A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a weekend piece entitled In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop,
which focused on the stressful nature of blogging. Using our friend Marc Orchant's death and Om Malik's heart attack as examples, Matt Richel built a case for web journalism as the cause of certain health woes because of its non-stop, 24/7 real-time nature. There is no doubt that news blogging is stressful.
But it is not just blogging. Real-time anything is stressful. Take TV news, is Anderson Cooper not stressed? Looking broader,
what about air traffic controllers or traders on Wall Street? Any human being that has to make decisions in real-time will be under a lot of stress.
The problem is much wider than the blogosphere. My wife, who works as a project manager for a large pharmaceutical company, is also under constant pressure. My dad, who at 60 had to switch jobs and became a mechanical engineer for a small company in Pennsylvania is always stressed too. The problem is not with blogging, the problem is with the real-time, as-fast-as-possible approach to things. In this post, we will explore the nature of real-time and argue that for better or worse, it here to stay.
Capitalism is about opportunities. Whenever there is a gap, there is an opportunity to bridge it.
The classic newspaper business worked like this. People gathered news throughout the day and then once every 24 hours, committed what they had gathered to paper. That was good enough for a long time, but with the emergence of radio and television, and later of blogs and RSS, once per day seems like a joke. Clearly, we demand news more often than once per day. News bloggers in politics, world news,
and particularly technology, recognized that the old way of delivering news had a flaw - it was not real-time.
They turned the flaw into an opportunity.
Of course, this is not specific to blogging. During the first days of the war with Iraq we saw reporters embedded with the troops. Ridiculous? Perhaps. But it was also quite entertaining, because it was the news in real-time. The competition between the news channels guarantees the rise of real-time reporting. In the endless quest to out-do their competitors, stations have eventually arrived at real-time TV.
And news was not even the first industry to push for real-time. First, there was Wall Street. When I joined Goldman Sachs almost 15 years ago, there was already talk about the real-time clearance of trades. I confess that I am not sure if we are there yet today, but we must be really close. The competetive pressure on Wall Street, unlike any other, drives everything to be faster and faster. The drive for faster is what keeps the brokers and Wall Street technologists up at night.
News blogging is probably one of the most stressful occupations you can have. First, you have to watch the
crazy-fast moving, non-stop tech world all the time. News bloggers have thousands of feeds in their RSS readers. Staying on top
of all that is not easy. In addition, you have to write well. It is not just the story, its how you present it
that makes a difference. Creativity needs to be present whether you are sick or its rainy or you are simply not in the mood.
Every day you need to watch the world and re-invent yourself.
In a way, news blogging is like a mom and pop grocery store in that everyday you have to get up and service people no matter what. The difference, of course, is that blogging is highly intellectual and the pressure to deliver unique and brilliant news creates much more stress than one would have running a grocery store. Mike Arrington is quoted in the New York Times article saying that this kind of pressure is not sustainable. Of course it is not. No human being can process information in real-time indefinitely. We get sick and tired of it.
However, to attribute Marc's death or Om's heart attack to blogging is probably far-fetched. And to speculate that because of these two examples the entire news blogging sector is endangered is far-fetched as well. Tech news bloggers are passionate and energetic and they love what they are doing. Love and passion help them stay on top of the rapidly moving river of news. And also, as with any endeavor, humans adapt. Mike and Om aren't alone anymore. They now have awesome teams of people who help them, just like we have a team of people doing news here at ReadWriteWeb.
Yet, real-time is not something that is about to go away. Perhaps one of the most vivid
examples of how real-time is creeping into our culture is Twitter. Even a few years ago, the concept of constantly telling others about what you are up to would be considered absurd. Yet today, we not only
embrace it, we are in love with the idea. Chat and email no longer reflect our constant hunger for 'what is going on now?' Listening to radio is boring because it is not personalized.
Neither is TV. But Twitter gives us exactly the kind of real-time news
we love - personalized and short.
Lets face it, we are obsessed with real-time. We want more, and faster. It is not enough for me to have you tell me what you did yesterday. I want to know what you did 5 minutes ago. It is not enough for us to know that yesterday Microsoft made a bid for Yahoo! This is the kind of news we need to know as soon as it happens. We have entered an age in media where as soon as the news is created it needs to be channeled and broadcast to everyone. Real-time is not an accident. It is a direct consequence of our hunger to improve. Of course, we may be biting off more than we can chew.
The bad news is that real-time is not going away. We are not going to settle for less than right now.
This means that the future holds more and more stress. As we evolve into a society that demands more information
and more information processing immediately, we are also evolving into a society of people under constant stress.
The fact that computers are ubiquitous is making it all that much worse. Of course people were stressed last century as well, but in the seventies when you went home for the weekend you, relaxed. Nowadays? No way. There is no 30 minute
period in my life that I do not check email. Going off the grid is really hard for many of us. Real-time is not only stressful,
it is addictive.
Faster causes stress. So does the non-stop flow of information. When we are unable to fall asleep at night, we lie down stressed and thinking why? Why am I doing all of this? The tough part is that there is no other way. We do not know how to do what we do and not be stressed. So for better or worse, we are rushing forward through the sea of information towards more stress.
Back in 2000, a wonderful science writer James Gleick, wrote a book called Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything.
The topics that we touch on in this post are discussed much more deeply and much more eloquently in Gleick's book. The age of Faster is upon us
and it is not just blogging that's under the gun. All of us, our life style, and our families are rapidly changing under the pressure and
stress of real-time. Where is it all headed? Only time will tell. One thing is for sure - we need to be careful and mindful.
Please let us know your thoughts on the emerging faster culture, on the concept of real-time, and how it is creating stress in your life.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Faster - Why Constant Stress is Part of Our Future.
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really nice written article over the phase of the life.I feel we have to adapt to the changing environment,that way we can always be where we were used to be.I feel practice some personal practices to handle pressure or the sheer pace of life...get a rid in virtual of more than 180km/hr will let you think your own actions after that trip very slow :)...I felt that when I go to a place thru bike to do get things faster..where as when i walk and go to the place I tend to be less phased...so it is all about thinking fast...increasing the processor speed inside :)...offcourse..one have to develop it...thoughts->speech->action...if u want action to be swift your thoughts also be so stream lined and like a river swift
Posted by: Ganesh Kumaran | April 24, 2008 9:46 PMI disagree that it is going to go on forever. Everything goes into a cycle. We are going to create more and more stress in our life and then probably counter the stress with reduction mechanisms, Mediation techniques and Yoga. After a while we are going to sit back and feel that we need to cut back on unnecessary things that create stress.
Posted by: abhilash | April 24, 2008 10:26 PMIt's more stressful to live in third world country where all your friends and colleagues just don't get the idea of how this fast economy works.
Posted by: Robin | April 24, 2008 10:49 PMYes, there's demand for more, now. And most of that demand is silly and useless. How many things does the market need NOW? Very few. If I hear about a new Google acquisition a few hours later than someone else it's unlikely to actually matter to me. Yet we act like breaking that news ASAP is somehow important.
We also have a LOT of redundant delivery of services... the news sector does this a LOT. Again, look at a Google acquisition story... first, it's Google... it will be EVERYWHERE... so why does every tech blog on the planet report the same basic set of facts? Second, by reporting right away you're not offering any actual insight. IN fact, one of the reasons I read RWW is that your articles are more thoughtful and less bandwagonny.
We do this in software too... how many photo and video sharing sites are out there? And how many have anything really different from the others?
But, after all that, I suspect you're right Alex. There's a limit to how much we can do but the system will push us right to that limit... if we let it.
Posted by: rick gregory | April 24, 2008 10:57 PMAlex, I mean no offense but this is silly:
"Blogging ... creates much more stress than one would have running a grocery store."
"News blogging is probably one of the most stressful occupations you can have."
Grocery owners have to deal with physical costs and inventory, razor-thin margins, large, rapidly encroaching competitors, returns, and actual human beings who can't be dismissed with a click when they don't like you.
And on stress, how about cops, firefighters, ER doctors, health care workers, soldiers, and kindergarten teachers?
News bloggers get to work at home or wherever they like, have a virtually zero cost-of-goods, global distribution, can differentiate and compete in many ways, and can focus on mainly one task.
I agree with other parts of the article but can we keep some perspective?
Posted by: Dose of perspective | April 24, 2008 11:53 PMIn many ways I think the faster pace is an illusion. Try getting a decision out of someone!
There is a strata of the world that is not particularly accountable to any one. Fads and fancies are adopted and dropped.
The issues of organization remain the same. We need to have people "close up" who deal with fast cycle events and who thus don't have the overall perspective. We need someone back from events who can collate and detect patterns. And we need ways for them to communicate.
What the internet allows us to do is to be both redundant and to communicate laterally with greater ease. For a well written account, look for the puppet-master's story on "I love bees". So many people will be contributing information that it is OK for the me to come-and-go. They will also generate ideas between them. We still need 'puppet-masters' in the back ground - amongst the contributors and amongst people who are engineering the game.
Its a personal choice where you play and you may also choose to play different parts at different times or on different games.
Posted by: Jo | April 25, 2008 12:50 AMAgaints Stress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZuxL15LwJw
Posted by: vicente corona | April 25, 2008 1:05 AMNews wires were covering real-time news decades before blogging was invented.
People love to boast about how stressful their jobs are in order to feel important....and bloggers really love to tell each other how important they are.
Yawn.
Posted by: Carl | April 25, 2008 1:19 AMI disagree whith the notion that the future holds more stress. Stress has nothing to do with beeing busy or placing high demands on yourself, or having to follow information flows etc.
Stress is the sense of not beeing able to keep the commitments we make, big or small, with others or ourself. It's a selfinflicted sense of guilt. The constant nagging feeling of "I should do" and "I'm out of control".
It's not the world or the system og the technology that causes the stress, it's our own inability to effectively manage information and renegotiate our commitments. The feeling of not "being on top of it all".
I therefore believe that the future will hold less stress for most people, as we continously will develop better information and commitment system.
The best one around currently is David Allens "Getting Things Done", but we will se much bigger developements as software and integretation among devices gets better and better - and as companies and schools see the value in sophisticated productivity management.
Posted by: Jeppe | April 25, 2008 1:23 AMTechnology has made us slaves to time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRyJ36rjuTs
Posted by: Ina | April 25, 2008 3:15 AMTechnology has made us slaves to time.
People are becoming too engrossed in productivity and efficiency.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRyJ36rjuTs
Posted by: Ina | April 25, 2008 3:15 AMGreat subject, but not very good conclusion. Some people will live fast, but others will prefer slow.
At the moment, people are still living in the mindset of the mass production age. That is, 'do the same thing better and faster'. The success may be large, but you are really stressed.
The ultimate solution is to find your own niche, so that speed does not really matter because you don't have a 100 competitors. The success may be smaller, but you are less stressed.
It is your choice. I choose the latter, and I predict we'll see trends toward it. That is one of the central topics of my book in process.
Posted by: Slow Blogger | April 25, 2008 4:02 AMthis story is not true.
Posted by: gregory | April 25, 2008 4:18 AM> There is no 30 minute period in my life that
> I do not check email. Going off the grid is
> really hard for many of us. Real-time is not
> only stressful, it is addictive.
Now that's just silly. Every computer and cellphone and blackberry has an "off" button. I use them all the time. In fact, I think I'll use them right now. Bye bye!
Posted by: Marcello | April 25, 2008 4:56 AMA couple of thoughts:
1. We really need to disconnect some times each day, espcially if you have a stressful life. (You, too, Alex!)
A few quick ideas: use the off button on your device. Use an auto responder on your email if you have to, to set expectations with others and give yourself permission. (Two words: Tim Ferriss.) Get outside and enjoy life, even if it is just for a 30 minute walk. Instead of checking email or the web the first thing when you wake up, invest in yourself and your health: go for a 30 minute walk (wake up and move, instead of wake up and email). How many of us here exercise each day? Walk 30 minutes? Do yoga or meditate? Feel like you don't have time? You CAN do it. Take back your life.
2. Why are we distracting ourselves with increasing information and multi-tasking, what is the underlying reason? What's missing in your life that you're trying to distract yourself from? I'll be writing more about this on my blog, but I'll mention briefly here that you will never e-mail, Twitter, YouTube, surf the web, [insert whatever your distraction of the moment is] yourself to feeling fulfilled in your life. There are solutions to all this anxiety we're feeling, and it isn't more and faster distraction.
3. Paraphrasing Dale Carnegie from 1948, and this is just as true today if not more true:
Those who don't know how to fight stress, die young. Is he talking about YOU? Could be...
Posted by: DEckoff | April 25, 2008 6:32 AM> There is no 30 minute period in my life that
> I do not check email. Going off the grid is
> really hard for many of us. Real-time is not
> only stressful, it is addictive.
I am unconvinced about the uniquely stressful life of top bloggers. I don't think their stress is different from any other very driven, successful person.
However, regarding speed, I do think it is a one way street - and ain't ever going back. Time to information is the ultimate advantage in capitalism - and even if you choose not to do it - someone else will.
So it is a choice - check email every 30 minutes for the rest of your life - or dial it down just a bid and accept that you're not going to beat those who are willing to do that.
Tom O'Brien
Posted by: humanvoice.wordpress.com@Tom O'Brien (#17):
Is the choice really A) check email every 30 minutes for the rest of your life; or B) dial it down just a bit (but accept that you're not going to beat those who are willing to do that)?
I would propose that you can effectively accomplish both, by delegating, automating, reducing, batching and filtering.
The reality is the vast majority of email we receive is not time sensitive.
For the few issues that are time sensitive and require your immediate attention, set up a different system than everything going into one bucket that you need to check every 30 minutes (or faster) for the rest of your life.
This abosolutely CAN be done.
Posted by: DEckoff | April 25, 2008 6:53 AMAnyone old enough to remember life before FedEx? When you could relax, safe in the knowledge that hyper critical package of poor earnings reports you just sent to company headquarters would take a week to get there. That week was like a vacation from reality , huh?
Posted by: Todd | April 25, 2008 7:05 AMI think all of these tools and constant access levels give us flexibility, not so much stress. At any time you can control the flow of information and digest at a pace that is suitable for you, then you can dip out. Set your own parameters for what works and when, and stick to them. For example, I ignore the blackberry when I am out to dinner with family. It can be stressful if you let it get to you. Then again, I don't blog for a living ;)
Posted by: Adam Cohen | April 25, 2008 7:15 AMThere is another way. Don't do it - it's that simple.
Iskold's analysis, while reflective of the current state of things, is rather bleak and his prediction fatalistic.
It is all mostly addiction and the need to know what everyone is doing every five minutes is still real-time absurd not to mention a waste of time.
Posted by: Glenn Taylor | April 25, 2008 7:24 AMGood post Alex. Some of the comments made by people above are harsh, but also do ring a lot of truth.
Specific to blogging, it's funny how we all complain of information overload, and yet the content creators complain about burnout. The content creators have a revenue model that favours hits - break the news, and you get more pageviews. More pageviews, makes you can dictate higher CPMS. Advertisers pay higher CPMS when there is a larger audience, because they think they are getting better value. But give it a decade, and I think this entire model will change. The online content industry needs to evolve a lot more, as its adopted the offline world's model which had some savage weaknesses.
I touch on this issue specifically on a recently blog post: http://liako.biz/2008/04/information-overload-we-need-a-supply-side-solution/
Posted by: Elias Bizannes | April 25, 2008 7:34 AMThe argument is well-phrased, but I disagree with a lot of it.
News reporting has always been a stressful profession. This isn't new. Working for wire services, newspapers, or news agencies doesn't lend itself to a 9 to 5, Mon. to Fri. schedule, especially if you want to have a well-written, sourced, and edited story ready for publication by deadline. This is why newspapers, Reuters, the AP, etc. have their editorial staff working in shifts throughout the night and week. Yeah, there's more staff covering more stuff rather than one lone righteous blogger rehashing something TechCrunch farted out, but still.
Yes, blogging changes the game by making the news cycle more instantaneous -- and I think that's a fine thing to do -- but if you walked into one of the vanishing bullpens at a newspaper you wouldn't find some reporter taking the time to blog about how their job is stressful and compare it to being a small-business owner -- there's no time because there's a dealine coming up and an editor who is going to be super pissed off if no stories come in.
If you aren't willing to do the job without whining then find something else to do. The CPMs for blogging suck anyway.
Posted by: Jeff | April 25, 2008 8:09 AMA few thoughts:
1. The word "stress" has become a catch-all for all kinds of things that are unrelated in their causes. Stress because of being overloaded is different from the stress produced by a failing business or an irate customer (comment #5). We need to disambiguate the context of the stress actively otherwise you can't have a meaningful discussion around it.
Posted by: Basab Pradhan | April 25, 2008 10:00 AM2. Overload stress, which is what this post is about, is caused by faster information flows, higher productivity tools and consequently higher expectations on work output. This applies to bloggers and all kinds of knowledge workers. Some of us take these higher expectations of output upon ourselves, some have it thrust upon them by their managers or team mates.
3. Faster, is not necessarily better. Overload stress produces health issues, undoubtedly, but in addition there are other costs. Personal costs of course, but also professional costs. You tend not to think deeply about issues. You tend to focus narrowly on subject areas (the stuff in your feedreaders). That makes all of us experts in some things but unable to develop new interests.
perhaps you have heard, there is no such thing as a stressful situation, there are only stressful reactions.
driving the first time, huge sensory overload, now we do it without thinking.
our mind has a million thoughts a day, we know to ignore most
quiet mind solves everything
Posted by: gregory | April 25, 2008 10:08 AMIf you want to see a job that's 24/7 realtime decision making, try being a mom of 4.
Newsblogging would be a relaxing vacation for me.
Posted by: Wacky Hermit | April 25, 2008 10:40 AMIt's about choosing your poison. Or, your life. I have recently started turning my email OFF for 2-3 hour periods during the day so I can concentrate on the work at hand. Funny how the earth hasn't ended or my life has gone on just fine. But I am not constantly distracted.
The point is that technology should support what we do, not get in the say. I have a hard time being off-grid, but I am slowly building in time when I am NOT on-grid.
And I have to say, it has reduced my stress.
IMO, unless there is a reason you have to be on call 24/7, turn it off for a few hours every day. You'll do better once you get back to it.
Posted by: silverfernWhile I don't disagree that stress and faster are here to stay, I wonder if we're less intelligent due to the lack of time we spend pondering what we're constantly inundated with? Deep reflection seems lost in todays "non-stop" world. While knowing about world changing events in "real time" is important, news regarding the latest gadget or acquisition are not. Learning to decipher what to focus on and internalize the meaning of news events is a skill that we should all develop, as blogging is a result of too short of attention spans and not enough demand for quality reporting. Here's hoping that the stresses of our faster society separate the wheat from the chaff in online reporting, leaving us all with wider viewpoints, and possibly, fewer unnecessary distractions.
Posted by: Ben | April 25, 2008 7:52 PM"check email every 30 minutes for the rest of your life"
Seriously, do you really believe that's the path to success? Do you think Warren Buffet does that? How about a younger mogul like Sergey Brin?
Email is just an input, and most of the time it's not important. If you think focusing on inputs like that is the path to success, more power to you, but I've found that the more often I shift context, the less productive I am.
Posted by: Derek Scruggs | April 26, 2008 7:36 AMDropping vowels could make things easier, xcpt fr th wrd "easier (sr?). Many of grew up in the "stop and smell the roses" era where we were made aware that life was passing us by; yet things got worse. Maybe, just maybe, people like to be busy and not have time to do nothing. The biggest thing that began this go-go culture was the end of the "blue laws" which caused almost all retail business to stop at 5:oo saturday night until Monday morning. Remember, Sundays, no stores -- not even grocery. nothing. you could not shop on Saturday night or Sunday. anywhere. That was the beginning of no time for...whatever.
Posted by: robyn | April 28, 2008 7:25 AMOur company runs a 24/7 data center. When we first launched, I had an employee who did not know how to leave or how to go home. If blogging is going to become a 24/7 business -- hire bloggers who you TRUST and agree on shifts to work. Pass off developing stories, work shifts and when your shift is over - GO HOME. If one person starts to believe he, or she, IS THE BRAND... Then this become self-imposed stress and they will flame out very quickly. Good luck to all the bloggers adjusting to this new format.
Posted by: BHays | April 28, 2008 1:31 PMPlease consider this definition of stress: It's our interpretation of external events that produces internal distortion or strain. In other words it has to do with our perception. Change our perception and we change how our body responds to stress.
Whe we are stressed, our body produces 1400 stress hormones resulting in many side effects including the inability to fall asleep. Unless we learn to transform our stressors it can lead to serious health concerns which may not show up immediately, but over time can wreck havoc on our lives.
There is a very elegant and simple solution and it can be utilized 24/7, right in the moment, so you are no longer uttering, screaming, moaning such phrases as "it is addictive...The tough part is that there is no way. We do not know how to dow what we do and not be stressed."
There is a way...I know, I used to say those same things myself and have turned my life around so that I am the most joyful I have been in decades.
Imagine how it would be for you when you finally did go on vacation you were truly relaxing and enjoying it as opposed to taking the first week to unwind and recover.
Posted by: Marianna Paulson | May 12, 2008 10:21 AM