Tag: “Science”

It’s seven o’clock in the evening. You haven’t moved a single box, you haven’t run, and you haven’t carried anything heavier than a cell phone. And yet, you feel that heavy, almost physical exhaustion that you normally associate with a day of house moving or a long workout. You sit down on the couch and don’t even have the energy to decide what to have for dinner. Why are you so tired?

1. The traditional separation: a cultural tradition more than half a century old

In 1983, psychologist Lisanne Bainbridge coined the term automation paradox to describe a seemingly contradictory phenomenon: the more sophisticated and reliable an automated system becomes, the more crucial human contributions become in order for it to function successfully. Paradoxically, at the same time that automation reduces routine workload, it also increases the importance of human skills when the system fails or encounters unforeseen situations.

If you are like me, you’ve probably learned to organize and manage your life through your intuition, listening to some advice, trying things, getting some things wrong and others right, until you have found a system that more or less works for you.

It is a reality that nowadays, unconsciously but relentlessly, we do nothing but train our brain to reduce its attention span. Our environment has become a great cacophony full of distractions and it is frankly difficult to ignore all the noise for a long time.