vesterberg.se

We went to Spain for a week in April last year and I had to tailor the flying route and other things. Today you can manage much by yourself by using internet. Self-service is nice, but you are faced with many choices and much details. It can be overwhelming. At work and in our private life, we have to handle an ever increasing amount of information. We make more decisions in a week than people did in a life-time hundred years ago and as a result many these days are suffering from informational stress.

Complexity

The human being can handle only a limited amount of complexity. We as individuals have different limits, and if we exceed this limit for some time it will affect us very negatively.

Quality

I can’t help comparing it with software engineering. Try to follow me; In order to cope with the complexity of today’s programs; we encapsulate or hide the details when we build a program. We move functionality into small components and build bigger components out of the small ones. We try to deal with things at a higher level. The nitty-gritty details can kill the quality of an application.

In the same way, to ensure quality in our own lives, we have to watch out for the details. The details and dependencies can become a nightmare. It might be so already in your life. Information stress undermines relationships and makes us blind to what is withering away. We have an internal limit of what we can handle and we have to be kind to ourselves and respect that limit. To build a life with quality, we need to delegate and let go of details. Let’s do that before stress kills us and we get burned out.

Prioritizing

Some choices are more important than others. Some details just have to be left to someone else to be taken care of. These days we have many gadgets and they have to be maintained. Let’s throw away some things! We have many activities and the schedule is crowded. Let’s throw away some things! Imagine how your life would be with a simpler lifestyle.

The Juggler

We can be like the juggler that adds one ball and then one more. He begins to drop balls, but do not notice and keeps on adding balls. We have to learn to know our capacity, so that when we begin to drop balls, we notice it and do something about it. Every now and then we ought to take pause and reflect and listen to our family or workmates. When we become easily irritated, it’s a sign that balls are rolling on the floor.

Help from the outside

New kind of services emerges; information brokers. We can get much information from the web, but sometimes we need to go to a travel agency and meet a friendly person, describe our desires and put the details in his or her hands. There will always be a place for service by humans. Man can never be replaced by machines or programs.