Always on, never off: How to flip the script on technostress

It’s time to transform the way you consume - and create - content.

By Mark Jones

There’s a moment when it hits me - I'm lost again. It's 10:30 pm, and I'm deep down the Instagram rabbit hole. Dang it! I really should be getting off to sleep.

It’s my Achilles heel. I love learning new stuff, so the endless scroll through a curated mix of storytelling, AI, politics, comedians, super-funny prank shows from Japanese TV, and documentaries is super compelling. Sound familiar?

The thing is, most of us pay constant partial attention to a mix of social feeds, news sources and a steady stream of work emails. It's how we live these days, right?

And for some reason, we can't seem to walk without staring at our phones (also guilty). No wonder many of us feel overwhelmed and perhaps a bit guilty: 'Wait! I should be sleeping right now, not stressing about this stuff!'

Well, it turns out there’s a name for that feeling: Technostress. (And no, I’m not talking about 90’s dance music - if you're old enough.)

So, what’s technostress?

Technostress is the burnout, brain-fog, and overwhelm we can experience trying to keep up with stuff - the latest news, industry trends, work shenanigans. Or it could be one blog, video or podcast too much.

I think of it as the cost of constant connectivity, being 'always on.' Sorry, it turns out surfing the web isn't free. There’s a very human toll.

Strangely we keep learning, forgetting and the rediscovering this cost of connectivity. Technostress is a term first coined by psychologist Craig Brod way back in 1984 when the world was full of green screens and mainframe terminals. The world was also black and white, at least that's what I tell my kids on purpose.

Technostress is of course a contraction of two words - techno and stress - which is quite interesting when you think about it:

• Techno is our entire digital universe. It's always in a hurry - innovation never sleeps.

• Then we’ve got stress. By definition also in a hurry. Cardiologist Dr Meyer Friedman called stress ‘hurry sickness’ even further back in the 1970s. Shockingly, he found too much busyness was bad for your heart.

No wonder the slow movement is popular. Slow food, slow living, doing nothing.

It's time leaders got perspective

I’ve been thinking about technostress through the lens of the stories we tell ourselves as leaders.

Technostress is clearly just a symptom of living online. But the cause,? Our digital lifestyle. The volume of content we consume, and our dwell time - the time we spend ruminating on the big stories of the day.

Telling stories is also stressful

Leaders are also stressed because they're more visible now than ever. Forget the idea of a mysterious CEO and faceless corporation.

We expect nuanced, thoughtful communication inside and outside the organisation. The CEO should be Chief Storyteller, as I was in my agency. In fact, there's growing recognition storytelling is an essential skill, right up there with critical thinking, decision-making and casting a strategic vision.

The trouble is, we’re not all super confident corporate storytellers.

Sure, AI is coming to help, but in general there’s a mental and emotional load we carry when it comes to storytelling and communications. If you’re trying to grow your organisation or personal brand (because you need another job after this one), you’re probably thinking about:

• What platform should I publish which piece of content?

• Are my ideas relevant?

• Should I be using more AI? Less AI?

• What happens if just a few people engage?

• And let’s not forget the classic dilemma: How else can you say, “Hello, I haven’t posted in a while…”

Leaders often outsource this work, but from experience the mental load remains. You have to review and approve your agency or VA’s work: Are they getting it right? Are they missing something? Are they making me look good?

The unspoken truth of technostress

Here’s the truth nobody tells you about this issue: it doesn’t stop. There’s no finish line unless you create one!

There’s always more content to produce, more stories to read, more trends to understand.

I remember trying to keep up with RSS feeds back in the early 2000s. Every magazine and digital publication had an RSS feed you were supposed to read in a content aggregator. Wow, that was overwhelming. I could spend all day scanning and reading items in my feeds but they kept filling back up like email!

Flip the script on technostress

That leads us to what’s next. We need to take a breath and flip the script.

It’s time to tell yourself a new story if it feels like you’ve been failing to keep up.

Rest assured nobody is fully keeping up to speed. There’s always someone or something going faster than you. The better question is: what do I need to know?

Filtering

A good start is filtering, one of the magic arts in business and leadership. It’s about understanding the signal-to-noise ratio. There’s lots of noise out there. Lots of people with ideas and endless angles on the same basic story.

But what's the signal? It's that one idea, a point of clarity or sense of meaning you can distill amidst the chaos.

With that in mind, here are some practical tips to overcome late-night technostress or that feeling of creeping overwhelm.

1. Reconnect with your 'why'

We love talking about our Sinek-inspired why, but talk is cheap. Doing, or not doing, is everything.

Ask yourself on the fly: Does this work or activity fit into my lifestyle or work. Is it helping me become the person I want to become, in my own eyes?

My golden rule applies here: when in doubt, chuck it out!

2. Delegate and automate anything you can

This isn’t hustle culture; it’s survival. You don’t have to be a one-person content production studio. Use scheduling tools. Hire a VA if you can. Divide and conquer with your team.

Let AI sketch out your ideas (of course I used AI for draft ideas!).

3. Take time out

Seriously. Go dark, take a digital sabbatical. Step away from the feeds - they’ll still be there when you get back. Your audience won’t forget you if you take a breather - in fact, they’ll relate to you more.

A final thought.

When I wrote my book on business storytelling, Beliefonomics, a core theme I explored was the idea of truly understanding your audience.

When you’re producing content or messages for anyone - colleagues, family, friends, customers - it’s important to really understand how they feel and what they believe about the world.

In this case, the secret to understanding technostress is taking time to think about the audience of one. That is, YOU.

We’ve each got our own limits, capacity and interest areas.

Mindfulness, self-awareness and other positive approaches to mental wellbeing must be informed by an understanding of your drivers, needs and wants.

For example, I consume lots of content because learning is one of my strengths. It builds my sense of wellbeing. But I hate to admit that even I’ve got my limits. Intuitively I know them well. I don’t always get it right, of course, but I’m much better at unplugging these days.

What about you? If technostress is your reality, and you’re wrestling with the stories you tell yourself, what’s going on beneath the surface?

Maybe it’s time to write a better story. Or at the very least - and I'm speaking to myself here - start with putting that phone away more often!

Onwards!

Mark

Hey, you got to the end! Nice work.

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