How was your weekend?
"How was your weekend?" It’s the standard Monday morning question. But lately, for many of us, the honest answer is too heavy for a Slack channel. When you are watching devastating geopolitical events unfold, the transition to "checking your emails" can feel not just difficult, but almost absurd.
To answer the question, my weekend was spent recovering from two ten-hour overnight flights, refreshing news sites, watching videos of devastation sent to me by colleagues in the Middle East and wondering about the state of the world right now.
We often think of focus as a binary switch—you’re either "on" or "off." But in times of global crisis, focus is actually a resource being shared between two competing processors: your Human Heart (processing empathy, fear, and grief) and your Professional Head (processing delivery and deadlines).
If you try to ignore the Human Heart, it doesn't go away; it just runs in the background, overheating your system and leading to that "foggy" burnout feeling. This week’s newsletter will be short with a few quick tips to help you navigate the week ahead.
1. Acknowledge the "Cognitive Split."
Stop judging yourself for being distracted. Continuous Partial Attention suggests that when we are emotionally preoccupied, our "cognitive bank account" is already at half-capacity before we even open our laptops.
2. Sharpen your Signal to Noise filter
Set a "Window of Witness." Give yourself 15 minutes to engage with the news, then intentionally pivot to doing something else. You aren't ignoring the world; you are managing your energy so you can remain a functional human within it. If you have an intense work week ahead, while your heart is heavy, you cannot operate at 100% efficiency. Create a filter for each anxious thought which comes up after this window. Is this signal or noise?
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) is a measure used in science and engineering to compare the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise.
Signal: The meaningful information you are trying to detect or communicate.
Noise: Random, unwanted fluctuations that obscure the signal.
As noise increases relative to the signal, the "Information Entropy" increases, making it harder for any system (mechanical or human) to function accurately. Research shows that the more noise you have to filter, the higher your "extraneous cognitive load." This is why "doom-scrolling" for information you cannot act on feels as exhausting as doing actual work—it requires constant, high-level filtering.
How do you tell Signal from Noise?
Signal has predictive value: It provides data that allows you to change your behaviour, mitigate a risk, or capitalize on an opportunity.
Noise is "Brownian Motion": Like the random motion of particles in a fluid, noise moves you around but doesn't lead to a destination. Geopolitical news that you cannot influence or that does not change your immediate safety or strategy is, empirically, noise for your specific operational system, even if it is humanly significant.
Cut out the noise to save your energy for what actually matters.
3. Additional Note For Leaders
If you lead a team, remember that your "emotional temperature" is a mirror for your team. You don't need to have the answers to geopolitical conflicts, but you do need to show up, reach out to colleagues who have family in countries affected, be a listening ear, offer support and resources. Simply acknowledging, "It’s a heavy week, and it’s okay if we aren’t at our usual pace," creates the psychological safety your team needs to actually settle into their work.
Your career is a journey, but you are a human being first. Taking control of the narrative means admitting that sometimes the narrative is hard.
Until next time, live free!!
Cheers!
Blessing.
