive’ is the secret to overcoming the tough times? A new study proves that dwelling on past failures might actually be more helpful than you think.
“Chin up!” or “Stay positive.” These are perhaps some of the most thrown-out advice when it comes to overcoming setbacks you face in life or at work. And granted, it does make sense: after all, why dwell on the past when the productive thing to do is to look forward and channel your energy on new projects?
Interestingly, a recent study by researchers from Rutgers University, the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University might be flipping the script on what it takes to performing well in stressful, high-pressure situations.
According to the study, people who spent 10-minutes writing about a stressful moment they’re experiencing actually performed better at tasks that required long-term consistency and persistence.
The logic? Pretty simple – this simple act of fleshing out your frustrations and feelings during difficult periods helps you avoid collapsing under pressure, and may build your resistance against future stressful situations.
It’s certainly a departure from what we think and know about ‘staying positive’ in the face of challenges and failure. However, it turns out that allowing yourself to embrace your Debbie Downer every now and then is actually helpful to you in the long run.
In an interview with MIC, Brynne DiMenichi, a doctoral candidate from Rutgers University-Newark, likens it to doing pushups to build our strength. According to DiMenichi, writing about a stressful moment helps develop resilience in future stresses (much like a muscle), allowing us to perform better at crunch time. No doubt, it’s a simple and brilliant trick that she recommends people to adopt, whether you’re in the midst of intense project deadlines at work or preparing for a major examination.
“For a really long time we’ve been told to stay positive,” DiMenichi said. “But writing about a past failure changed the way that a participant responded physiologically to the possibility of a new failure.”
It’s especially interesting that the authors had actually initially set out to prove the opposite. That writing about a prior success would lead to better performance – in the spirit of actualising a dream into reality if you will. In a similar 2015 study, 100 volunteers were split into two groups: one which wrote about a previous failure, while the other wrote about a recent movie they’d seen. both groups then took a 30-minute test to assess the effect on performance.
“The effects on performance are pretty strong,” she shares. Participants who “didn’t write about failures displayed twice as many errors (during the test) as those who did.” In both studies, it was also discovered that participants “who wrote about past failures (made) slower, more deliberate choices over time.”
It’s certainly an illuminating study and DiMenichi plans to further discern whether it’s the act of writing itself that’s key or the reflection behind it that is. It’s a study that’s still in the works, although she suspects it’s the latter.
Now, who would’ve thought that a quick 10-minutes of indulging a past failure would be so helpful? Next question: does this also apply to wallow on the couch reliving memories after a breakup… (We kid, of course.)
Sarah Khan
Photo: Getty Images
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