The Myth of Knowing When You're Tired: The Hidden Dangers of Overwork

November 15, 2024

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min read

Dr. Ramses Alcaide

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As we continue to push the boundaries of what we can achieve, modern society has turned "hustle culture" into a badge of honor. We’re taught that more is always better, that working longer and pushing harder is the key to success. But neuroscience paints a different picture. The reality is, many of us don’t even realize when we’re tired, mentally overloaded, or on the brink of burnout until it’s too late. Our brains, despite their incredible power, don’t communicate with us as well as we might believe.. Normally we feel tired when our body is tired. But, our brains have been tired, sometimes for hours, before the cue of physical tiredness sets in.

The Neuroscience Behind Fatigue

Fatigue isn’t just feeling sleepy; it’s a complex neurological state that impacts everything from cognition to mood. When the brain is overworked, its ability to function optimally is impaired. This includes slowed reaction times, reduced problem-solving capacity, increased irritability, and even impaired decision-making. Studies have shown that after a certain point, more work hours don’t translate into more productivity, in fact, they lead to costly mistakes, poor judgment, and far too often, burnout.

What’s particularly troubling is how poorly we gauge our own fatigue. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making and self-regulation, is one of the first areas of the brain to falter under stress and exhaustion. As a result, our ability to recognize just how tired we are ironically diminishes as we become more fatigued. This creates a dangerous cycle of overwork and cognitive decline, often without us even realizing it. Moreover the brain itself does not have pain receptors, which is why it cannot feel pain or fatigue directly. This is why neurosurgeons can perform brain surgery on conscious patients without the patient feeling pain from the brain tissue being manipulated.

What this means is that normally when you feel tired it is because your body is tired, however your brain has been tired sometimes for hours and the quality of your work likely has been diminished that entire time. Take for example the image below. I was doing deep work for about an hour. At first I was locked in showing a medium to high focus (blue) and then my brain started getting tired which showed a low focus (yellow). However, I didn’t even know I was tired until 30 minutes past, resulting in wasted energy, and frankly, junk work.

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In the workplace, cognitive fatigue often results in errors that cost billions in lost productivity. Fatigued workers are more prone to accidents, more likely to engage in counterproductive work behaviors, and less creative in their problem-solving. For leaders and creators, the implications are dire: we are often operating at a fraction of our true cognitive potential when we push beyond the limits of our mental capacity.

Brain Data: The Next Frontier

While we can measure our heart rate, track our steps, and even monitor our glucose levels, the brain has remained largely opaque to us. Brain data is poised to become the next frontier in biofeedback and for good reason. Understanding how our brain responds to stress, fatigue, and various stimuli can unlock unprecedented opportunities to optimize our mental performance. It can help us recognize the early warning signs of burnout and allow for interventions before productivity plummets or well-being suffers.

One of the most powerful features of the MW75 Neuro is its ability to prevent cognitive fatigue by using real-time brain data to signal when it’s time for a mental break. Traditionally, we rely on subjective cues—feeling tired or distracted—to decide when to take a break. But by the time we recognize these signs, our performance may already be compromised sometimes for hours.

The MW75 Neuro changes this by providing proactive insights into your brain's state. Using advanced brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, it monitors cognitive activity and detects early signs of fatigue or decreased focus. When the system identifies that your brain is approaching a threshold where productivity and cognitive efficiency begin to decline, it prompts you to take a break.

By encouraging breaks at optimal moments based on real-time brain data, the MW75 Neuro helps users maintain consistent levels of focus and mental performance throughout the day. This targeted approach to managing cognitive load not only prevents burnout but also supports long-term mental health and productivity. With MW75 Neuro, users gain the ability to work smarter, protect their brain’s health, and optimize their day-to-day performance through meaningful, science-backed breaks. Below you can see how my focus changed as I started leveraging MW75 Neuro’s break features. I was working for a similar amount of time but the break enabled me to boost my focus upon returning to work. Our focus point system helps users see the positive impacts on productivity of taking breaks at the right time, and how those breaks far outweigh pushing through to avoid the fear of “lost time.” This efficiency effect compounds the longer your focused sessions are.

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Why does this matter?

The brain is the engine of creativity and innovation. To create, to solve problems, and to drive meaningful change, we need a brain that’s well-rested and operating at its best. Fatigue is a creativity killer. When we are mentally exhausted, we default to familiar solutions and struggle to think outside the box. Our brains need periods of rest and rejuvenation to form new connections and spark creative insights.

Research shows that "eureka moments" are more likely to occur during periods of rest or mental downtime. Giving the brain time to process and reflect is essential for breakthroughs. This is why sleep, breaks, and managing mental load are not luxuries but necessities for anyone in creative, innovative, or leadership roles.

The Path Forward

We need to break free from the myth that more work equates to better outcomes. The neuroscience of fatigue tells us that without proper brain care, we’re not just limiting our potential, we’re actively harming it. As individuals, as teams, and as businesses, we must prioritize cognitive health, creating cultures and tools that empower us to work smarter, not harder.

The era of brain data and neurofeedback is upon us, and it holds the promise of transforming how we understand and care for our most valuable resource, our mind. In a world that demands constant innovation and adaptation, those who harness this knowledge will be the ones who thrive. The question isn’t if we can afford to care for our brains, but if we can afford not to.

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‍²Distraction Stroop Tasks experiment: The Stroop Effect (also known as cognitive interference) is a psychological phenomenon describing the difficulty people have naming a color when it's used to spell the name of a different color. During each trial of this experiment, we flashed the words “Red” or “Yellow” on a screen. Participants were asked to respond to the color of the words and ignore their meaning by pressing four keys on the keyboard –– “D”, “F”, “J”, and “K,” -- which were mapped to “Red,” “Green,” “Blue,” and “Yellow” colors, respectively. Trials in the Stroop task were categorized into congruent, when the text content matched the text color (e.g. Red), and incongruent, when the text content did not match the text color (e.g., Red). The incongruent case was counter-intuitive and more difficult. We expected to see lower accuracy, higher response times, and a drop in Alpha band power in incongruent trials. To mimic the chaotic distraction environment of in-person office life, we added an additional layer of complexity by floating the words on different visual backgrounds (a calm river, a roller coaster, a calm beach, and a busy marketplace). Both the behavioral and neural data we collected showed consistently different results in incongruent tasks, such as longer reaction times and lower Alpha waves, particularly when the words appeared on top of the marketplace background, the most distracting scene.

‍Interruption by Notification: It’s widely known that push notifications decrease focus level. In our three Interruption by Notification experiments, participants performed the Stroop Tasks, above, with and without push notifications, which consisted of a sound played at random time followed by a prompt to complete an activity. Our behavioral analysis and focus metrics showed that, on average, participants presented slower reaction times and were less accurate during blocks of time with distractions compared to those without them.

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