White paper · Not peer reviewed
Stress as a Recovery Speed System
Preprint · 2 October 2026 · 14 pages · License CC BY-NC-ND
Performance depends less on how much stress a person carries than on how quickly their physiology returns toward baseline once the demand ends.
Draws on published research on allostatic load, stress physiology, and cardiovascular and vagal recovery. Three lines of evidence support treating recovery as a distinct variable: short and long exposures differ in kind, activation can persist past the stressor through internal processes, and delayed physiological recovery has been associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes independently of the size of the initial response. The paper also states where the evidence is thin, including that pooled effects for recovery from psychological challenge are small.
Keywords: stress recovery, allostatic load, heart rate variability, autonomic regulation, recovery speed, resilience
White paper · Not peer reviewed
Decision Quality Under Load
The Case for Training Control Rather Than Calm
Preprint · 2 October 2026 · 16 pages · License CC BY-NC-ND
Acute stress reallocates cognition toward fast action and away from flexible deliberation. The trainable target is control, not calm.
Meta-analytic evidence indicates that acute stress reduces working memory performance, with the effect substantially larger under high cognitive load, and reduces cognitive flexibility, while dissociating within inhibition: control over actions improves as control over attention worsens. The paper separates two claims usually merged, showing that while stress clearly reshapes cognition, brief relaxation techniques have not been shown to restore decision quality. What the evidence does support is training under pressure, where meta-analyses in sport and law enforcement report medium effects.
Keywords: decision making under stress, executive function, prefrontal cortex, pressure training, state regulation, leadership under pressure
White paper · Not peer reviewed
A Nervous System First Methodology
Regulation as a Trained Skill
Preprint · 2 October 2026 · 20 pages · License CC BY-NC-ND
Autonomic regulation is the primary training target, and voluntary slow breathing is the most accessible input to it.
Sets out a practice model built on one respiratory input directed toward three aims, reset after a demand, recovery toward rest, and deliberate activation before demand, distributed across a working day as brief practice attached to existing cues. The paper also corrects two claims commonly made in this field, including in the author’s own prior work: heart rate variability driven by paced breathing is not a measure of vagal tone, and there is no evidence that brief frequent practice produces greater physiological adaptation than longer infrequent practice.
Keywords: autonomic regulation, slow breathing, resonance frequency breathing, practice dose, habit formation, self-regulation training
Preprints. Not peer reviewed. These three papers have been submitted to SSRN and are awaiting its completeness review, so the SSRN pages may not be public yet. Each paper is available here as a PDF now, and the SSRN links will be added on posting.