Why do healthy habits disappear when work gets busy?
Because the demand in front of us feels urgent, while the cost of skipping sleep, movement, breaks and recovery usually shows up later. Under pressure, people naturally prioritise what has to be done now - and the things that support longer-term energy and performance are often the first to be pushed aside.
The last quarter of the year is often one of the busiest and most stressful.
When pressure builds, people often take the approach: "I'll just get on top of this and then I'll look after myself."
Organisations can fall into the same pattern. "Just this once" becomes one more push, one more late night, one more weekend to get something over the line.
Sometimes that is necessary.
The problem is when "just this once" starts becoming the normal way of working.
Why we drop healthy habits when work gets busy
Under pressure, the first things people tend to sacrifice are often the very things helping them cope with the pressure.
Sleep. Lunch breaks. Movement. Downtime. Time with people they care about. Fun.
They can feel optional because none of them usually has an immediate deadline attached to it.
The report has to be finished today. The email has to be answered. The meeting is already in the diary.
The walk can happen tomorrow.
Lunch can be shortened.
An earlier night can wait.
Each decision can look perfectly reasonable on its own.
The difficulty comes when the decisions begin to accumulate.
What looks like creating more time for work in the short term can gradually reduce the capacity people have to do the work well.
The things that feel optional often aren't
Sleep, movement, proper breaks, recovery and time away from work aren't simply nice additions to life.
They are part of what allows people to think clearly, make good decisions, regulate stress, remain patient with other people and perform well over time.
This is where we can get the relationship between work and wellbeing backwards.
We treat recovery as something we can return to once the work is finished.
But recovery is one of the things that allows us to keep doing the work.
At some point, the extra effort starts costing more than it gives
There are times when people need to work harder. There are deadlines, crises, busy periods and genuine moments when an extra push is needed.
But there is a limit.
Research on working hours shows diminishing returns as hours become excessive. People may still be working, but the quality and value of those hours does not continue increasing at the same rate.
John Pencavel's research at Stanford has shown how productivity can decline as working hours rise, particularly once working weeks become very long.
The wider organisational cost is significant too. Gallup has estimated the global cost associated with employee burnout at around $322 billion a year through lost productivity and turnover.
The issue isn't hard work. It's hard work without enough recovery.
I learned this long before I worked in wellbeing
During my years in humanitarian aid work, the work was fascinating, meaningful and often all-consuming.
There was always another problem to solve, another deadline, another reason to keep going.
I was good at pushing through and getting things done.
Because I was still functioning, I didn't always recognise what it was costing me.
I would work harder to solve what was in front of me, while sleep, recovery and the rest of my life quietly got pushed further down the list.
I was solving problems at work while creating problems in my own life.
I now see variations of that same pattern in leaders and teams all the time.
People are still functioning.
They are still getting the work done.
From the outside, they can look completely capable.
That doesn't necessarily mean the way they are working is sustainable.
If we need people at 100%, they can't be at 100% all the time
This is one of the most important things I have learned.
If we want people to be able to give 100% in the crucial moments, we cannot expect them to operate at 100% all the time.
There has to be movement between demand and recovery.
Recovery doesn't mean avoiding challenge.
It means giving the system enough opportunity to reset so that people can respond well to the next challenge.
Recovery doesn't always have to be something big
One of the mistakes we make with wellbeing is assuming the solution has to involve major change.
It doesn't.
I've watched people begin to change how they feel and function through something as small as two one-minute breathing practices a day - one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon.
Two minutes of deliberate recovery
One minute mid-morning.
One minute mid-afternoon.
Stop. Breathe. Let the system settle before moving into the next demand.
Not a retreat.
Not a complete routine overhaul.
Sixty seconds, twice a day.
Small things can matter precisely because they are much easier to keep doing when work gets busy.
The minimum version matters
We often design our wellbeing around the ideal week.
An hour at the gym. A long walk. A proper lunch. An evening completely free of work.
Then the week becomes busy and the whole plan disappears.
Sometimes it is more useful to have two versions:
- the ideal version when life allows it;
- the minimum version that survives the busy week.
If an hour's exercise isn't happening, can you still move for ten minutes?
If a long lunch isn't realistic, can you spend fifteen minutes away from the screen?
If the usual routine has disappeared, what is the smallest version you can keep alive?
The point isn't to lower standards.
It is to stop a demanding period from becoming the point where everything that supports you disappears.
This is an organisational issue too
It is easy to tell people to look after themselves.
It is harder - and more useful - to look at whether the way work is organised actually allows them to do it.
If people routinely work through lunch, stay late, cancel time off, remain permanently available or feel guilty about recovery, that is not simply an individual habit.
It tells us something about the environment people are working in.
Leaders don't need to remove every period of pressure
That isn't realistic.
But they can notice when exceptional pressure has quietly become normal pressure.
And they can pay attention to what people are having to give up in order to keep meeting the demands being placed on them.
When one person is already close to burnout
Sometimes the issue is no longer simply about preventing unhealthy patterns.
One person may still be functioning and delivering, but they are exhausted, overwhelmed or getting close to burnout.
This is why I developed Burnout to Balance - a structured 1:1 coaching programme that organisations can use to support an employee before sustained pressure turns into burnout, prolonged absence or losing a good person.
The programme gives the individual confidential, practical support to understand their own stress patterns, restore energy and make sustainable changes in how they work and live.
The takeaway
Wellbeing isn't what people earn after the hard work is done. It is part of what makes the hard work sustainable.
The things that disappear first when work gets busy can tell us a great deal.
Not just about an individual's habits, but about how much capacity the way we are working is consuming.
Sometimes the answer isn't another wellbeing initiative.
It is making sure people still have enough left for the rest of their lives.
Sources & further reading
John Pencavel, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research - Productivity and Working Hours