It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If we stop, we lose on the spot. Carroll's line is what this era feels like. Keynes predicted a 15 hour working week; what arrived was 15 hours a day, and rest that has to justify itself by making us more productive.
ภาษาอื่น / Other language: English · ไทย
It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. — Lewis Carroll
This line is exactly what I feel right now.
If we stop, we lose on the spot. There is no choice but to keep running. And the only way to win is to run even faster.
So when do we get to rest?
We can rest, so that we have the energy to keep running, right?
But hold on! Is that right?? Why has the reason for resting turned into: so that we don't burn out and hit game over?
Back in the 19th century there was a slogan:
"Eight hours' labour, Eight hours' recreation, Eight hours' rest" — Robert Owen
But the way this era feels, it has turned into: any hour we are not asleep has to be put to maximum use!
Which of course means that if our head hits the pillow and sleep doesn't come at once, it registers as enormously inefficient.
The only thought left is: if I don't fall asleep now, within these three minutes, tomorrow I won't be fresh, and I won't be able to work at full capacity!
And yet, about a century ago, Keynes predicted that as technology advanced life would get easier, and the working week would come down to just 15 hours: so few that the worry would be not knowing what to do with all the time.
But what actually happened is that those 15 hours turned out not to be per week. They are per day.
When one part of us badly wants a break while the voice in our head insists the time has to be used efficiently, our clever brain finds a way to let the two live together: there is no need to feel guilty about letting ourselves sleep a little, because sleep produces benefits too, and it is good for overall productivity!
Exercise, hobbies, any of it, all of them need a reason, an account of what benefit they produce. Exercise, and we fall ill less often. Read a book, and it builds vocabulary and cultivates empathy.
The reason that we simply like something, that it makes us happy, does not carry enough weight for our brain to accept.
In the AI era this gets worse. Each of us has tens or hundreds of projects to run, and each project means supervising ten or more agents.
Instead of having more time because AI is helping, it has turned into: we have to produce several times more than before, because AI is helping!
And if there is time left over (the kind where the battery isn't already flat the moment our head hits the pillow), it goes on keeping up with the papers and the various labs' posts.
As for rest? Rest is nothing more than the road to being able to work more.
Instead of work being one important part of life, our life has become the infrastructure that supports getting the work done. 😥
Hmm. Or are we burning out already?
Translated from the Thai original by Claude.
