Brain Facts:
workplace

Isolation
—Job Stress

Isolation on the job is part of the more general problem of job stress, which is not limited to specific occupation. Both white-and blue-collar workers are involved. When British researchers at the University of Manchester rated job stress according to factors of pay, control of job activities, physical work environment, and stress-related disorder, they found that miners, policy officers, prison officers, and construction workers occupied the most stressful jobs. Completing the list, in decreasing order of job stress, were airline pilots, journalists, advertising executives, dentist, actors, nurses, firefighters, teachers, social workers, bus driver and postal workers.

Multi-Task

You can walk and chew gum at the same time, but when it comes to simultaneously performing multiple tasks that require intellectual attention, the brain can't do it. It locks in on one thing at a time. It can switch between tasks quickly — in less than the blink of an eye — but it does switch. And things can get dropped in the switching.

"It is true sequential processing," he says. The brain needs a moment — and it may be just a millisecond, but it needs it — to stop focusing on one thing and start focusing on the next. "Every time you try to force it to multitask, you end up collapsing certain systems. And you can show that people on projects who try to multitask make twice as many errors and it takes them twice as long to get something done."

And that is driving people nuts, he says. "After awhile, if you do that the whole day long, you get this vague feeling that you're not done. And that you're never done. And that when you go home, you're still not done." And science has proved, he says, that behavior produces a kind of stress called "learned helplessness."

Multitasking

In order to multitask, the brain uses an area known as the prefrontal cortex. The “executive” brain enter controls our ability to assess and prioritize various task. Ironically, chronic stress causes its greatest damage to this prefrontal cortex. Brain scans of volunteers performing multiple tasks together show that as they shift from task to task, this frontal part of the brain actually takes a moment of rest between tasks. You may have experienced a prefrontal cortex “moment of rest” yourself if you’ve dialed a phone number and suddenly forgotten who you called when the line is answered. What probably occurred is that between the dialing and the answering, your mind shifted to another thought or task, and then took that “moment” to come back.

Sisyphus Reaction

One of the worst forms of isolation on a job comes from being locked into a stressful, repetitive task that creates separation not just from other workers but also from freedom for decision making. Researchers have suggested the term Sisyphus reaction for this situation. The description of this problem goes back more than sixty years. The pattern is that of a driven, effort-oriented person who strives against great odds but with very little sense of accomplishment or satisfaction. (In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, king of Corinth, was banished to Hades and condemned to push an enormous stone up the side of a hill—only to have it roll down again, requiring him to repeat the labor endlessly without success. They Sisyphus syndrome differs from the type A behavior pattern mainly because of the lack of emotional fulfillment.