What NASA’s Fatigue Research Can Teach Us About Listening to Ourselves

In this episode, I explore NASA’s fascinating research on fatigue and how it highlights surprising gender differences in how tiredness is perceived and managed. Together, we’ll unpack what it means to acknowledge our tiredness without judgement and gently rebel against the pressure to hide it.

Here’s what I’ll cover:

• What NASA discovered about fatigue in astronauts
• Why women’s tiredness is often underestimated (and men’s overestimated)
• My own reflections on the exhaustion that comes with socialising
• The unspoken societal pressures to appear “fine” when we’re anything but
• How noticing and naming your tiredness can be a transformative act of self-care
• The power of self-awareness to support your well-being
• A gentle nudge to embrace your tiredness instead of pushing through it

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Transcript

The Gentle Rebellion

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Gentle Rebellion where overwhelm is optional. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to this week's episode, which is unusually inspired by research from NASA. Research from NASA. So NASA did some research, or they continually do research, into how to reduce accidents in space and aviation due to fatigue.

Speaker 1 0:32

Before we get into that, I'm going to tell you the magical story of how I came across this article, because actually I don't read the Times. Actually I don't read the Times. And yet through my letterbox came an actual, real newspaper. Don't really see those so much these days. Do you Do all your reading of the news online? Yep, the Times newspaper magically came through my door. I ignored it until today when I went to light the fire and I found it in the kindling place and I thought, oh, that might be quite interesting to read a newspaper, a real, live newspaper, spread out on the table with a cup of coffee. So I had a quick glance through. This article caught my eye straight away. I thought, wow, we can do something with this in the gender rebellion. And here we are.

Speaker 1 1:25

But why was there a newspaper coming through my door? Well, firstly, I live in one of those lovely, lovely, old fashioned English villages where somebody delivers newspapers, which is really really nice. It's a volunteer from the shop and I don't know what happened last week, but apparently, according to my partner who was working from home last week, he said oh, they just keep, somebody keeps delivering the times, and they were delivering it to our neighbor, who has now put a printed notice on her door with a map to where this newspaper should actually go, and, despite making that effort, instead of delivering it to the person next to her, they, they decided to deliver it to us, and not just once, but more than once. However, it stopped after we put a notice on our door. That's not the point, is it? I had this newspaper for free, which is really nice, because that's how I got this article, and I really, really hope this discussion is going to help you, and I really really hope this discussion is going to help you.

Speaker 1 2:28

As usual, the title of the article didn't match the research findings particularly well. However, I'm a research geek. I try to resist reading anything about research because it can just zap masses of my time. I'll just go into it. So, oh, I don't think that was a good setup. I don't think that was a good design. I just geek out on that, and then I find lots of problems to solve which are none of my business, so I usually resist it.

Speaker 1 2:53

But this caught my eye because obviously it was a summary and it was relevant to us and what we're up to in the gentle rebellion. So this is what they did. They looked at, they're monitoring astronauts energy, energy levels, obviously because they found that fatigue is a cause or contributes to accidents in about 50% of the time. So obviously it's really really important to be able to monitor the energy levels of astronauts, but isn't it important for us to monitor ours? If we want to be like astronauts on our own adventure, we need to be good at looking after ourselves right.

Speaker 1 3:31

So what they did is they looked at the body language of space crews and then strangers rated how tired they thought the crew were and then, separately, they asked the crew how fatigued they actually felt. And this is what they found the observers underestimated how tired the women were and overestimated how tired the men were. And apparently the researchers weren't surprised at the results because of another fascinating, though slightly mean, experiment, where men and women they were volunteers, obviously had tourniquets put around their upper arm and then they had to hand grip exercises to induce discomfort and pain. And what they found in that one is once again observers underestimated women's discomfort and overestimated men's. The cues they used in the case of the first piece of research to decide how tired the women were to decide how tired the women were were things like expressiveness and attentiveness during a conversation, for example, things like eye contact, and that made me really think about myself and when I force myself if I force myself to be sociable, when I don't feel like being sociable, one of the first things to go I will notice eye contact. So if I want to override that, I'm deliberately making sure I'm maintaining eye contact so that I appear to be listening, even if I'm partly switching off.

Speaker 1 5:06

Now I don't put myself in that situation much anymore, but I used to all the time. In fact, I used to do this every single day. So this reminds me of the time when I was teaching mathematics in a large school and there's no breaks between lessons at all. It's just this endless. I mean, I know there's a break eventually, but you have consecutive lessons and 32 kids have just left. You're absolutely exhausted. Imagine you've just done a really, really good presentation that you took a week to prepare for. It's done and then the next one happens immediately.

Speaker 1 5:45

And research shows that standing at the door and greeting children and looking them in the eye is really really good for building relationships and then helping you teach them. But it's also exhausting, particularly for me as an introvert. So I would have to force myself and it was school policy to stand at the door. Not everybody did it, but I was a good teacher so I was doing it and also I do think it's a good thing. It's just that it nearly killed me, because in a day that could be 150, 200. I mean, it's just crazy the amount of eye contact going on. For an introvert man that was a tough one. So this reminded me of that, that the demonstration of external behaviors that that were out of alignment with with my needs.

Speaker 1 6:27

Now, obviously, as adults in society, there's a compromise. You know we don't walk around doing crazily unsociable things. However, in terms of the importance of nourishing myself and looking after myself properly, that was a problem for me and that's one of the reasons I'm really grateful not to be in that profession anymore, because that's one of the many things that just didn't work for me and not because I didn't love aspects of it, and not because I don't love talking to people and I really eye contact matters very much to me, but that's why, right, eye contact matters, doing a good job matters, but doing it in that profession didn't work for me. And the article ends by talking about the fact that there may be a question over the idea that I mean. I don't want to get into some sexist argument because it's really not the point of this. I'm not interested.

Speaker 1 7:21

I'm tired of the denigration of men at the moment. After denigrating women, we're now going to denigrate men. It's like yeah, how does? How's that helping everyone? Zero sum game. Anyway, there is research on questions about whether women are better at managing pain, whether women are more stoical than men. Now, I think it's probably. Well, of course, it's far more complicated than this, but you could argue that in order to give birth, women would have to be pretty good with pain. But apparently women are less likely to be given pain medication and more likely to be given are less likely to be given pain medication and more likely to be given talking therapies, and apparently women won't ask for pain medication as quickly as men and also, when they have it available, they won't take it as quickly. So that's just interesting, isn't it? I don't know what that's about. Obviously, I can't unpick all of this research and I don't intend to, but I'm really interested, not in the sex differences, because the sex differences there are definite differences between the sexes overall, on average. There's loads of research about that good, robust research, which I think is really helpful to take into account when getting to know ourselves and how to live in a way that works for us.

Speaker 1 8:40

However, for the purpose of this podcast, what I want to focus on is what this means for you. What can you take from this? So it was clear that the women were hiding symptoms of fatigue and the men were hiding weren't or weren't as much. That's what's going on, isn't it? Because if the women were tired than they appeared and the men were less tired than they appeared, there's a mismatch. So there's some behaviors there, for whatever reason, and you can shout at society, all of you, all that you want. You can shout at evolution, all you want. How's that working out for you? Or we can look at the information and say to ourselves honestly how do I behave? What am I up to? Because that's where your power is.

Speaker 1 9:29

So for me, the gently rebellious response to this is the highlight here that noticing and honouring tiredness matters. Noticing it in particular, because I think that the honouring our tiredness by changing our plans is much harder. It's a bigger step, and we always want to look at the easy wins, the simplest way to gain something, and for me, that would be noticing. Noticing, acknowledging to myself, not moaning to other people, not having to change lots of things, but just neutrally noticing. I'm tired, that's it. Not I'm tired, I need to cancel. Not, I'm tired, I'm going to let people down. Not, I'm tired, what's wrong with me? I should ought, must do something about this tiredness, but rather just completely neutrally. I'm tired, that's it. Because when we acknowledge that and when we drop the judgment about it, we feel better instantly. I'm just tired. It's just how things are. It's just useful information. I don't have to do anything with it yet, or, when you're ready, you can change your priorities in order to look after yourself better. So there's just lots of possibility.

Speaker 1 10:50

Just from asking the question am I hiding my tiredness and pushing on through? And if I am, why am I doing that? What am I up to? Because there's got to be a gain. Right, you're not stupid, you're really savvy, you're really smart, you're really successful, even when you don't feel like it. So there's got to be a gain from that pushing on through. Maybe it's easier than something else, or maybe it's worth it temporarily, but maybe it's not worth it permanently. So for me it wasn't worth it permanently and I changed careers. It doesn't mean you've got to change careers, and I think this is the problem, isn't it? When our minds go from I'm really tired, I need to change careers, it's too much.

Speaker 1 11:30

So then you just don't acknowledge what's wrong. That never works for me. It's easy to get into that trap Everything's wrong because I'm tired. And the thing is, when we're tired, everything feels wrong anyway. Right, because tiredness affects our ability to think straight. So that's why the gently rebellious response is just to acknowledge it, is to neutrally notice. I'm tired. It's just how things are. It's just useful information. I don't need to beat myself up or change everything about my life, I just need to start by acknowledging it. How would that feel for you? How would it feel to acknowledge tiredness without shame, without guilt, or without disappointment for yourself, or without disappointment for yourself? How would it feel to gently rebel against the pressure to hide your exhaustion, or not? How would it feel to just leave things as they are and just to acknowledge it or not acknowledge it? Notice the difference. Notice the power of saying to yourself I'm tired, and then notice the power of ignoring it and pushing it down. Notice the difference for yourself. Thanks for being here. Help you gently rebel. Please visit my website.