Getting out of the Gray Zone

The ‘gray zone’ in a sport like running or biking is a level of effort that feels slightly difficult. Think of running up a slight hill at an average pace. This type of ‘gray zone’ effort is causing fatigue while bringing few athletic benefits. Over time, endurance sport coaches figured out that the most endurance benefits come from 80% or more of training time being spent in super slow, easy feeling training. The other 20% or less should usually be super hard efforts that take us to the edge of our speed and intensity limits. 
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The best endurance training is never in the ‘gray zone’. It is mostly on the easy, consistent, long duration end of the spectrum, with occasional hard sprints layered into the mix a few times per week. We escape the gray zone by keeping your easy days truly easy and pushing yourself to your maximum ability on the hard days. 

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Have you ever experienced the ‘gray zone’ in a Social Sector work setting? This is when you keep trying to focus and get distracted, and shift attention away to another area. The gray zone happens when you are working on something but not fully focusing on that task. When you are working on a document and your phone keeps buzzing and you lift it up and check X.  The gray zone happens in endurance athletics when you are neither going at your full effort nor going slowly enough to be building up a training base.

The gray zone means working at an average output with little differentiation in effort or attention. The gray zone feels alright at first, and may even bring some good results at first. But then the ability to continue degrades over time and leads to decreasing performance. This shows itself with distraction and loss of focus on things that matter both at work and in the rest of life.  The gray zone means you are not giving full effort or taking time to relax. 

I lived and worked in the gray zone for many years, without understanding how to escape. 

In grey zone work scenarios I would sit down at the computer and either take in information or try to create things like documents, notes or research without a break. I would also be taking in other information (like talk radio or podcast) at the same time. This work approach would lead to average work at first and then less ability to focus. Eventually it would lead to bouts of burn out since I had not let myself mentally recover from focus oriented tasks. 

Athletically, my gray zone training would mean going out for a run and running at the same moderate intensity for the entire run.  This means that I remained constant or got slower over months of running a few times a week instead of increasing my fitness. My body has not pushed to a higher level of exertion, nor given time to recover and gain additional strength after effort. This translated into lethargy and loss of fitness. 

Interestingly, I can feel myself slipping into gray zone behaviors when I am low on sleep or have skipped my recharge times (breaks during the work day or time away from the screens over the weekend). 

What is the gray zone
In a strategic sense, the gray zone happens when you are not pushing yourself to your limit, and not giving yourself time to rejuvenate and recover after your full intensity. This leads to average and later to diminishing results that may spiral toward burnout. 

Caveat: The gray zone concept is quite different from the idea of consistency and showing up and doing the work even when you don’t feel motivated. Consistency of practice is essential, but we get a much better outcome if we work in bursts of intensity, followed by periods of rest. 

How to avoid the gray zone
The time tested way to beat the gray zone is to understand the performance formula: stress + rest = growth. 

An athletic concept that avoids the gray zone is the concept of interval training where short bursts of high intensity followed by periods of less intense movement build fitness at a higher rate than other types of work. 

The pomodoro technique is one of the high performance habits for aid workers that we’ve talked about in the past  mirrors this approach. Setting a 22 minute timer for deep focus work, then taking a short break, and longer break after several rotations mimics this energy burst and recovery. 

Another way to avoid the gray zone is to make a clear list of the types of things you do each day, week and month and separate them into urgent, important and delegatable/outsourceable categories. You cannot outsource your physical exercise but you might be able to outsource something like cleaning your house. The more you outsource, the more free time you will have to do full focus deep work on your area of highest contribution. 

You can also get into the gray zone if you say yes to too many activities and tasks for an extended period of time without the recovery process. 

How to apply this practice to the Social Sectors
The feeling of what I and others call ‘the resistance’ is that feeling of blockage when you know what you need to do that day but can’t seem to start. This is another symptom of the gray zone, where you probably have been working with average intensity and have burned out. 

Don’t pretend to work if you hit a block. Stop, refresh, and then go back. I’ve done this and continue to do this even when I’m working alone: pretending that time staring at a screen is producing something or moving the needle. Remember how easy it is to fool yourself. Notice when you are successfully fooling yourself and pretending to work. Notice. Stop, and go into a recharge cycle. 

When you are in the grey zone it is difficult to see your way out. Have a recharge list ready when you have downtime. When you do decide to go into recharge mode, be clear and prepared about what that is. This becomes a to do, and not to do list. It is easy when you need a recharge to fall into negative activities that are bringing you down rather than recharging your body and mind. Avoid this trap by having a list ready and reading the list before you decide to recharge. 

My ‘to do’ and ‘not to do’ lists for recharge:

Everyone’s list is different. You need to develop your own. 

Making it work for your life
Choose how you share this concept with your colleagues. If you are working for a Social Sector organization, you might be one of the only people in your office who works along these lines. Many of your colleagues will be living and working in a gray zone and not understand that there is another path, and suggesting another way can be counterproductive. Being a living example and making the smart performance choices ourselves is usually the best approach. Then letting the results speak for themselves in our actions, thoughts and consistent high performance. 

Happy Trails!