Читать книгу Stand Out - Hill Alison - Страница 7

We live in a time where ‘open 24/7' has been sold to us as a convenience. And in a lot of ways it is. We now are able to go to the gym and pump weights at 2 am if we want to, bop down the aisles of the local supermarket to Richard Marx's greatest hits long after those pesky school kids have gone to bed, and scream into the pharmacy for an urgent order of fungal cream whenever we want (okay that last one is actually quite convenient). When we find ourselves on the couch, we can watch whatever we want, whenever we want, rather than viewing times being dictated to us by the networks. And who doesn't love a good binge-watch? Yep, you can watch zombies in varying states of decay on The Walking Dead to your heart's content – with no ad breaks – and scare the bejesus out of yourself for 10 hours straight if you so well please. Our world is like a giant remote control.

Play. Rewind. Fast forward. Play again. But the pause button? She's-a-broken.

This ease of convenience has crossed over into our connectivity and communications. The flexibility in how we interact, when we interact and who we interact with around the globe has fundamentally changed the way that we connect with each other, including random strangers who can be granted our time and attention at the expense of those in front of us. (C'mon, you've surely whiled away a couple of hours of your precious time in some sort of Facey-post ‘serve-volley-return', haven't you?)

So while this connectivity has brought us many bonuses, it has also come with a few downsides, and perhaps the most obvious downside is the intrusion on our time. While we have more demands within our day, the parameters haven't changed. We still have only 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week. You can't do anything that will give you bonus hours. If you waste a day, you don't have hours striped from you. You've got 24 hours, in 60-minute lots. That's your quota. Something has to take a hit and wear the cost of stretching this time too far. The collateral damage is a collective feeling of overwhelm in our society that means we are constantly running in a million different directions. The fight for your attention is real: the project, the mother-in-law, the chocolate cake sitting in the communal fridge at work. Couple this feeling with the relentless change environment that we are now facing, particularly in our places of work, and the result is higher exhaustion levels and shorter fuses. Within the corporate world, organisations no longer speak about five year plans – because they don't know what the lay of the land is going to be in five months' time, let alone five years. Change is absolutely relentless and individuals are merely holding on.

Phew! Have I cheered you up? #sorrynotsorry

Among this busyness we find that we snap quicker than we should, we disconnect from the people we love the most, and we get caught up doing what we think we should be doing, leaving what we want to be doing at the bottom of the pile – gathering dust because we keep adding to the pile. As a result, we end up consumed by fear, worry and guilt about postponing the things that really matter to us – and then trying to numb the despair we feel. Busy is the boss and we're its faithful servants, turning up full pelt whenever it snaps its fingers. Losing sleep, losing our mind, and losing connection to what we truly love. This, ultimately, has an impact on our health, our happiness and our sanity.

Is any of this resonating with you? If you're nodding your head like one of those dashboard bobble-head thingos, it's okay. You're not alone – and it doesn't have to stay like this.