Working for Good or Ill

If work were easy, it wouldn’t be called work.  Expect that at least some stress will be intrinsic to any job, whether formal employment or work around the house.  That said, while some hassles are inevitable, others are preventable.  Moreover, although everyone experiences work-related problems, some recover more quickly than others do.  What a person does during and after the hassles can make all the difference.

Job performance of any kind depends to some extent on what psychologists call “executive function.”   While its definition varies somewhat from expert to expert, let’s use the one suggested by Blair and Raver (2012).  In lay terms, executive function is the ability to self-regulate behavior.  It is comprised of working memory (the ability to keep information in our consciousness long enough to permit us to understand, learn, or reason with that information), flexibility in shifting our focus among relevant sets of intellectual processing rules, and inhibitory control that permits reflection over impulsivity. 

All work demands some degree of executive function.  For instance, when preparing dinner for a family of four—whether a professional cook or everyday person—one uses executive function to reflect first on what needs to be done rather than to rush mindlessly into the activity, adjust heating or cooling as needed, and coordinate the readiness of final food items so that all can be eaten after the family is seated.  Cooking sounds simple when it is described in decontextualized abstract terms such as I have used.  But we all know that any one of a thousand hassles can arise when trying to prepare a meal or to perform any task.  Let’s consider research regarding the demands placed upon nurses.

Luis Manuel Blanco-Donoso and colleagues (2016) studied job pressures that nurses experience, how they try to cope with the pressures, as well as the on-job and at-home consequences. They found, not surprisingly, that nurses who had more problems controlling their emotions at work experienced greater post-work emotional exhaustion.  The investigators explained that the most stressed nurses were those who did not pay attention to, understand, or adequately regulate their emotions.  That is, nurses with executive function deficits were nurses who complained most of exhaustion, physical aches and pains, and negative emotions.  Moreover, the problems tended to be present both at work and at home.

How did the more successful nurses cope?  Two ways: making good use of on-the-job resources and engaging in recovery experiences at home.  The resource of colleague support was a particularly helpful coping mechanism that diffused tension and assisted problem solving.  Notably, supervisor support conferred no such advantage, although that may have been due to factors specific to the study in question.  Second, both physical exercise and relaxation experiences also promoted successful coping.

As I repeatedly have emphasized in all my writings, context is critical.  Blanco-Donoso and his colleagues felt similarly when commenting on their results, specifying that “the efficacy of emotion regulation strategies can be variable and that a regulatory strategy that proves adaptive in one context can prove maladaptive (or does not have any effect) in a different context.”  For instance, it would be readily apparent to all that confiding in a coworker can be helpful in one setting and self-defeating in another. 

To conclude, we all need to use our best executive function skills to deal with our jobs, whether employment-related or home-related -- to work under circumstance of least harmful stress and to recover from the inevitable stress that often will occur.  Most important, we need to understand our unique contexts, interior and exterior, because context is critical.  That is why my Don’t Rest in Peace book had contextualizing as a major theme.

References:

Blair, C., & Raver, C. C. (2012).  Individual development and evolution: Experiential canalization of self-regulation. Developmental Psychology, 48, 647–657

Blanco-Donoso, Luis Manuel; Garrosa, Eva; Demerouti, Evangelia; Moreno-Jiménez, Bernardo (2016).  Job Resources and Recovery Experiences to Face Difficulties in Emotion Regulation at Work: A Diary Study Among Nurses.  International Journal of Stress Management, May 2 , No Pagination Specified.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/str0000023.