This isn't just about tech workers. It applies to writers, accountants, nurses, and students. Every time you switch contexts—from email to spreadsheet, from conversation to typing—you lose a little bit of your soul. You feel frazzled. You feel like you ran a marathon but ended up exactly where you started. So, what is the solution? Going off the grid and living in a cabin? Probably not.
For the past decade, the productivity industrial complex has sold us a lie: that the human brain is a supercomputer capable of infinite parallel processing. They sold us the "tabs" metaphor. Ten tabs open? No problem. Twenty? You’re a rockstar. This isn't just about tech workers
So tomorrow morning, try this. When you sit down to work, pick one thing. Just one. Put on noise-canceling headphones (even if you play white noise). Hide your phone. And do that one thing until it is done. You feel frazzled
Every morning, we reach for our phones before our feet touch the floor. We scroll through emails while brushing our teeth. We listen to podcasts at 2x speed while driving. We sit in Zoom meetings while secretly Slack-ing a coworker about lunch. We have confused busy-ness with business , and we are burning out because of it. Going off the grid and living in a cabin
That discomfort is the feeling of a muscle growing. That twitch is the death rattle of your old, scattered self.