07-16-2026
Time-intensive, cognitively demanding work is part of life, but it does not have to come at the cost of your well-being. For this year’s Mental Health Action Week, an annual Purdue-wide event, the Center for Working Well led the Daniels School of Business’ emerging professionals through a well-rounded set of wellness events aligned with university-wide initiatives to strengthen resilience. Focusing across academic, social, and physical practices, daily focus points directed rising professionals to identify common stressors, set goals, snack better, take walking breaks, and carve out time for social bonding.
During the week, more than 500 Daniels School of Business students participated. One event asked students to name stressors that will feel familiar to any high-performing professional, and they listed: sleep challenges, high-stakes performance expectations, demanding job searches, time management struggles and the pressure of maintaining relationships alongside work. Surfacing these themes publicly helps turn “private burdens into a shared conversation,” reframing stress as a human experience rather than an individual shortcoming. That mindset shift matters when deadlines pile up. Recognizing that strain is common makes it easier to seek support early instead of pushing silently toward exhaustion.
The mindset that you can “have it all" at once is exhausting. It’s unproductive to work on each of these wellness aspects at the same time. By giving participants a single daily focus, the week encourages us to layer these lessons together for holistic wellness along the way. Focus on sustainable steps that fertilize healthy responses to stress.
A five-minute walk, a brief conversation with a mentor, or a deliberate commitment to better sleep can function as “micro-anchors” that keep you steady during cognitively demanding stretches. Practicing micro-anchors across multiple domains that are small by design makes them realistic to use when your calendar is already full. Rather than waiting for a long weekend to recover, you build recovery into the workday itself. The message is to focus on one aspect of yourself you want to improve and put your full attention on it. This requires us to be present and "locked in" on that single aspect. Wait to shift to another until you create small healthy habits in your current focus.
High cognitive performance rests on very physical foundations. Across Mental Health Action Week, participants named sleep, movement, nutrition, and time outdoors as central to their ability to learn, focus, and show up well at work. Students specifically named the following as ways that they can protect their well-being — and the science backs them up:
The Center for Working Well offers courses on the well-being paradox and the science of working well, helping establish small practices that help you grow day to day. These practices protect you when work is at its most intense. By treating well-being as integral to performance, you build a career that can thrive over the long term, not just survive the next deadline.
Allison Gabriel is the Thomas J. Howatt Chair in Management in the Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management Department at the Mitch Daniels School of Business and director of the Center for Working Well.
Natalie Schneider is a clinical assistant professor in the Daniels School’s Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management Department whose research examines how employees and organizations can build and develop resources to contend with severe work stressors.
