The disease of more
How abstract excesses overwhelm, change and imprison us
The “disease of more” was a phrase coined by National Basketball Association (NBA) coach Pat Riley to describe how, following a successful season, players can become entitled and want more of everything, including money, playing time, and media attention, which starts the onset of the team’s demise.
Needless to say, it’s not just NBA players that are affected by wanting more. Everyone wants more of everything, more so than ever before. Never in human history has there been such an overwhelming abundance of food, clothing, and material goods. Beyond necessities, consumer goods of all kinds—electronics, furniture, and household items are more accessible and affordable than ever, filling stores and warehouses to the brim.
In addition to the explosion of physical goods, the world now overflows with the non-physical. The digital age has brought an endless supply of information, entertainment and convenience. I intend to explore these intangible excesses of the mind, as I believe they have the greatest impact on us, by dictating our actions and shaping who we become.
More communication
Suppose you invented an incredible new passenger plane that reduced aviation fuel consumption by 50%, and every airliner worldwide adopted your aircraft. In that scenario, it’s a natural assumption to think that aviation fuel across the globe would reduce dramatically and be good for the environment. However, the opposite is true, and fuel consumption would increase because flying has become more efficient, which means more flights, lower prices and more demand for flying. This is known as the Jevons paradox.
The Jevons paradox is named after the economist William Jevons, who in 1865 observed that coal consumption increased in England despite the innovation of the Watt steam engine which was significantly more efficient than the previous design.
"It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth."
—William Jevons
It’s not just fuel, though. Whenever a system is improved, it can bring with it unexpected results. Communication is one example of that.
Since the invention of writing, messages have gone from being carved into rock to being written or printed on paper, delivered by hand, horseback or carrier pigeon, to analogue telegrams, phones and to where we are today with almost instant digital messaging. It’s fair to say that communication has become incredibly efficient.
Before computers were commonplace, working in an office meant a heavy dependency on telephone communication, typewriters, filing cabinets, dictation machines, interoffice mail and carbon paper.
I’ve never typed a letter with carbon paper, but it’s safe to assume there’s a limit to the number of copies before they become illegible. This forced consideration into how many people received a communication. You don’t need to be told that in the modern workplace, that doesn’t happen. When sending emails, it’s not uncommon to have every man and his dog in the carbon copy line.
Email is just one example of how much more efficient communication in the workplace has become since the digital revolution, instant messaging and video conferencing are two other notable examples.
It’s a natural assumption to think that productivity improvements came with this increased efficiency. However, there’s little to no evidence to support that which is referred to as the Solow paradox, named after the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow, who famously observed, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”.
While I’m not old enough to have worked in an office before the computer, it would not surprise me if computers and especially email not only make no difference to productivity but have a negative effect.
The reason for this is the Jevons paradox, but instead of coal, it’s our time being used as a resource. Just as it was natural to assume the Watt steam engine would reduce coal consumption, it’s natural to think that digital communication would reduce time consumed compared to working with typewriters, Tipp-Ex and fax machines.
This time-saving technology should free up time and make us more productive, allowing us to spend time innovating, being creative, and generating more sales. But just as the Watt steam engine made it cheaper and more accessible for more people to travel, which meant more coal being burnt, efficient communication created an explosion of messages being sent, and instead of time being saved, just like coal, more of it was burnt.
Where messaging has become almost frictionless, it means little to no thought goes into it. Whereas before, writing a letter required thought and reflection into what was being sent, today, it’s not uncommon to have one-word messages or an emoji.
The same is true for meetings. When meeting invitations were sent through the post, it meant planning and allowing enough time from the invite being sent and the meeting date. Fast forward to today, and it’s not uncommon to receive meeting invites that start on the same day, next hour or sooner.
And it’s not just in the workplace, the shift in how we communicate has been just as dramatic with friends and family. In Superbloom, a book about the history of media technology and how it has changed society and culture, the author, Nicholas Carr, describes how things were before digital communication.
It wasn’t until the middle of the nineteenth century that postal rates fell far enough to make letter writing a popular pursuit. […] Letter writers were not just able to converse with friends, lovers, and family members across great distances; they often found they could say things through the post that they found difficult or impossible to say in person.
Letters sustained but also deepened relationships. And the care and attention devoted to a letter’s composition and reading were themselves expressions of affection and respect. Once read, a letter often became a keepsake and, in time, an heirloom.
Beyond its social role, letter writing was for many persons an act of self-expression and, more deeply still, self-reflection and self-definition. Sitting down and composing a letter provided women and men with a rare opportunity to contemplate their daily lives and, through the careful arrangement of words and sentences, shape their experiences and emotions into a coherent and meaningful narrative.
The slowness of the mail removed letter writing from life’s everyday toing-and-froing. The delay between writing and reading cleared a space for introspection, for organising one’s thoughts without regard to society’s demands for immediate reaction and response.
If, as William Wordsworth suggested, the origin of poetry lies in ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity,’ then the writing of a letter brought at least a little of the poetic sensibility into people’s otherwise busy days.
As we’ve progressed from posting letters to email to instant messaging — along that path has been an escalating level of anxiety. If you posted a letter, you wouldn’t expect to receive a reply for a few weeks. When the same message is sent by email, you’d expect a reply in a few days, while an instant message is more like a few minutes.
Instead of digital communication making our lives easier with how we communicate with friends and family in a similar way to the workplace, the reduction of friction has made us do more of it than ever before to the point where it has become all-consuming. As things become easier — we just do more of it, and in spades. It’s been an evolution of deliberate and reflective communication to text speak, forwarding cat videos and memes.
Or as Nicholas Carr writes, “We spend our days sharing information, connected as never before, but the more we communicate, the worse things seem to get.”
More news
When you factor in podcasts, streaming services, radio, social media and websites—as well as links shared by friends, it becomes clear that we are constantly simmering in a soup of news, from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we close our eyes each night.
[…]
It turns out that wallowing in the suffering of seven billion strangers isn’t particularly good for our mental health.
It’s easy to lose sight of what the purpose of the news is, which is to provide information so you can make informed decisions about your life, your community, and your government. Used correctly, the news should be a useful tool, however, for most of us, it is not. It’s become an all-consuming toxic brew that drains our psyche and warps our reality.
Before newspapers, news was slow and primarily spread through word-of-mouth, and was geographically restricted. Travelling messengers delivered information orally or in written letters and official news was communicated by town criers who would announce information in the town square.
If you went back a few hundred years it would have been a tougher life compared to today but there must have been less psychological burden from not knowing about every terrible event going on every minute of every day. Moreover, I speculate that receiving news might have been somewhat enjoyable when you consider it was often exchanged in a social setting, whether that be in the town square, church or tavern.
Fast forward to today, and news has become like a drug. We hear what is going on instantly all of the time. It becomes impossible to avoid. Every hour on the hour, the radio stations give us our fix. Social media was originally meant for discovering what your friends and family were doing, and now it’s just another news outlet keeping us transfixed.
You can fool yourself by saying you’re a good citizen by keeping abreast of what is going on, but the inconvenient truth is that news is mostly entertainment, and why the phrase “angertainment” was coined.
Your work might mean you need to know what’s going on with regular frequency, maybe you trade stocks or work in politics. However, the vast majority of us don’t. It seems like it’s a genuine interest for some who otherwise would have little to talk about.
I put my dad into that category. He is completely consumed with politics, and it has changed who he is as a person. Every email he forwards me is something I’m supposed to be getting angry about. And whenever we meet, he always wants to talk about “the government” or Trump or Musk or Brexit. You name a divisive topic, and my dad loves to get angry about it.
“Some poor, phoneless fool is probably sitting next to a waterfall somewhere totally unaware of how angry and scared he’s supposed to be”
—Duncan Trussell
I’m confident that overconsumption of news detaches us from reality, makes us worse people and undoubtedly makes life less enjoyable.
Ask yourself this: when was the last time any piece of depressing news was useful? While, of course, this is possible, I would argue it’s a low probability while, in comparison, the likelihood that too much news leads to permanently souring your mood is close to 100% likely.
While some news is useful, just like digital communication—overconsumption is not. Or, as Nicholas Carr wrote in Superbloom, “We consume media, then media consumes us”.
More convenience
I consider myself fortunate to have experienced life before the internet, as it allows for comparisons. Before the World Wide Web, watching a movie at home meant a trip into town, wandering through Blockbuster’s aisles and hoping the film I wanted wasn’t already rented out. No online reviews to guide my choice, just the cover art and a gut feeling. Once back home, I’d often cook food that was a little more special than normal and accompany it with a beer or glass of wine. It wasn’t a special occasion, but it was an occasion. At least mildly noteworthy.
After putting the cassette into the video player, I’d pay attention from the beginning to the end even if the film wasn’t that good—in part because of the effort that had gone into collecting the film (which wasn’t over until rewinding the cassette and returning the next day), and in part because there was no other choice. It was a Hobson's choice.
Nowadays, everything is within easy reach, on-demand, and available 24/7; I don’t need to tell you how much the times have changed. At a press of a button, we have more to watch than ever before. I wonder, though, are we better off?
The term “friction” is often used in Silicon Valley. I’ve worked in digital marketing, so I’m familiar with the term and how there’s a concerted effort to make things easier for the consumer. The reason for this is because making things easier influences your behaviour. It makes you do things you might not ordinately do if it was a tiny bit more difficult.
For example, now that online shopping is so simple, we do a lot more of it compared to when we had to travel to town at the weekend. If I tried to persuade you to buy a poorly constructed gizmo that you probably didn’t need on a Monday evening, and it meant getting off the sofa and driving to a shopping centre— the likelihood of you doing it is slim to none. But make it a couple of clicks and next-day delivery, and all of a sudden, you’ll buy the said gizmo and the “frequently bought together” item, too.
For thousands of years, taking the path of least resistance served us well as it conserved our energy. Nowadays it’s a redundant feature of our DNA and has been hijacked by Silicon Valley to make us buy stuff we don’t need and do things we’d rather not be doing.
Over thousands of years, our lives have become progressively easier with the Industrial Revolution accelerating that shift, with railways, electricity, sewing machines and many other labour-saving devices. In more recent times there’s been an even bigger surge in labour-saving technology; the rise of technology that allows us to tap, swipe, click, and pay without moving more than a finger.
It’s what’s known as “convenience culture”. A culture shaped by technology and the increasing availability of products and services designed to save time and effort.
A side effect of life becoming more convenient is that we’re prepared to do less for ourselves. It appears the end game is to get to a point where we no longer have to do anything—a path towards complete helplessness.
Another side effect of convenience is that everyone expects everything quickly. Nothing can wait. So we become impatient. And impatience is just another form of anger. Whenever we don’t get something quickly it makes us angry, anxious or frustrated.
Whatever it is you like doing, there’s a good chance that technology is working in the background so you can do even more of that said thing, not just some of the time but all of the time and instantly, at a click of a button.
Now that there’s no need to travel to the video store for a film or video game, the newsagents for your newspaper or library for a book. The unsurprising consequence is a sharp increase in the amount of content we consume.
You would think that doing more of something you enjoy brings happiness. But, like many things in life, the opposite of what seems logical can often be true. More content means you overconsume, you’re overloaded with choices, you lose your capacity to concentrate, you under-appreciate and no longer enjoy it as much as you once did.
There’s a well-known experiment involving jam that you may have heard of by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper. Two jam-tasting booths were set up in a supermarket, one with six and the other with twenty-four flavours. While the booth with more jam generated more interest, it led to fewer sales. The study demonstrated the concept of "choice overload," where having too many options can lead to decision paralysis.
This wasn’t the only finding though—the other was that those who made a purchase from the booth with more jams were less satisfied with their eventual purchase. I think this is a good analogy for life—we have more than ever before but we’re not satisfied.
With so many options for nearly everything, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve made the wrong decision (the Fear Of Missing Out). Whether that’s a film or someone we’ve met online—we’ve traded our attention (and ourselves to a degree) for convenience and choice.
Technology is making our lives easier, not better.
More freedom
Maynard Keynes made a famous prediction: Within a century, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advance of technology, no one would have to work more than about fifteen hours a week. The challenge would be how to fill all our newfound leisure time without going crazy. “For the first time since his creation,” Keynes told his audience, “man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares.” But Keynes was wrong. It turns out that when people make enough money to meet their needs, they just find new things to need and new lifestyles to aspire to; they never quite manage to keep up with the Joneses, because whenever they’re in danger of getting close, they nominate new and better Joneses with whom to try to keep up. As a result, they work harder and harder, and soon busyness becomes an emblem of prestige.
—
, Four Thousand Weeks
Everyone knows someone (maybe it’s you) who is perpetually busy. In psychology, it’s referred to as chronic busyness. I can think of a few work colleagues that were like that.
The reason for their busyness might have been to gain status as society often sees being busy as a sign of being in demand, productive and successful. But maybe there was nothing “sinister”, and it was just their personality, and their home life was equally as hectic.
Personally, I like enough (or at least something) to be doing, but not too much. I like time to think, reflect and not be rushed. Near the end of my office tenure, it didn’t concern me that my boss (probably) thought I was lazy. While everyone else in my team was running around like headless chickens, I would try and hide, respond slowly to emails and not log in to the work messenger app.
There’s a saying that, “if you want something done, ask a busy person”. I believe there’s something to be said about that. Busy people attract more work, like honey to bees. Whereas those of us who take 1-2 days to reply to an email and are unavailable on instant messenger are less likely to get the “urgent” assignments.
Some psychologists believe that chronic busyness is used to suppress, deny and avoid underlying psychological issues. Another view is that being constantly busy is a way to avoid deciding or thinking about what you should be doing with your life.
In a roundabout way, we all fall into the chronic busyness category. Even if we’re not running around with packed diaries and overflowing work schedules, we’re all swamped with communication, news, things to buy, pings, breaking news alerts, and vibrations. We’re overloading our nervous system, which means we don’t have time to think, reflect, and consider. Being bored is invaluable thinking time to ponder what to do or change about your life.
One of our deepest evolutionary instincts—believing that more is always better—no longer serves us. Our ancestors struggled with scarcity; we struggle with excess. Information was once hard to find; now, we’re drowning in it. Choices were once limited; now, we’re paralysed by them. News, communication, and convenience were once scarce; now, they consume us.
If you find yourself unable to sit with yourself in the quiet, if the silence feels unbearable, if the itch to check [your phone] gnaws at you like a half-formed thought—then you must face the truth: you are no longer the master of your own attention. The world has already reached into you, has taken root inside your mind, and what you call your “self” is merely a thin layer wrapped around the endless hunger for distraction.
— Meditations for Phone Addicts by Fyodor
Never has Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words rung truer: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” But in an age where we absorb more information than ever—through technologies designed to profit from our distraction—being yourself has never been harder.
The way forward isn’t more, it’s less. Less news, less noise, less busyness, less mindless communication, fewer endless choices. More slowness, more presence, more clarity.
Only by stepping back can we reclaim our minds, be ourselves—and be free.
Great read for a Wednesday, well done!
Well put!