Worth Reading – The mental toll of continuous transformation
This is something worth thinking about:
Today’s organisations evolve faster than people can recover.
https://www.thehrdirector.com/features/health-and-wellbeing/mental-toll-continuous-transformation/
I talk about change here often because the tech world is evolving at a ridiculous speed. We are challenged at every turn to keep up with new tools, new skills, and technology that we couldn’t have imagined when we started our careers.
What we don’t often talk about is the limit of our ability to keep adapting. To quote the article:
Much of corporate wellbeing focuses on resilience, yet resilience is often misunderstood. It does not mean absorbing unlimited pressure. It means recovering after periods of strain. Constant adaptation prevents recovery and therefore depletes resilience rather than strengthening it.
This feels like a small hand being raised in the corner of a deafening room, trying to point out the obvious. We’re only human. We need a break. That unsettled feeling you get every day at work might not be imposter syndrome or everyday stress, but the sheer exhaustion of knowing that you can never pause and focus on getting work done. The skills and knowledge you have now will be worthless tomorrow.
I think this is why so many people hate the idea of Generative AI, because it’s a never-ending cycle of change. There is no point at which you can get good at using AI and remain effective with it for any length of time. It will change. There will be new models, new features, and new use cases to explore. There will be no rest. There will only be the latest adaptations.
What leaders aren’t asking is when does that constant drumbeat of change become too much? When do your most engaged employees who take on every new challenge hit the wall and become your most unengaged employees? We weren’t made to be resilient in the face of change every day. There needs to be time to recover.
We’re losing that as fast as technology is changing, and that’s a lot of burnout to go around.
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