HUMAN PERFORMANCE IN A DISTRACTED WORLD
- Erin Barnes
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
I’ve found myself doing what feels like accidental ethnography of gym floors: quietly watching how people train. Or rather, how they don’t.
I’ve watched the same pattern on repeat: people sitting and resting six, ten, twelve minutes between sets on pin-loaded machines. At the extreme, that’s half an hour parked on one piece of equipment for three sets, phone in hand the entire time. Scrolling. The weight is often a token load, one or two pins on a leg press, barely enough to wake up the primary movers.
What interests me is not just the performance effort, but the absence of awareness. Something I fear isn’t just playing out on the gym floor.
One day, ‘researching the trend’ I stood 30 centimetres away from a person; their field of perception didn’t widen at all. The body is in a gym. The mind is somewhere inside an infinite-scroll casino, getting micro-doses of dopamine novelty instead of macro-signals of exertion.
THE DILUTION OF AWARENESS AND ADAPTATION
And the nervous system, which evolved for clean load:rest cycles, stress, signal, integration, repeat, is now getting noise instead of information. It's like trying to upgrade software while someone keeps yanking the power cable every 15–20 seconds.
I find myself anchored (or concerned) to Ken Ware's work in neurophysics. On the Gold Coast, he's been showing for decades, that adaptation depends on coherence: slow, deliberate movement, low interference, full sensory presence in the task at hand.
The rep isn't just exercise. It’s information being written into a living, dynamic network. Flood that network with extra stimulus, music blasting, phone scrolling, notifications, and the message degrades.
Underneath it is a very simple neurobiological mismatch. Ware's neurophysics lens makes it clear that the body needs stillness, intention, and a relatively calm sensory field to process input and create adaptive change. That is almost impossible when we load our nervous systems with constant sensory assault and dopamine hits on loop.
Gym sessions, which once served as powerful anchors for intrinsic reward and self-generated endorphins, are now diluted by the need to be entertained while doing them.
AND THIS IS WHERE I LAND:
If a training session isn’t enough to light up a positive feedback loop and adaptation (growth), it’s no surprise our workplaces are struggling to maintain engagement, innovation and productivity with the phone in our hand or on our desk.
Corporate offices are full of very expensive nervous systems trying to adapt under the same conditions as that leg press.
We've effectively built open-plan gyms for cognition: rows of humans on machines, long rests full of meaningless micro-stimuli, workloads too light or fragmented to produce flow state or meaningful adaptation.
Here, the pin-loaded machine is email, Slack, Teams, the calendar, and the weights are meetings. If you measured a workday like a training session, you'd see it: three hours of actual load, scattered across eight to ten hours of being in the vicinity of effort. A set of deep work here. Six minutes of inbox wandering there. Flip to Slack. Back to a doc. Phone check. Tabs multiplying. No clean reps.
The nervous system is trying to adapt, but the data is corrupted. It's all rogue visual dominance and auditory clutter. No wonder the system starts to misfire: burnout, increase in neurodivergence awareness, anxiety, decision fatigue, leadership numbness, disconnection, overconsumption (food, spending, gambling, drugs, alcohol, sex, tech use………..)
Underneath the HR labels and performance conversations, you've just got a human body that hasn't been allowed to complete a clean cycle of stress, integration, recovery, growth.
TURNING WORKPLACES INTO PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENTS
This is the gap A Human Edge walks into. We have this deep understanding of the human system, AND the complex commercial operating environment.
We eliminate the wasted noise. We bring back adaptation, productivity, and intrinsic engagement. Not with another policy or performance review. Not with a mindfulness session or poster in the kitchen. With the assumption that we are dealing with complex biopsychosocial systems that need better infrastructure, rhythms, rituals, language and integrated intelligence, rather than pep talks.
We treat deep work blocks like heavy compound lifts: you clear the space, you control the inputs, you commit to the set. No mid-rep scrolls. No mid-squat emails. Just one channel of demand, fully inhabited.
Then you rest, truly rest. Not by switching to a different dopamine drip, but by giving the system sensory, active recovery.
Elite performers know that stress relief and recovery is not sitting on the couch. It’s doing the less pleasurable, dopamine-inducing, yet restorative actions. Yet, almost 70% of Australians 'watch TV to reduce stress', despite it negatively impacting sleep, recovery, growth and connection.
At A Human Edge, we treat meetings like deliberate intervals: short, specific, high-signal, then off. Cameras on as presence, connection and focus, not surveillance. Cameras off when what you really needed was an async update, not a gallery of distracted faces learning bad habits of disrespect. We review cadence and impact iteratively, with a collective experiential mindset.
TRADITIONAL HUMAN RESOURCES MODELS CAN'T SOLVE A NERVOUS-SYSTEM PROBLEM
Traditional HR was built to document, protect, standardise. It was never built as a coaching nervous system for the enterprise.
What we build instead, inside and alongside organisations, is something closer to a elite performance environment:
Operating rhythms that respect how brains and bodies actually change
Structures that create barriers against distraction and optimise the pathway to flow state
Feedback loops that reward intelligent effort, rather than mere availability.
When we set up the infrastructure and rhythms keeping the science of human performance in focus, the metaphor shifts. The person in the gym finishes a heavy set, breathes, checks in with their body, maybe nods to the human waiting beside them. The knowledge worker closes a loop of deep work, steps away from the screen, feels the floor underfoot before stepping into the next demand.
The nervous system gets what it's always needed: a clear signal, a clean pause, a chance to lay down new wiring. And we actually get more done, and with greater impact.
Presence becomes normal again.
A CALL TO ARMS
Maybe I can’t change society's new norms, however I can issue a call to arms:
Lead (at home, work and in the community) like the next generation is watching, because they are.
They are learning from your nervous system what is normal: scattered or steady, half-here or fully in the room.
Show them that coherence is possible in a noisy world.
Show them that focus is not old-fashioned, it's a performance, health and fulfilment advantage.
Show them that every time they touch their phone, they are trading away presence, contribution, connection, satisfaction, and possibly growth, (all the things we know strengthen mental, social, and physical health) for manipulation toward overconsumption.
Show them that the solution to rebalance the dopamine pleasure-pain cycle is not in a pill, but quite literally, in our hands.
Put the phone in the drawer – at home and at work. You can still hear it ring. You do not need to see it staring back at you like a slot machine in your peripheral vision. We know that even the sight of it, is a distraction in itself, because evidence shows that we’re already feeling the urge to get the dopamine hit from it in that moment.
Take the social apps off your home screen, or off your phone altogether, and notice what appears in the space that was previously filled with thumb reflex.
In the gym, sit with the urge to reach for the screen between sets and sit in awareness and connection to your body.
Feel what a real two-minute rest feels like when your brain is not being hijacked. We're busy, but I challenge most to track if they are effective.
At work, give yourself one honest block of time where nothing is allowed to interrupt you, and then protect it like you would protect a child crossing a busy road.
ONE REP. ONE SET. ONE DECISION.
This is where it actually starts:
One Rep: one honest, fully present effort. The smallest unit of adaptation your nervous system understands.
One Set: one defined slice of time and repetition with a clear purpose. Twenty-five, fifty, ninety minutes where you clear the decks so your system can process load instead of sifting noise.
One Decision: to clear the sight and sound of distraction out of your immediate field. Phone out of view, notifications off, tabs closed, so your brain is not being yanked by every potential hit of dopamine, and can remember what real satisfaction feels like.
