Graph of productivity vs anxiety

[jack]

http://jimhines.livejournal.com/724969.html

This post describes a productivity vs anxiety graph as a bell curve: no anxiety and you don't work on something at all; too much and you're too terrified to start.

What I take away is that if someone isn't doing something you think they should, the right answer isn't always "come up with more and more and more reasons why they should". If their problem was "they couldn't be bothered", that will help. But if the problem is "they're paralysed by terror", making it MORE urgent will make it HARDER to start, not easier.

I feel, when I'm procrastinating, I'm often in the "paralysed" state. And I feel people should be entitled to say "get on and do it" to me, but that if they want to help, it would be more useful to start by asking "do you want more urgency or more reassurance" and provide whichever I ask for.

Contrariwise, if it's something I've promised to do, and someone's dependant on that, it's my responsibility to manage my internal emotional state, not theirs, and I can't expect someone at work etc to automatically accommodate me. But I've tried to get better at recognising the problem, and asking for what I need, rather than just assuming that what I need isn't obvious, I'm wrong for needing it.

Comments

[simont]

if someone isn't doing something you think they should, the right answer isn't always "come up with more and more and more reasons why they should". If their problem was "they couldn't be bothered", that will help. But if the problem is "they're paralysed by terror", [...]

Of course, the third option somewhere in the middle is that their problem might have nothing to do with emotions – there might be some actual objective problem beyond their control that's standing in the way of what you want done. In which case, it still doesn't help to try to add more motivation to a person who can't make that problem go away; what you need to do is find the person who can, and try persuading them instead...

[ptc24]

I've been know to say of my SSRIs: "they take away a lot of unnecessary anxiety, but also some necessary anxiety too". In some cases, it seems that the gap between too much anxiety and too little is razor-thin or non-existent, but not always.

I wonder... if the performance-vs-anxiety graph is as drawn, and anxiety - or for that matter d(anxiety)/dt - is inversely proportional (or negatively proportional) to some average of recent performance... what would the dynamics be like?

[mathcathy]

I'm not convinced by those charts. They seem over simplistic to me.

[jack]

What do you think is wrong? To me, they look like they're clearly not supposed to represent actual numbers, but just a vivid visual reminder of the idea that "more depression = less work" and "too much or too little anxiety = less work". Do you think those simplifications are wrong, or shouldn't be made into graphs, or is there a bigger problem?

[mathcathy]

From a graphic perspective: next to each other they imply a curvature for the anxiety one and not the depression one. Why not straight lines for both? Or does anxiety change at different rates at each end?

Also, I don't think that this holds true for everyone. Certainly for me, depression didn't reduce the amount of work because I used work to battle depression. I was quite cross with my doctor at the time, for saying that I should stop work because I was ill, when it was all too evident to me that stopping work would make me more ill. i.e. stopping productive work increases depression. Therefore, the causal relationship implied by the chart is perhaps out of kilter because it could be the other way around.

A jumble of thoughts, meaning I'm not sure that they're right, although I get the overall sentiment.

I'm just not sure that it's wise to try to classify something so potentially sensitive and persuasive in such a way.

[jack]

Ah! Sorry, that makes sense now.

[eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com]

I think these sorts of graphs are useful when you can identify them for yourself and work out what's true for you. e.g. I think my graph of anxiety against productivity would show high productivity at zero anxiety, a dip at medium anxiety, and back up to the original level at high anxiety (basically the opposite of the graph in the blog post!). I'm pretty productive when I'm happy/contented and not anxious. When I'm a bit anxious, I'll probably spend some time/effort doing things to reduce that anxiety or work out where it came from, and thus be less productive. When I'm very anxious, that's probably because of outside pressures which mean that I have to spend all my time working, so the productivity goes slightly up, possibly back up to original levels (but so does misery).

It depends a lot on the type of work, as well. If the work is well-defined and straightforward I can be very productive whatever my mental state, and can use work / the feeling of productivity as a mood booster. But where it's more creative or involves people more I get worse when I'm anxious and/or unhappy - e.g. I wouldn't want to write a code review while in a bad place; I would probably not make the best calls on marginal things and would phrase comments in unhelpful ways.

[jack]

Ah, that's really interesting. It resonated with me so strongly I didn't stop to consider whether it was just me.