Do odors affect your performance and work ethic?

The simple answer is yes! 

 

The reasons may not be what you assumed. Go figure, odors affect people's mood, work performance and behavior in many ways, but it isn't because odors affect us like prescriptions. 

 

What's really happening?

 

Surprising, odors recall our own memories through past experiences. 

 

Are odors learned?

 

For an odor to evoke any sort of neurological feedback, one must first learn to associate the odor with some event. This is why the same odors bring about different responses and emotions for different people. This is associative learning.

 

 Associative learning occurs when multiple events or items are linked to each other because of an individual's past experiences. 

 

Is this like the smell of Grandma's cookies?

 

Absolutely!  Let’s say you and your sibling know that smell and it warms your heart, but one time when you both ran to enjoy the searing hot chocolate chips mixed with the soft chewy dough your sibling trips and cuts his knee or hits their head.

 

Cookies may remind you of your Grandma and the love of fresh baked cookies. Your sibling may associate the same smell of fresh baked cookies of pain, an ice pack or even nausea and anxiety. 

 

The odor then triggers the same negative  anxious reaction when encountered later.

 

How can this happen in the short term?

 

You have a bad day at work, a bad day on zoom or your kids just don't understand something and frustration dwells. In those moments, new memories are stored. You and/or your kids take the evening to refresh. The moment you or your kids are back in the same situation,the same odors from yesterday now trigger the same responses. 

 

Although the learned association may be mild, it's still there. These odors are stored via short term memory and create long term memories which can develop and affect work performance.. 

 

This happens not only in the home but also at the office. 

 

If you're looking to achieve optimal levels of performance from employees, help your children or even yourself, consider neutralizing those odors to help keep everyone you care about and yourself focused and on track. 

 

Your  goals are waiting, all you have to do is contact Renovair for your free in home estimate.