International Stress Awareness Day
International Stress Awareness Day: Can Mindful Moments in Aviation Help Put People at the Heart of Work?
Aviation is an industry built around attention. From the flight deck to the cabin, from engineering to ground operations, awareness, concentration and the ability to respond to changing circumstances are fundamental to what we do.
Yet how often do we stop to consider where our attention actually is?
We may be walking through an airport, preparing for a flight or sitting in a briefing, while our minds are already several steps ahead. Perhaps we're thinking about a difficult roster, an upcoming assessment, a family commitment, an unresolved problem at work or simply the growing list of things waiting for us at home.
We're physically present, but our attention is somewhere else.
Stress isn't simply about how much we have to do. It's also about how we experience and respond to the demands placed upon us. When we're under pressure, our attention can become increasingly occupied by worries about what has happened, what might happen next, or things we feel we ought to be doing.
That constant mental activity can add to our experience of stress, even when there's nothing we can usefully do about those concerns at that moment.
This is where mindfulness may have something to offer. It doesn't remove the pressures we face, but it can help us recognise when our attention has become caught up in them, and give us an opportunity to choose where to focus instead.
Mind full or mindful?
There's a deceptively simple distinction between having a mind full and being mindful.
A mind full of thoughts isn't necessarily a problem. In aviation, thinking ahead, anticipating difficulties and managing competing demands are essential professional skills. The difficulty comes when our attention is so occupied by what has happened, or what might happen next, that we lose sight of what's happening now.
Mindfulness is often associated with meditation, breathing exercises or sitting quietly with our eyes closed. These can be useful, but mindfulness doesn't have to involve any of them.
At its simplest, mindfulness means deliberately bringing our attention to the present moment, noticing what's happening without immediately judging it or getting caught up in our thoughts.
And for pilots in particular, perhaps this isn't such an unfamiliar skill.
Think about a demanding phase of flight. We deliberately direct our attention towards the information that matters, monitor what is changing and recognise when something needs a response. We're not trying to think about everything at once. We're managing our attention.
Mindfulness isn't quite the same as operational concentration, but there are similarities. It involves recognising where our attention is and consciously choosing where to direct it.
In that sense, mindfulness is a variation on a skill pilots already practise.
Where do we choose to put our attention?
Our attention is a limited resource, and the way we use it matters.
At one end of the spectrum, we might spend twenty minutes doomscrolling, moving from one piece of bad news to another without consciously deciding that this is how we want to spend our time.
At the other, we might be fully engaged in a complex approach briefing, deliberately concentrating on the information, decisions and potential threats that matter.
Both involve attention, but there's an important difference in how consciously we're directing it.
Of course, we can't concentrate intensely all the time, nor should we try. Our minds wander, we become distracted and sometimes we simply need to switch off.
The question isn't whether we're concentrating hard enough. It's whether we recognise where our attention has gone and have some choice about bringing it back.
That might mean noticing the aircraft as we walk across the apron rather than mentally rehearsing the rest of the day. It might mean giving a colleague our full attention during a conversation, or recognising that we're becoming frustrated before that frustration affects how we respond.
None of these requires a formal mindfulness exercise. They're simply opportunities to be more deliberate about where we place our attention.
Practising a skill we already have
Like many of the skills we use in aviation, mindfulness improves with practice.
I think it's helpful to imagine attention as a muscle. We wouldn't expect to develop physical strength through one occasional workout, and we shouldn't expect to become more mindful through one occasional attempt to concentrate on the present.
Instead, we can practise in small moments throughout the day.
Perhaps it's noticing the weather and surroundings on the walk to work. Perhaps it's concentrating on the first few mouthfuls of a meal rather than looking at our phones. Or perhaps it's taking a moment to recognise how we're feeling before moving on to the next task.
The point isn't to do these things perfectly. Our attention will wander. Recognising that it has wandered and choosing to bring it back is part of the practice.
The more often we make that conscious choice, the more familiar the process becomes.
And importantly, it doesn't need to become another demanding task on an already crowded to-do list.
But stress isn't simply an individual problem
There is an important distinction between helping people develop strategies for managing stress and expecting them to compensate for an unnecessarily stressful working environment.
Mindfulness is one stress management tool. Recent research demonstrates it's an effective one. It cannot, however, resolve excessive workloads, unpredictable schedules, poor communication or a culture in which people don't feel able to express concerns.
We need to be careful that wellbeing doesn't become another responsibility placed entirely on individuals, particularly when many of the pressures they experience are outside their control.
An organisation that genuinely puts people at the heart of work needs to consider how work is organised, how decisions are communicated, whether people feel listened to and whether they can raise difficulties without fear of negative consequences.
Noticing ourselves — and each other
One of the benefits of being more deliberate about our attention is that we may become better at noticing other people.
When we're preoccupied with our own pressures, it's easy to miss the colleague who seems unusually quiet, someone struggling with an unfamiliar task or a person whose behaviour is different from what we'd normally expect.
Noticing doesn't mean we need to diagnose a problem, offer advice or find a solution. Sometimes it simply means recognising that someone might appreciate a conversation, a little patience or an opportunity to be heard.
The same applies to ourselves. Recognising that we're becoming overwhelmed, frustrated or distracted isn't a failure of professionalism. It's useful information that can help us decide what we need and how to respond.
A small thought for Stress Awareness Day
Perhaps this International Stress Awareness Day we could think about mindfulness not as another wellbeing initiative or something extra we ought to be doing, but as a skill we already use in different ways.
We can practise it by making small, conscious choices about where we direct our attention.
We can notice when our minds are full of things that don't need our attention right now.
And perhaps we can occasionally stop to appreciate some of the extraordinary things that have become ordinary through familiarity.
A mindful moment won't solve every difficulty we face at work. But it may help us respond more thoughtfully, connect more meaningfully with colleagues and recognise when something needs attention.
Putting people at the heart of work begins, in part, with remembering to notice them — ourselves included.