Modern Life Sucks: 4 Ways The Status Quo Is Wrong
The more books I read (Brain Rules, Predictably Irrational and Freakonomics to name a few recent ones) and the more I write on this blog, the more I come across ideas and concepts that go against the conventional advice dished out by businesses, schools and the media in general. This is in some ways alarming. Millions of people are born, grow up and lives their lives based on traditional ideas that are sometimes outdated, occasionally misleading and often contradictory to scientific research and logic. Is it any wonder that we are generally less happy, less well off and often in careers we hate nowadays? Below I’ve detailed four concepts where, when it comes to being productive organized and just generally living stress-free, the world has got it badly wrong. Can you think of any others?
Our brains can cope
We don’t know very much about the brain at all. Just ask any neuroscientist. We know it’s powerful – more so than any other species on the planet – but as a result it’s easy to take for granted just how much it can cope with, how much information it can take in and how much stress it can handle. Wondering why you have an headache? Trying to do your homework while listening to music, checking your Facebook page and texting your friends may have something to do with it. The brain does have limits so be aware of the stresses you’re putting it under.
Everything is balanced
It’s easy, perhaps comforting, to assume that everything in the world is harmoniously split down the middle and that everything is black and white. On the one hand you can assume that all customers are equally valuable and that every task serves a purpose. On the other hand you can assume that the number of great, good and bad films are all equally split or that the difference between the number of highly successful staff and average staff is roughly balanced. The world always finds it equilibrium.
But a little analysis goes a long way and as the 80/20 rule demonstrates, the world is anything but balanced, in fact it’s often predictably unbalanced to rather extreme lengths. A very small percentage of your customers bring in the majority of profits, a number of staff make the most sales, most of the value in your life comes from a just a few activities, etc. Instead of inefficiently spreading our time, energy and attention over a wide area should we not be focusing it on the stuff that really makes a difference?
There’s never enough time
Time management. It seems everybody is at it nowadays trying to squeeze more out of their time and constantly looking for ways to add a few extra minutes into their day. We want more time to do stuff, more time to be able to get things done, more time to be able to do a good job, be with our family, enjoy ourselves and indulge in hobbies and interests. But every time we make more time we always seem to fill it with the same old stuff. It’s like trying to dig a hole in the sand when the tide is coming in (read my post on time wasting for a better understanding).
According to Parkinson’s law we’re coming at it the wrong way. Work expands to fill the time available to it. When time is tight or you have a short deadline, you’re focused to focus on the essentials. When you’ve given a week to do a job that should take a day, it suddenly becomes a BIG DEAL!!! We can’t make more time for ourselves – there will always be only 24 hours in the day. However we can do our work in much less time than we often think.
We can multitask
It’s a fact that humans cannot multitask. When it comes to attention rich activity like reading a book with the TV on in the background, or talking on the phone while driving, you’re brain is constantly having to flick attention back and forth. Imagine that there are two rooms next to each other, each containing an activity that both need doing at the same time. You have to keep dashing between the two rooms closing and opening the doors as you go. This is essentially how multitasking works in the brain. With all the door closing and rushing between rooms, that’s a lot of wasted energy. Why then, are businesses so obsessed with it?!
8 Comments
On the first day Headline News changed its format back in 2001, I was amazed by how much information they were cramming onto the screen. As I sat mesmerized, the news of a study stating the inefficiency of multitasking scrolled across the screen. So funny!
Hey James.
Learning outdated material could be a large issue holding back the youth, as it is like learning how to use AltaVista search when Google advanced search is where the time should be spent nowadays. Your book examples, plus what I have seen written around, do agree that a lot is either wrongly taught or taught by example that isn’t fruitful, like in Debi’s comment about news stations packing so much information on screen that we get even less out of their show.
That point about there not being enough time, and then having saved time filled in with more garbage, is a great response to those who say they don’t have enough of it. I’ve done that where I’ve saved time and then tossed away, and it sure didn’t make sense. I would now rather save time and spend it sitting there thinking than put it into some wasteful activity.
I cut out multitasking from my routine when I saw that the short-term feeling of getting so much done was just a feeling, and wasn’t supported with actual results that come from doing the right things well.
Thanks for this relevant discussion.
Thanks for the responses. I agree with you Armen about how outdated material is holding youth back. I can’t remember who pointed it out originally, but there is a huge gap between what business does (I would argue that by extension this also includes schools, politicians, etc.) and what science knows. In the UK at least, schooling practices haven’t changed since Victorian times, and modern business practices are just the natural evolution of ideas originally developed in the Industrial age. It’s actually quite alarming.
A lot of conventional wisdom is just plain wrong. Several years into my career, I surveyed my college friends to find out where we were in our lives, how we got there, and how we had expected to get there.
The result was virtually no one ended up where they had planned to go. Even those who did got there through a combination of luck, timing, and serendipity, rather than by following their careful plans. And yet every book on career planning I’ve seen advocates some variant of figuring out where you want to be in five years and making a plan out of that. Empirically, I don’t believe that works (I do believe there are systematic things you can do to increase the chances you’ll end up somewhere interesting, I just don’t think you can predict where that will be or how you’ll get there in advance).
Here in America, we’re also saturated with a couple hundred billion dollars’ worth of advertising a year telling us that the route to happiness is by being cool, fashionable, owning the latest stuff, etc. Of course they say such things because they’re in the business of selling all that stuff. But that’s just simply wrong. The route to happiness has far more to do with having strong relationships and community, doing good for others, and learning not to sweat the small stuff.
Great comment Stever and so true. I agree about how flawed the idea of setting five year plans and variations of that can be. The reality is so much of it is not in our hands. We can do things to influence our fate, but to say you’ll have achieved your ideal job in two years, five years, etc. is badly misleading.
Hey Stever, the route to happiness is certainly not about being cool. The nerds have won, the cool kids at school are usually not the big achievers later in life.
In terms of learning from an early age we are not given the right focus. Making money is never taught even in a business studies course. We figure that out usually in middle age when its too late.
Talking of time management, how much work do we all get through on that last before we go on a holiday? If we worked like that every day we could work a two day week.
Regarding email, phones, etc. I think that is a big problem. I almost find it funny when I am in a meeting and someone will answer their phone saying, “I am in a meeting, can I call you back?”. If it’s not urgent to take it why do that? That’s just not concentrating on the meeting or what you could be learning.
Multitasking can create such a bad mental state. Have you spoken to someone on the phone and you know they are not really listening? Maybe doing email?
Don’t get me wrong, I am also guilty of that sometimes but I try and turn away from my computer when I take a call. It’s about having a quality chat with someone rather than not thinking about what you are saying.
I really think the Simon And Garfunkel song Sound Of Silence tells us that modern life is about not listening to anyone, not really caring about anyone, perhaps even yourself and not being able to do much in one’s life to live stress free.
Instead, it’s just the silence of the empty consumerism and fame we all follow. And it’s easy to say money rules the world, but money is just an avenue to status and division. Hell, when middle income earners need an Asian nanny to raise their kids because they are either too busy, not capable, rather uncaring, and just plain interested in the status of a career, modern life isn’t long for this world. Division of mother and child is the death blow.
And that sucks! Yet the chatter of endless emails, calls and forms silence us all to do anything about it.
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