Where are your employees right now?
Ideally, in deep work, crafting innovative solutions, right?
But, in reality, they’re most likely slowly dragging their feet toward their third meeting of the day, overwhelmed by information, caffeine, noises, and messages.
In short — they’re overstimulated.
And, when your employees are overstimulated, they inevitably lose their focus on their priority work, and productivity suffers.
So, turn your attention to nipping the overstimulation buds in their roots — and increase your employees’ well-being with our spot-on advice from seasoned experts. But first, let’s find out what overstimulation at work is, and how to recognize it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Screen time research shows that over 70% of office workers spend too much time in front of a screen while working.
- Overstimulation symptoms include headaches, muscle tension, irritation, and even panic attacks.
- Reducing meetings and messages can decrease overstimulation at work.
What is overstimulation, anyway?
Overstimulation occurs when we’re exposed to various stimuli, such as stress, loud noises, or bright lights. This, in turn, causes sensory overload — i.e. the phenomenon when our sense(s) become overwhelmed by something in our environment, to such an extent that our brains can’t process everything they’re bombarded with.
Now, something seemingly minor, such as fidgeting or mild restlessness, can be overlooked — but it’s actually a symptom of overstimulation.
As this overstimulation grows, the symptoms get stronger. So, fidgeting can turn into irritability which you notice only when your employee snaps at someone.
Once you settle that situation, and the employee is back at their desk, you believe all is well.
But what you don’t see is that constant office chatter, combined with bright yellow walls, stuffy air, and a task with a tight deadline now make your employee breathe heavily, while their headache intensifies quietly.
They’re sweating and feel utterly uncomfortable and just want to have some peace and quiet.
Employees can even experience a full-blown panic attack due to sensory overload.
And, of course, all this leaves consequences on the quality of work.
CEO Louis Carter highlights an “increase in mistakes, short attention spans, even for small tasks.”
Carter confirms that these occurrences aren’t due to burnout, but rather due to “overstimulation from too many inputs, meetings, messages, and constant pivots.”
Breathing exercises and talking to a health professional can help a great deal in calming our nervous system — and in helping us handle overstimulation at work. However, we need to actively work on eliminating the causes of overstimulation in the first place.
Sensory overload affects your ability to work
How to prevent your team from being overstimulated at work?
There are plenty of things you can do on your way to rooting out overstimulation in your team. As you gain experience, it will become easier.
Our experts with abundant experience in leading teams have shared useful advice and specific examples on how to overcome overstimulation on a team level.
Start time tracking tasks
For employees, overstimulation can occur when they have a pile of tasks waiting for them, but no idea how to approach them.
We’ve all been there.
Each task has a different level of priority and requires a certain amount of time. What should be done first, and how long will it take?
Well, first, be clear on what the priority tasks are — they can’t all be equally important or urgent.
Next, allocate the right number of hours to completing the tasks — but make sure you don’t rush your employees by allocating too little time when defining their deadlines.
Having employees track time can help all of you better understand how much it takes to finish any task.
The goal is also to encourage employees to focus on the task at hand and not on trying to do too many things at once.
After all, it has been confirmed time and time again by studies on multitasking that our brains don’t have the ability required to perform 2 or more things at once.
In fact, a study covering the costs of multitasking had only 2.5% participants who showed no signs of decrease in performance while multitasking. Apart from these gifted few, the rest who attempt to multitask risk losing up to 40% in productivity.
So, enabling your employees to focus on a single task will not only make them more productive, they’ll also get rid of the overwhelming feeling that they’re not doing enough.
Further reading:
Time tracking should by no means be considered as micromanagement — so read on to find out how to introduce it to your employees:
Declutter your office space
What does your office look like?
If you’re surrounded by piles of paper, drawers filled with documents, office supplies, and other miscellaneous items, make the decision that this stops today!
Set aside 15 minutes or half an hour each day for your team members to either shred, toss, or move the unnecessary piles elsewhere.
Furthermore, digital decluttering is even more needed today, as countless emails, screenshots, or data can also overstimulate. Allocate 1 hour a week to your team members so they can reduce digital clutter.
And then, once you clear up your workspace, you could also introduce green spaces to rest the eyes and brain. Being surrounded by greenery reduces sensory overload, which is exactly what you want to achieve.
There are plenty of low-maintenance plant species that you can get, such as snake plant, pothos, spider plants, peace lily, or any of the lovely succulents that can decorate all office desks.
The result?
A calming office space that supports work, and doesn’t cause headaches or frustration.
Further reading:
Thriving in a cluttered office is much harder than in an organized space. Read all about it right here:
Make your office more neutral in terms of colors, noise, and fragrances
If you feel as if your employees simply can’t focus on their tasks, try to scan the office first.
Take a deep breath — is the air fresh or is it filled with strong scents?
Listen closely — the songs coming from the radio may very well be the cause of irritability for some.
Look around — if the colors are hurting your eyes, they’re doing the same to your employees.
Fragrances, noises, and aesthetics of your office can play a vital role in overstimulation.
For example, brightly colored walls — yellow, orange, red — can be especially good at overstimulating your team’s senses.
You want to go for neutral colors, such as light blue, or different shades of white, gray, and green. For example, the right shade of blue improves concentration, and shades of green have a calming effect on the nervous system, and improve well-being.
Conquer overstimulation by adjusting the environment
Next is noise reduction.
It’s easy to see how loud noises would be the prime cause of overstimulation for your employees.
Constant chatting, music, the sound of the coffee machine, the elevator, opening and closing the doors, or working next to a construction site, can all cause overstimulation.
And while noise reduction is not always possible, you can do the following:
- Provide high-quality noise-cancelling headphones,
- Hold meetings behind closed doors so you don’t interrupt other colleagues, and
- Organize quiet office spaces, where anyone can work without distractions.
Further reading:
If minimizing interruptions at work is art — learn how to be an artist by following useful tips from this blog post:
Finally, scents.
Did you know that perfumes and cleaning supplies can trigger sensory overload?
So, get rid of those — and while you’re at it, take away the scented candles and those strong air purifiers. Also, refrain from having lunch in the office, unless, of course, there’s a designated, enclosed area with a dining table.
You can also open windows more frequently to let in the fresh air — but, if this is not an option, plants and A/C will do the trick.
Enable regular and frequent breaks
According to the Lunch report, 78% of employees claim that spending their lunch break away from the desk improves their work performance.
Do your employees have regular breaks, or do they tend to stay inside the office to be able to finish work for the day?
If they never leave the office desk, you need to work carefully on your team dynamics and see to it that they have enough time to rest well and — prevent overstimulation at work.
Apart from regular lunch breaks, Manager and Co-owner, Alex Smith, emphasizes the importance of a “formal disengagement break”.
In their company, they have a “special room with big format prints of beautiful landscapes and nature.” Employees are encouraged to spend 10 minutes in that room, actively watching the images. Smith confirms this helps “reboot their mental state” and leads to a “20 to 30 percent enhancement of the accuracy and the speed of their next job.”
Advise your team members to reduce screen time when possible
Speaking of disengaging from screens — the American Optometric Association screen time research shows that over 70% of office workers experience excessive screen time.
To avoid this type of sensory overload, you can help your team members cut down screen time whenever possible — whether it’s scrolling through social media apps or going through work emails.
In line with this, Smith has a useful protocol for his team members — “every two to three hours, we ask team members to leave their screen and go and do something entirely unrelated.”
During this time, the employees can take a “five-minute walk around the office area”, tidy their office desk, or even play “non-competitive board game with one or two people.”
Finally, you should lead by example and steer clear of scrolling through your phone during breaks. In this way, you’ll encourage your employees to reduce screen time even more.
Excessive screen time takes away from productivity
Introduce “quiet” days or focus time blocks
During the workday, in a modern workplace, employees must juggle emails, meetings, and phone calls. As Executive Leadership Coach Michelle Bevan puts it, “things are constantly dinging and chiming, reminding us that someone needs something from us.”
Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report shows that an average employee receives 117 emails — per day.
And, as if this is not already too much, the same report found that the average time without interruptions by mail, meetings or messages during office hours is — just 2 minutes.
Bevan proposes the “no meetings on Friday” rule that would allow for some quality time when employees can engage in deep work. This is a great way to limit the sensory input and manage overstimulation.
CEO Adam Bushell organizes uninterrupted time blocks each day for his employees, when “all non-urgent internal communication is suspended, phones are diverted, and digital notifications are muted”.
This reduces the feeling of overstimulation — and, according to Bushell, reduces the amount of minor errors by 15%.
Bevan concludes that introducing periods where team members aren’t disturbed “creates space for employees to really focus”.
Further reading:
It’s easy to slip into holding unnecessary meetings. Read on to learn how to recognize if this is the case in your team:
Reach the optimum level of stimulation
As a leader, your goal is to reach the perfect level of stimulation, where your employees will be inspired to work, but not be mentally and physically drained.
As soon as you notice (and, preferably, even before you notice) that your team is engaged in shallow work — i.e. work that lacks creativity and innovative solutions — check whether they’re overstimulated by their work environment.
And then, make sure to help provide them with enough time and space to think clearly and out of the box.
Use the timer tracker Clockify to track and better allocate time — and then use this data to reduce overstimulation at work. Get the full CAKE.com Bundle, to also get the team communication app Pumble and the project management tool Plaky, for extra productivity, and extra savings.
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