Handling Cognitive Strain Mid-Workday: Feasibility and Initial Effects of a Self-Regulation Protocol

Abstract

Knowledge workers routinely face competing priorities, time pressure, and high workloads, which impair their capacity for deliberate self-regulation and may reinforce automatic but ineffective coping responses. This master's thesis introduces a four-step self-regulation protocol (SNAP), designed to be applied in the workplace at moments of cognitive strain, without requiring withdrawal from the ongoing task. The aim of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of SNAP in the workplace and to understand its preliminary effects in a sample of Estonian knowledge workers (N = 14). A three-day daily-prompt study with pre- and post-surveys collected data on perceived cognitive clarity, task completion, task-based performance, and well-being, followed by six semi-structured interviews analysed using reflexive thematic analysis SNAP use exceeded the pre-registered feasibility threshold, indicating that this type of in-task intervention can fit within knowledge work context. SNAP use did not predict improvements in same-occasion cognitive clarity or intention-behaviour gap, but pre-post comparisons revealed positive directional trends in task-based performance and well-being. Qualitatively, participants described the protocol's primary value as a metacognitive shift, highlighting their capacity to notice automatic avoidance behaviour at the moment it arose and to make a deliberate choice about their priorities. The findings point to a mismatch between the mechanism and the measure, as the fixed-time ratings did not capture the within-episode attentional shift that participants described as the working mechanism of SNAP. Future studies should incorporate a control condition and a longer practice period.