A Little Bit of Anxiety Can Boost Work Performance, Says New Study

While dealing with constant anxiety would understandably make it extremely difficult to be productive at work, a little bit of anxiety may actually be a good thing. That’s the conclusion of a new study recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

According to researchers from the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), anxiety in small doses can help workers be more focused and propel them to take control over their behavior. To conduct their study, they examined the outcome of their previous research on the mental health disorder, which looked at the common triggers of workplace anxiety and its relationship to employee performance, the Daily Mail reports.

Through their study, they identified two types of anxiety that tend to pop up at work: the general kind that leaves employees constantly distracted or thinking about the causes of their anxiety, and the less frequent kind that only emerges because a worker has to do certain tasks like public speaking, which could negatively affect how they do in that task.

From their study, researchers found that the former may cause exhaustion and burnout, but the latter—since it’s in a smaller dose—may actually make you a better worker. Study co-author Julie McCarthy and associate professor at UTSC explained, “If you have too much anxiety, and you’re completely consumed by it, then it’s going to derail your performance. On the other hand, moderate levels of anxiety can facilitate and drive performance.”

It appears the reason low levels of anxiety can be beneficial is because workers might be able to recognize their feelings of anxiety and use them for good—to focus and to boost performance—or at the very least, to prevent their anxiety from affecting their performance. Lead study author and assistant professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University Bonnie Hayden Cheng said, “After all, if we have no anxiety and we just don’t care about performance, then we are not going to be motivated to do the job.”

As the Daily Mail reports, 72 percent of Americans who deal with anxiety on a daily basis say it gets in the way of their work and personal lives.