Why are you so tired?

By Angela Atkins, co-founder, Elephant Group.

When you’re working long hours, it’s understandable that you get tired and burnt out. But what about when you’re not? What about when you’ve got good work-life balance and are working reasonable hours. Why do you still feel exhausted all the time?

I’ve been considering this, as I’ve been feeling this same tiredness, and I think I’ve figured it out. It’s because the day-to-day stuff has got really hard. And time consuming. And frustrating!

Technology has theoretically made life easier. And for a number of years that was true. I remember around 10 years ago when apps were really easy to use, internet banking worked well, passwords didn’t have to be so complex you can never remember them and when there were lot of companies doing cool new things to make life great (think Airbnb, uber, UberEATS, Expedia, Netflix etc).

But now all that tech has become so securitised and so regulated, and IT teams have gone back to trying to protect their systems from the users at all costs – so the users often can’t actually use the systems they’ve paid for.

Your password now has to be so many letters, capital and lower case, and special characters – it is ridiculous. My husband and I now have code words for each of our passwords so that we can remember them!! And even when you log in and get it right, you then have to be sent a code to your phone and have 15 seconds to enter it, or you’re not allowed to log in. Or you have to link it to your google or facebook account, giving them access to everything you do. Then it’s time to prove you’re not a robot with tests that are so difficult you actually start to question whether you are a human at all. And then when you go to use the app again, it now needs updating. And logs you out.

This morning I tried to make a payment online. After much grinding and re-entering the same information multiple times, and clicking that I’m not a robot, which kept expiring and cancelling all my details – I finally gave up and emailed them to ask for a payment link (and a minor miracle they actually had any way to contact them). 15 minutes gone, and nothing achieved.

Then I wanted to change the location of a meetup group that I run. It kept erroring. I googled how to do it and there was much conflicting advice. I deleted everyone from the group. That didn’t help. Then I tried to do it in the app (I’d been working through this on my laptop on their main website as that usually works better). The app needed updating, then logged me out, and then my password would no longer work. I reset it, entered codes, finally got back in. It still wouldn’t change location. I had to delete the group, and set it up again. 45 minutes gone, and nothing achieved as now I have to wait to see if they will approve the exact group I’ve been running already, but just with a different location.

And the thing is …. everything is like this now.

Staying at hotel recently I used the whatsapp to ask for more towels. It was a chatbot. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand your query’ it said. ‘I need more towels’ I messaged. ‘Please rephrase your request’ it said. ‘Bring me towels you stupid chatbot!’ I messaged. ‘You will need to contact customer service between 9am and 9.15am on Thursday mornings only. Extra towels are $8.99’ it answered. It was Friday. And it did know what I wanted if it could tell me the price of towels!! I am exaggerating slightly but we got no extra towels.

All of this is changing how we react with the world. Anyone under about 30 has grown up in a world where they have been lied to their whole lives. They can’t get into sites they’ve paid for. When they pay for no ads, they still get ads. They don’t get things delivered when the company said they would be. Products aren’t as pictured. Companies don’t comply with legislation. And there is no-one to complain to, because we’ve got rid of human customer service. Younger generations have learnt to accept this but it must have skewed their world view and view of humanity.

Those of us who remember this wasn’t how it used to be, have an extra layer of sadness that this is what we’ve built.

Yes all of these problems are first world problems. But when companies act so unethically, when they make accessing what you’ve paid for so difficult, when they make solving any issue you have so time consuming and often unachievable – they are making us all knackered. That’s why we’re all so tired.

I don’t know how we make it stop. With AI it looks like it’s going to get worse, rather than better.

So all we can do, is look at what we can influence.

If you work in HR, or learning, or you manage a team – can you make the processes at work easy to use? Can you try and reduce the lies and frustration we’re all feeling? Many of the modules in our Certificate programmes look at how you can use design thinking to transform your processes, write your policies engagingly, make things EASIER. That what we’ve tried to do at Elephant. To make it easy to register for our training, to provide support and coaching from our team who are all real human beings!!

IT teams – please look at how you could make it easier for us all to access systems that we’ve paid for, and have extremely complicated passwords for!! HR and learning teams – please look at your LMS and intranet and policies and processes and see how you can streamline them, and make them a pleasure to use! Managers – have a look at what systems your team is using and ask them how you could make things work better.

If we collaborate and try and find ways to make using technology easier – maybe we’ll suddenly all have a little more energy again. We won’t be feeling so burnt out all the time.

I’d love to hear if you manage to achieve this and any success you have!