Where's That Digital Exhaustion Leading Us To?

 

Not too long back, once I login to our mainframe-based systems, on average, my unread mails right at SOD [start of day] was averaging 50 mails more OR less.  Those days, I thought that was way too much especially since email platforms at that time were hosted by those large-scale mainframe systems [at that time, IBM was the market-dominant player].  Correlating that backdrop today is like measuring the distances in our work area versus the distances that separate the planetary bodies.  Yup, even emails have a very high saturation rate NOT just in the urban areas.  Frankly, regardless of economic and social strata, almost everyone has an email account.  Oh yes, almost every merchant will entice us to register and subscribe so that we may receive freebies and promo notifications.   So, that explains WHY it's a non-news if I'll make noise that I got hundreds of new mails everyday in my In-box.  NON-news at all dude💥💥💥

A few years back, I was doing the legwork to prepare several of our team members WHO were Japan-bound for a project assignment and amongst many queries, my Japan counterpart advised me to include "LINE" in my preparation checklist.  I thought he was referring to a "POSTPAID PHONE LINE" instead of a prepaid account.  Only to realize that "LINE" is Japan's most popular mobile messaging application.  Ouch.  I thought I was a techie enough and updated enough.  Only to realize that I had a long way to go😕😕😕

Fast-forward to today, WHAT's our typical scenario?  XXX unread messages, tons of notifications [from FB, Viber, Slack, Telegram name it] and to complicate things, you have 3 to 5 dashboards to open with data-driven reports for you to present in the MBR [monthly business review] come next day.  Then, that familiar hollowness sets in😡😡😡

Suddenly, WHAT happens next?  True, we may NOT be experiencing physical fatigue OR literal burnout BUT a distinctly modern form of depletion, experiencing WHAT researches now identify as "DIGITAL EXHAUSTION".  A bit scary here is the fact that unlike that traditional burnout, this so called "DIGITAL EXHAUSTION" is NOT triggered by either poor management OR even toxic culture.  Instead, experts opine that it can 'flourish' even in well-functioning workgroups even led by well-meaning leaders.  So WHAT really is driving "DIGITAL EXHAUSTION"?  Studies show that "DIGITAL EXHAUSTION" is NOT caused by the devices themselves BUT rather, it stems from HOW these devices connect us to information and people in ways that fundamentally challenge our cognitive architecture❎❎❎

Our takeaway: WHAT seems alarming is one key finding in recent researches showing that these    "DIGITAL" technologies fragment our attention in unprecedented ways. LIKE WHEN we constantly shift our focus between emails, spreadsheets chat messages and video calls, our brain must redirect blood flow to different neural regions and stats data show that a typical person makes nearly 1,200 such transitions daily with each transition requiring several seconds [at the very least] for neural retooling.  Experts also claim that these transitions leave "ATTENTION RESIDUE", that lingering activation that impairs our performance.  Oh Oh, WHERE's THAT DIGITAL EXHAUSTION LEADING US TO???