Getting past inbox of anxiety and distress

If email anxiety is consuming you, follow Newport for possible resolutions.

Until it popped up on my computer screen recently I couldn't have ever sensed if something as useful as an email was making us miserable. Curated by Washington University Professor Cal Newport, the message suggests that sending and receiving messages come for a price that we hadn't bargained for. Newport backs himself with survey data and clinical studies to prove that cheaper mode of incessant communication guarantees our misery. Do emails stacked in my inbox generate anxious moments? it does by effecting both our productivity and our mental health. If nothing, it undervalues the concentration of mind to produce valuable output. 

Nearly three decades into emailing in the country may have cost the postal services a great deal but not without letting email users like you and me remain in perpetual low-grade anxiety, and that too unknowingly. Could it be the intangible cost of relying on instant communication that we don't mind skipping a meal but rarely let checking the mailbox elude us. One may shrug it aside as an incidental side effect of a compulsive in-box habit but in reality it may be much more serious than that. And, facts tend to prove it so.

Using time-tracking software, researchers at the University of California found that employees of a large company checked their inboxes an average of 77 times a day, with the heaviest user checking more than 400 times daily. Psychologists contend that such involuntary action induces a heavy cost in terms of mental energy, reducing cognitive performance while creating a sense of exhaustion and reduced efficacy. These dual reactions - admiration of instant communication and detestation due to email burnout - leave many knowledge workers in a state of frustrated resignation. The unfortunate mismatch may seem unavoidable.  

However, it has emerged as a serious concern in recent times. Enacted in France in 2007, a new labor law gives email users in offices the so-called right to disconnect. Companies with fifty or more employees were required to negotiate specific policies about the use of e-mail after work hours, with the goal of reducing the time workers spent in their in-boxes during the evening or over the weekend. One of its kind, the law aims to reduce burnout of employees, which is more relevant now as the shift toward a more frenetic work-from-home makes life miserable. Not sure if it is being noticed elsewhere, though. 

Our compulsive relationship with email needs serious rethinking, Newport incisively argues in his new book A World Without Email. Since we can't get away from it given our evolutionary obsession with social interaction, the need to reduce the tortuous cycle of increased email workload invariably causing frustrating misunderstandings and confused exchanges has never been more compelling. Far from improving human condition, however, this efficient mode of communication is causing uncontrolled distress to most of us. Look around and one will find compelling evidence for renegotiating our engagement with emails.   

Even if one were to disagree, there are numerous studies which prove that the need to be constantly connected is associated with suboptimal health outcomes. Little gets realized that the more one spends time on email,  the higher is one’s stress for that hour. I have reasons to suspect that much deeper forces are at play in generating our mismatch with this tool, driving us nuts even if we have serious intentions of ignoring an email or a potential connection. Ironically, we have been condemned to ignore the source of discontent that, if properly managed, stands to improve our work output.  .   

The compulsion of communicating instantaneously notwithstanding, we have been reduced to human routers of digitized information. Just because it’s possible for us to send and receive messages incessantly through our waking hours doesn’t mean that it is a sustainable way to exist. Need it be said that the sheer volume of communication generated by modern professional email degrades our traditional social circuits, if it hasn't done so already. Unrestricted reliance on email has eroded the emotional content of human exchanges. Technology is indeed turning us into zombies.      

The trouble is that not many seem to be complaining, but for those who have been at the receiving end of it. An employee was recently devastated after receiving an email from his employer which read, 'We are still not sure how the office will run without you from next week'. If that wasn't less demeaning and distressing, the message carried a smiley with the signature, and was copied to all other employees' of the organisation. So much for speed and convenience at the cost of degenerating human emotions and feelings.  Unless we open our eyes to the emerging new reality, we will get consumed by technology if we aren't already!  

A World Without Email
by Cal Newport
Penguin UK
Extent.296. Price. Rs 699.  

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine on Aug 15, 2021.

On the periphery of change

Seeking change beyond sheer material progress underscores the need for placing dignity and freedom ahead of the prevailing ideology of development.  

Can a solitary heroic deed by one among them uplift the entire community from its century-old demeaning tag as rat-eaters? Could conversion of the culture of pig-rearing into a thriving business move the marginalized into centre stage in society? Has political representation in recent times contributed to giving the habitual drunk an agency to lift themselves out of the hierarchical social construct? Dasrath Manjhi’s landmark efforts in cutting through the hillock with a mere borer and a hammer; Babu Majhi’s success with conversion of pig-rearing tradition into a roaring business; and, Jitan Manjhi’s drawing political capital in the caste-dominated politics has the making of a legend but without rendering any corrective narrative to the stigmatized image of their community of the Musahars who have sizeable population in Bihar, and limited numbers in the neighboring states of Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal. Five chapters in this thin volume empathize with the lived realities of the Musahars who find themselves at the crossroads of human development, marred as much by the denial of development as their own culture of resistance to the process of enforced change. 

Counting them as one among many of its unintended victims, The Marginalized Self offers a well-reasoned critique on the project of development that contributes to the phenomenon of underdevelopment leading to further marginalization of the excluded. It is in this context that iconic Dasrath Manjhi, the mountain man, had exhorted his fellow community members to take cognizance of their own underdevelopment in getting beyond income poverty in understanding social exclusion as the cause for deprivation. ‘Change should necessarily respect the ethos of the community, and create enabling conditions where they have the freedom of choice.’ 

What gives purpose to the five standalone articles is an attempt to view development from a cultural lens, to position development as if culture matters. The slender volume may have been an outcome of a research project conducted over a decade ago, the insights and observations have not lost out on their contemporary relevance. The Marginalized Self offers an engaging multi-layered narrative, which questions the top down prescription of development. With a deep dive into myths, beliefs and practices of the Musahars, the writers suggest the need for producing a bottom-up version of development conducive with the cultural underpinnings of the community.

Much has been written in recent times on how ‘development’ has come to colonize the world ever since the term was first coined in 1945, at the end of the Second World War. However, there is no denying that the promise of development has failed the marginalized millions across the world. The seductively packaged idea of economic emancipation has continued to persist, a non-negotiable entity that has contributed to strengthening the political economy of the nation-state in the name of the poor. The Marginalized Self is an optimistic undertaking that raises the stakes of the marginalized community as it glorifies the marginal space it has been pushed into. 

All said, it is unlikely if the discourse on development will get a dent in the state where caste-based economic marginalization is more of a norm than exception. However, the fact that the Musahars are seeking change beyond sheer material progress underscores the need for placing dignity and freedom ahead of the prevailing ideology of development.  

The Marginalized Self
by Rahul Ghai, Arvind Mishra & Sanjay Kumar (Eds)
Primus Books, New Delhi 
Extent: 159, Price: Rs. 1,095.

First published in The Hindu, issue dated July 25, 2021.

Exploring the unique factor

There are aspects of human individuality that lack genetic explanation.

Javed Akhtar’s lyrical query ‘Main aisa kyun hoon, Main jaisa hoon main waisa kyun hoon’ (‘Why am I like this, Why am I like I am’ from movie Lakshya) reflects a persistent curiosity that has engaged mankind ever since. By default, nature insists on individuality as a unique trait to sustain diversity for harnessing limitless potential of human ingenuity and endurance. But if inherent randomness is an evolutionary reality, why should understanding the inevitability of human individuality be a matter of concern? It does matter, however, as it not only helps know ourselves better while judging others’ consciously, it also provides a basis for getting clarity on the politically volatile concepts of gender, race and nation. Else, racist supremacists like those in the US and the Hindu nationalists in India will continue to base their policies of racial oppression on population genetics. It isn’t that racial categories don’t exist but that such categories are not hereditary, and hence the need to refute racist pseudo-scientific arguments. 

Unique is distinct and timely, putting to rest the tired and inaccurate nature versus nurture discourse. Combining recent research with credible experiments, the book seeks to ascertain aspects of human individuality that lack genetic explanation. Not all intricacies of human idiosyncrasy are coded in the genes though, making humans more than the sum of all the genes they are born with. It is here that social experiences play up over genes to give the distinction to our individuality. Subject to how you were raised, what diseases you’ve had, which foods you’ve savored, and what weather anomalies you encountered in your formative years contribute to shaping individuality as a trait that sets each of us apart.  

Some of the science around genetics may remain a little hard to follow, but the book offers fascinating insights into an area that has subconsciously remained closer to heart. While stinky armpit is heritable, political beliefs aren’t gene dependent. Curiously, your flavor of wine or cheese is not exactly the same as mine because the sense of smell and taste is driven by no less than four hundred olfactory receptor genes which while applying to all sensory systems express differently in two random individuals. That is why, your green is not necessarily my green.   

Exploring the world of dreams, memories and senses, David Linden looks at everything that makes us distinctly ourselves: our height and weight, food preferences, personality styles, gender identity, racial bias, sexual orientation and intelligence. The findings reveal that gene expression is exquisitely regulated, over both short and long term, to reflect in human individuality as an impact of varied experiences over specific genes. Every experience worth whatever its weight plays a bigger role in making us who we are.

Hrithik Roshan singing 'main aisa kyon hoon..'

Written with authority and purpose, the narrative treads into an area over which scientific consensus is still at some distance. However, what Linden overtly achieves in conveying is that more than just genes, there are wide range of influences that determine our individuality. And, it may eventually seem to be an evolutionary necessity as individuality holds the key to our ability to live together. In this respect, there is no genetic evidence to suggest that racial group differences in genes are linked to any behavioral or cognitive trait. On the contrary, it is the very definition of nonscientific self-serving racial bigotry, asserts Linden. 

Unique addresses the types of questions about human individuality that can contribute to more informed discussion on a subject that often incites political passions. While racial discrimination is one of its crucial manifestations, the science of human individuality has also separated the political Right from the Left for over more than a century. Given this fraught backdrop, the book plays it straight in synthesizing the current scientific consensus and provides the kind of clarity needed from popular science books like this, especially the one that investigate both what makes us human and what makes us distinctly, immutably ourselves.

Individual variations not only define us outwardly but point inwardly too, informing us about the state of our mind and bodies. ‘Each of us operates from a different perception of the world and a different perception of ourselves’. These individual variations get elaborated and magnified with time as we accumulate expectations and experiences. Ultimately, the author concludes, ‘interacting forces of heredity, experience, plasticity, and development resonate to make us unique.’ Well researched and compelling, Unique has the potential to change the way we think about why and how we are who we are.  A fascinating story of human individuality has been told with pace and elegance. The book should provoke some fruitful debate. 

Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality
by David J. Linden
Basic Books, New York
Extent: 317, Price: US$ 30.

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine dated July 21, 2021.