Sleep
What a nap is for, and the two lengths that work
Napping is either an excellent tool or a way to ruin the evening, and the difference is almost entirely duration.
Anneke Storm
Contributing writer, Care Pebble
Anneke covers stress and recovery, with a particular interest in what people do when nothing is working.
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14 articles
Stress & Calm
Burnout is not the same as being very tired
Burnout has a specific shape: exhaustion, cynicism and a collapse in sense of accomplishment. Rest alone does not resolve it.
Stress & Calm
Rumination is a habit, and habits can be interrupted
Going over the same thought repeatedly feels like problem-solving and is not. The difference is whether anything changes.
Stress & Calm
The recovery week nobody schedules
People plan effort carefully and recovery not at all. Building it in deliberately is the difference between sustainable and not.
Stress & Calm
The stress response is useful, which is why it is hard to switch off
The physiology evolved for short acute threats and is being run continuously by things that cannot be fought or fled.
Stress & Calm
Worry that is useful and worry that is not
Some worry produces preparation and stops. The rest circles, and the distinction is testable.
Stress & Calm
Saying you are struggling, at work, without oversharing
There is a middle between concealing everything and disclosing everything, and it is mostly about what you ask for.
Sleep
Sleep when there is a baby in the house
Most sleep advice is unusable in the first year, and what remains is about distribution rather than quantity.
Sleep
Jet lag, and why flying east is the harder direction
Your body clock does not travel at the speed of the aircraft. Which way you fly decides whether it has to stretch a day or cut one…
Stress & Calm
Money worry has a shape, and it is not the size of the sum
The distress attached to money tracks uncertainty and the sense of having no lever, far more closely than it tracks the actual…
Stress & Calm
The nerves before something you actually chose to do
Anticipation produces the same racing heart whether you dread the thing or want it. What separates the two experiences is what you…
Stress & Calm
Waiting to feel ready is the delay, not the preparation
Putting something off is usually an attempt to avoid how the task feels rather than a failure of time management. That is why…
Stress & Calm
Comparison is automatic, and willpower is the wrong tool for it
You do not choose to measure yourself against other people; the mind does it without asking. What you can choose is who is in the…
Stress & Calm
Waiting for a result you cannot influence
Test results, job decisions, other people making up their minds. The waiting has its own physiology, and the strategies that help…