The Big Blur Phenomenom

In business the expectation is to be on call 24/7, or as one of my top executive friends says, 25/8, always with blackberry/iphone in hand. Saturday and Sunday shouldn't even be called the weekend because for so many of us, the week never ends. We take our work home. We take it everywhere we go. Meetings are booked back to back with no time to spare, face to face interaction has been replaced by email and everything is expected to be completed in a nanosecond. Corporate cutbacks and this lousy economy mean fewer people are doing more work. At the same time, the demand for quantifiable return on investment has been pushed to the limit and monitored like never before. All this is happening while the cost of doing business is increasing and the margins of success are decreasing.

Personal life is not much different. The phone is always on, the calendar is always full, everything is expected to be completed in a nanosecond, the cost of living is increasing and the margin of successfully getting everything done is decreasing.

Whether at work or in personal life, we tend to move from one obligation to the next, often moving so fast that things get left incomplete because of scheduling, deadlines and unexpected interruptions. I call it the big blur phenomenon because we are moving so fast that there is little distinction between the things that define our lives. As a result, we often miss what’s most important. Days merge into weeks, weeks merge into months and time flies faster and faster. It’s no wonder that we are stressed out and in need of a break!