Is remote working damaging our ability to learn?

Neu­ro­science appears to show the lone­li­ness and social iso­la­tion expe­ri­enced by peo­ple of all ages dur­ing lock­down is hav­ing a neg­a­tive effect on our abil­i­ty to learn. 

A num­ber of stud­ies have found such iso­la­tion results in areas of the brain – the pre-frontal cor­tex, hip­pocam­pus and amyg­dala – shrink­ing. This sce­nario leads to a decline in cog­ni­tive func­tion, which includes impaired learn­ing and mem­o­ry. An inabil­i­ty to con­cen­trate is anoth­er com­mon symp­tom. 

But there are also oth­er impor­tant dynam­ics that occur when peo­ple work from home for pro­longed peri­ods, although the impact may vary based on each individual’s lifestyle, health and even per­son­al­i­ty. 

Accord­ing to Natalia Rams­den, direc­tor of cog­ni­tive opti­mi­sa­tion con­sul­tan­cy SOFOS Asso­ciates, while remote work­ing may be con­ve­nient, it robs us of a “dynam­ic work­place where we are stim­u­lat­ed and chal­lenged”, which is impor­tant in cre­at­ing an opti­mum envi­ron­ment for our brains to learn.

“Our synap­tic con­nec­tions grow through rep­e­ti­tion, but it’s new expe­ri­ences that cre­ate new con­nec­tions,” she explains. “For many, the office is a rich source of stim­u­la­tion for their brains; chal­lenges and cog­ni­tive stretch occur through work con­tent, but also through dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions, inter­ac­tions with oth­ers and even the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment itself.”

This deficit is not helped by sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tions, such as high stress lev­els, poor sleep, less exer­cise and unhealthy eat­ing. More­over, because the bound­aries between home and work life have blurred, many peo­ple find it dif­fi­cult to switch off or unwind, which is vital if the brain is to “solid­i­fy new learn­ing and trans­fer things from work­ing to long-term mem­o­ry”, says Rams­den.

Promoting brain health and function

Anoth­er chal­lenge, accord­ing to Dr Guy Champ­niss, head of behav­iour­al sci­ence at engage­ment con­sul­tan­cy The Cre­ative Engage­ment Group (TCEG), is we may sim­ply be either less inclined or less able to learn due to the impact of remote work­ing on what he calls “cog­ni­tive load”, which is the amount of infor­ma­tion work­ing mem­o­ry can hold at any one time. When this load is high, as in a remote work­ing sce­nario, we sim­ply have less “cog­ni­tive band­width” for learn­ing.

“Remote work­ing is tax­ing as it removes all the usu­al social, non-ver­bal and visu­al cues we typ­i­cal­ly use to nav­i­gate sit­u­a­tions and under­stand con­ver­sa­tions,” he says. “This means we have to lean in more to com­pen­sate for their lack, so the cog­ni­tive load is high and that makes us tired.”

More­over, because any option­al activ­i­ty comes with its own cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis of whether it is worth doing or not, we may sim­ply feel learn­ing takes too much effort.

So what can employ­ers do to over­come, or at least mit­i­gate, the worst impacts of this sit­u­a­tion and ensure their employ­ees’ abil­i­ty to learn is opti­mised? 

The most impor­tant thing, says Rams­den, is to “pro­mote brain health and func­tion”, oth­er­wise known as neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, the brain’s abil­i­ty to make new con­nec­tions, which enables it to change and adapt more eas­i­ly to dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, because doing so enhances cog­ni­tive per­for­mance.

“Every­thing we do and don’t do influ­ences neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty,” she says. “What we eat, how active we are, how well we sleep, under­tak­ing brain-spe­cif­ic exer­cis­es: all of it makes a dif­fer­ence”.

To improve employ­ee well­be­ing and per­for­mance, Rams­den rec­om­mends encour­ag­ing five key brain-boost­ing activ­i­ties. The first involves stay­ing hydrat­ed as drink­ing eight to ten cups of water a day can boost brain per­for­mance by almost 30 per cent.

The sec­ond is ensur­ing a good night’s sleep as it detox­i­fies the sys­tem and solid­i­fies learn­ing. Next is break­ing rou­tine by try­ing some­thing new or men­tal­ly chal­leng­ing to build new neur­al con­nec­tions, for exam­ple brush­ing your teeth with your left hand if you are right hand­ed or vice ver­sa.

The fourth entails eat­ing foods known to boost cog­ni­tive func­tion, such as oily fish and berries, while the final one involves man­ag­ing stress. “Rather than being wired all the time, you want the brain to fluc­tu­ate up and down as it needs to or it’ll just run out of steam,” Rams­den explains. 

Sim­ple options for those who find activ­i­ties like mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion test­ing, says Cari Gui­t­tard, pro­fes­sor of glob­al man­age­ment at Hult Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness School in San Fran­cis­co, is per­form­ing a restora­tive yoga pos­ture (vipari­ta karani) that involves lying on the floor with your legs up against the wall for ten min­utes. 

Anoth­er approach is to write in a stream of con­scious­ness around a giv­en prompt for ten min­utes each day to increase blood flow to the brain and focus atten­tion. Also use­ful to pro­vide instant clar­i­ty and focus are the box breath­ing tech­niques used by US Navy Seals. 

Relearning how to learn

Reas­sur­ing­ly, how­ev­er, a four-week tri­al under­tak­en by TCEG with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal firm AstraZeneca in 2020 to stim­u­late a rich­er learn­ing cul­ture appears to pro­vide evi­dence that “we’re far more mal­leable and adapt­able” in learn­ing terms than we might think, says Champ­niss.

Because a learn­ing cul­ture is based on people’s abil­i­ty to be “curi­ous, col­lab­o­ra­tive and brave”, dur­ing the exper­i­ment, an unspec­i­fied num­ber of employ­ees received “nuggets” of con­tent each day to draw atten­tion to such behav­iours, “boosts” to show their ben­e­fits and “nudges” to encour­age them to do what­ev­er was being sign­post­ed. 

Met­rics, which includ­ed behav­iour­al mea­sures such as inter­act­ing with web­sites or apps and self-report­ing via sur­veys and learn­ing logs, revealed the time par­tic­i­pants spent on learn­ing increased by 78 per cent. They were also more able to spot learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties dur­ing their day, more will­ing to apply what they had learnt to their work and felt more con­fi­dent about their con­tri­bu­tion and per­son­al impact.

“It’s a two-way street; even if we’ve lost our learn­ing mojo dur­ing lock­down, the study shows we’re remark­ably mal­leable in being able to relearn how to learn. Core behav­iours aren’t set in stone; we can all adapt, often to our own sur­prise,” Champ­niss con­cludes.