Perhaps the unnerving feeling that comes from having the freedom to do as you please helps explain why 72 per cent of hybrid workers in a recent survey reported finding this set-up emotionally exhausting – higher than both those who work completely remotely and those who work solely from the office.
And the relentless expansion of the digital realm, a trend that pre-existed the pandemic but was accelerated by it, must also be a factor in what we might call the Great Overwhelm. These days we are not just battling to reach inbox-zero; we’re also trying, futilely, to get to podcast-episode-zero, TV-series-zero and Instagram-story-zero.
Everything is in fact all too bountiful in the online land of infinite possibilities. This lack of scarcity not only creates a problem for the value proposition of digital matter – one of the core issues for cryptocurrencies – but is also just utterly exhausting.
Oh, you finished that show? Here are ten similar ones for you to try! Oh, you’re looking for single men in your area aged 30 to 45? Here are 10,000 of them! (There are 10,000 of you too, of course.)
No wonder the move to in-person dating events. And the growing number – over 1 million – of those who fork out US$5 a month or so to read a single Substack writer’s output rather than subscribe to a newspaper that employs hundreds. You might not be able to finish FT.com, but you can easily complete a Substack.
It is worth remembering that the grass on the other side is often rather more yellowy-brown than we imagine it: Finding an excuse to cancel social plans is quite different from not being allowed to make them in the first place. But some of us are still struggling to know what to do with so much of a good thing.
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