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

Send us a text

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

🎙️ Welcome to Overwhelm is Optional

This podcast was created to help big-hearted, driven professionals break free from overwhelm and experience more clarity, ease, and joy.

But here’s the exciting news… I’ve moved beyond overwhelm.

If you’ve been listening and resonating with this message, you’ll love what comes next.

I’ve created a new podcast: Deep Heartfelt Success—because success should feel as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

🎙 Join me there → Search "Deep Heartfelt Success" on your favourite podcast platform and subscribe.

💡 Experience Deep Heartfelt Success for Yourself
Book a complimentary Deep Heartfelt Success Session—a no-pressure, transformative conversation designed to help you step into your next level of success with ease.
📅 Book here

📚 The Gently Rebellious One-Minute Journal
A simple, powerful way to stay focused on what matters most.
👉 Buy here

🌍 Website:
Explore practical tools, resources, and ways to work with me.
👉 Visit here www.heidimarke.co.uk

🎧 Free Audio: The One Minute Marke
Start prac...

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.

(00:21):
Research from NASA.
So NASA did some research, orthey continually do research,
into how to reduce accidents inspace and aviation due to
fatigue.
Before we get into that, I'mgoing to tell you the magical
story of how I came across thisarticle, because actually I
don't read the Times.

(00:42):
Actually I don't read the Times.
And yet through my letterboxcame an actual, real newspaper.
Don't really see those so muchthese days.
Do you Do all your reading ofthe news online?
Yep, the Times newspapermagically came through my door.

(01:03):
I ignored it until today when Iwent to light the fire and I
found it in the kindling placeand I thought, oh, that might be
quite interesting to read anewspaper, a real, live
newspaper, spread out on thetable with a cup of coffee.
So I had a quick glance through.
This article caught my eyestraight away.
I thought, wow, we can dosomething with this in the
gender rebellion.

(01:23):
And here we are.
But why was there a newspapercoming through my door?
Well, firstly, I live in one ofthose lovely, lovely, old
fashioned English villages wheresomebody delivers newspapers,
which is really really nice.
It's a volunteer from the shopand I don't know what happened
last week, but apparently,according to my partner who was

(01:46):
working from home last week, hesaid oh, they just keep,
somebody keeps delivering thetimes, and they were delivering
it to our neighbor, who has nowput a printed notice on her door
with a map to where thisnewspaper should actually go,
and, despite making that effort,instead of delivering it to the
person next to her, they, theydecided to deliver it to us, and

(02:07):
not just once, but more thanonce.
However, it stopped after weput 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.

(02:28):
As usual, the title of thearticle didn't match the
research findings particularlywell.
However, I'm a research geek.
I try to resist readinganything about research because
it can just zap masses of mytime.
I'll just go into it.
So, oh, I don't think that wasa good setup.
I don't think that was a gooddesign.
I just geek out on that, andthen I find lots of problems to

(02:49):
solve which are none of mybusiness, so I usually resist it
.
But this caught my eye becauseobviously it was a summary and
it was relevant to us and whatwe're up to in the gentle
rebellion.
So this is what they did.
They looked at, they'remonitoring astronauts energy,
energy levels, obviously becausethey found that fatigue is a

(03:10):
cause or contributes toaccidents in about 50% of the
time.
So obviously it's really reallyimportant 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 likeastronauts on our own adventure,
we need to be good at lookingafter ourselves right.

(03:31):
So what they did is they lookedat the body language of space
crews and then strangers ratedhow tired they thought the crew
were and then, separately, theyasked the crew how fatigued they
actually felt.
And this is what they found theobservers underestimated how
tired the women were andoverestimated how tired the men

(03:53):
were.
And apparently the researchersweren't surprised at the results
because of another fascinating,though slightly mean,
experiment, where men and womenthey were volunteers, obviously
had tourniquets put around theirupper arm and then they had to

(04:13):
hand grip exercises to inducediscomfort and pain.
And what they found in that oneis once again observers
underestimated women'sdiscomfort and overestimated
men's.
The cues they used in the caseof the first piece of research
to decide how tired the womenwere to decide how tired the

(04:43):
women were were things likeexpressiveness and attentiveness
during a conversation, forexample, things like eye contact
, and that made me really thinkabout myself and when I force
myself if I force myself to besociable, when I don't feel like
being sociable, one of thefirst 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 thatI appear to be listening, even

(05:04):
if I'm partly switching off.
Now I don't put myself in thatsituation much anymore, but I
used to all the time.
In fact, I used to do thisevery single day.
So this reminds me of the timewhen I was teaching mathematics
in a large school and there's nobreaks between lessons at all.
It's just this endless.

(05:25):
I mean, I know there's a breakeventually, but you have
consecutive lessons and 32 kidshave just left.
You're absolutely exhausted.
Imagine you've just done areally, really good presentation
that you took a week to preparefor.
It's done and then the next onehappens immediately.
And research shows that standingat the door and greeting

(05:48):
children and looking them in theeye is really really good for
building relationships and thenhelping you teach them.
But it's also exhausting,particularly for me as an
introvert.
So I would have to force myselfand it was school policy to
stand at the door.
Not everybody did it, but I wasa good teacher so I was doing
it and also I do think it's agood thing.
It's just that it nearly killedme, because in a day that could

(06:11):
be 150, 200.
I mean, it's just crazy theamount of eye contact going on.
For an introvert man that was atough one.
So this reminded me of that,that the demonstration of
external behaviors that thatwere out of alignment with with
my needs.
Now, obviously, as adults insociety, there's a compromise.

(06:31):
You know we don't walk arounddoing crazily unsociable things.
However, in terms of theimportance of nourishing myself
and looking after myselfproperly, that was a problem for
me and that's one of thereasons I'm really grateful not
to be in that profession anymore, because that's one of the many

(06:52):
things that just didn't workfor me and not because I didn't
love aspects of it, and notbecause I don't love talking to
people and I really eye contactmatters very much to me, but
that's why, right, eye contactmatters, doing a good job
matters, but doing it in thatprofession didn't work for me.
And the article ends by talkingabout the fact that there may

(07:14):
be a question over the idea thatI mean.
I don't want to get into somesexist argument because it's
really not the point of this.
I'm not interested.
I'm tired of the denigration ofmen at the moment.
After denigrating women, we'renow going to denigrate men.
It's like yeah, how does?
How's that helping everyone?
Zero sum game.
Anyway, there is research onquestions about whether women

(07:37):
are better at managing pain,whether women are more stoical
than men.
Now, I think it's probably.
Well, of course, it's far morecomplicated than this, but you
could argue that in order togive birth, women would have to
be pretty good with pain.
But apparently women are lesslikely to be given pain
medication and more likely to begiven are less likely to be

(08:02):
given pain medication and morelikely to be given talking
therapies, and apparently womenwon't ask for pain medication as
quickly as men and also, whenthey 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 allof this research and I don't
intend to, but I'm reallyinterested, not in the sex

(08:22):
differences, because the sexdifferences there are definite
differences between the sexesoverall, on average.
There's loads of research aboutthat good, robust research,
which I think is really helpfulto take into account when
getting to know ourselves andhow to live in a way that works
for us.
However, for the purpose of thispodcast, what I want to focus

(08:44):
on is what this means for you.
What can you take from this?
So it was clear that the womenwere hiding symptoms of fatigue
and the men were hiding weren'tor weren't as much.
That's what's going on, isn'tit?
Because if the women were tiredthan they appeared and the men

(09:05):
were less tired than theyappeared, 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, allyou want.
How's that working out for you?
Or we can look at theinformation and say to ourselves
honestly how do I behave?
What am I up to?

(09:26):
Because that's where your poweris.
So for me, the gently rebelliousresponse to this is the
highlight here that noticing andhonouring tiredness matters.
Noticing it in particular,because I think that the
honouring our tiredness bychanging our plans is much

(09:48):
harder.
It's a bigger step, and wealways want to look at the easy
wins, the simplest way to gainsomething, and for me, that
would be noticing.
Noticing, acknowledging tomyself, not moaning to other
people, not having to changelots of things, but just
neutrally noticing.

(10:08):
I'm tired, that's it.
Not I'm tired, I need to cancel.
Not, I'm tired, I'm going tolet people down.
Not, I'm tired, what's wrongwith me?
I should ought, must dosomething about this tiredness,
but rather just completelyneutrally.
I'm tired, that's it.
Because when we acknowledgethat and when we drop the

(10:30):
judgment about it, we feelbetter instantly.
I'm just tired.
It's just how things are.
It's just useful information.
I don't have to do anythingwith it yet, or, when you're
ready, you can change yourpriorities in order to look
after yourself better.
So there's just lots ofpossibility.

(10:50):
Just from asking the question amI hiding my tiredness and
pushing on through?
And if I am, why am I doingthat?
What am I up to?
Because there's got to be again.
Right, you're not stupid,you're really savvy, you're
really smart, you're reallysuccessful, even when you don't
feel like it.
So there's got to be a gainfrom that pushing on through.
Maybe it's easier thansomething else, or maybe it's

(11:14):
worth it temporarily, but maybeit's not worth it permanently.
So for me it wasn't worth itpermanently and I changed
careers.
It doesn't mean you've got tochange careers, and I think this
is the problem, isn't it?
When our minds go from I'mreally tired, I need to change
careers, it's too much.
So then you just don'tacknowledge what's wrong.
That never works for me.

(11:35):
It's easy to get into that trapEverything's wrong because I'm
tired.
And the thing is, when we'retired, everything feels wrong
anyway.
Right, because tirednessaffects our ability to think
straight.
So that's why the gentlyrebellious response is just to
acknowledge it, is to neutrallynotice.
I'm tired.
It's just how things are.

(11:55):
It's just useful information.
I don't need to beat myself upor change everything about my
life, I just need to start byacknowledging it.
How would that feel for you?
How would it feel toacknowledge tiredness without
shame, without guilt, or withoutdisappointment for yourself, or

(12:22):
without disappointment foryourself?
How would it feel to gentlyrebel against the pressure to
hide your exhaustion, or not?
How would it feel to just leavethings as they are and just to
acknowledge it or notacknowledge it?
Notice the difference.
Notice the power of saying toyourself I'm tired, and then

(12:42):
notice the power of ignoring itand pushing it down.
Notice the difference foryourself.
Thanks for being here.
Help you gently rebel.
Please visit my website.