Faster–Why Constant Stress Is Part of Our Future

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 Richtel 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 more broadly, what about air traffic controllers or traders on Wall Street? Any human being who 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.

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