YETMO

”Figuring Out the Frazzle Factor"

I consider myself an observer of life. It’s fun, and provides material for my writing. Besides, my “friends” say it gives me an excuse not to do much of any real value.

These so-called friends are sufferers, I tell you my real friends -- my readers. They are stressed out from morning to night; going, going, and going. They can’t stop. Or, if they are able to put their lives into Park for a minute, they’re looking over their shoulders wondering when the respite will end, because it shall end – and quickly.

It would be nice to proclaim that I, your humble literary servant, is inured to such societal phenomenon, but, Ay!, even I, fall victim to this dreaded dis-ease.

Figuring out our frazzledness has eluded me for some time. It’s not for lack of trying, but for inability to focus and concentrate long enough. In short, I was fighting being frazzled so much that I couldn’t determine who or what was the frazzler. [I hope you like these new words. They’ll appear in the next edition of your Webster’s Dictionary.]

Thanks to my wife, who’s currently employed full-time to underwrite my semi-retirement, the answer to this perplexing frazzle problem has been finally unearthed.

We’re frazzled not because we’re too busy, which we are. We’re frazzled not because we’re too overscheduled, which we are. We’re frazzled not because we’re expected to be in more than one place at the same time, which those of us with school-age children most certainly are.

The answer is….we’re frazzled because of this. What you’re looking at right now. The computer? Yes, and no. It’s technology. We’re up to our necks in technology.

Why are you reading this article on this website at this time? Shame on you! [I guess I shouldn’t be scolding you. If you decide to listen to me, which I conclude to be impossible based on my family’s reactions to my pronouncements, I’ll have no readers.]

Don’t worry. I’m not going to beat up on you – or me. We’re products – or victims – of our culture, society, and time in history. Call it what you will, but we now are so super-connected to the world, ourselves, and others, that we have no downtime from anything or anybody.

Remember my wife? Let’s get back to her, and the frazzle answer. During one of our more reasonably successful attempts to decompress and recharge our batteries, we got to talking about what was behind this sense of feeling overwhelmed most of the time.

We looked at our lives, both at home and work. As a semi-wise husband, I won’t disclose my wife’s age, but for folks like me, of the Baby Boomer Generation, it’s intriguing to consider how our lives and worlds have changed.

I always marveled at my grandparents’ generation, those born around the turn of the 20th century. They had to adapt to electricity, radio, jet aircraft travel, space travel, and even soap operas on daytime TV. Wow! From outhouses to outer space. Who could have been forced to deal with more change in one lifetime? Maybe we are being confronted with changes just as significant, if not more so by the time our lives are over.

Consider this, which gets back to my conversation with my wife. Fifteen years ago, maybe less, but let’s be conservative and not exaggerate, we were not, to any great degree, exposed to cell phones, e-mail, and hundreds of cable TV stations blasting 24-7 stories about car chases in Houston or any conceivable human or animal activity that can be filmed to fill up never-ending news cycles.

A decade and a half ago, answering machines were not everywhere. Even office phones were not usually so equipped. That’s what secretaries were for. What’s a secretary, you might ask? That’s my point exactly. If someone didn’t reach you – or your secretary (there’s that strange word again) – the matter waited until tomorrow. Perhaps the subject was important, but people adapted. If you couldn’t catch someone live-and-in-person, you had to wait. When you arrived home from work, nothing intruded into your life, except for family and friends, which is the way it should be.

E-mail and the Internet. Ah, my fingers quake merely typing these words on my now nearly indispensable keyboard. Such beasts, er, I mean, utilities, were unavailable to the masses in the early 1990’s. Now, the omnipresent Internet and ceaseless e-mails are contributing greatly to our frazzle.

My lovely wife noted that she now has to check voice messages on three different phone lines at work as well as our home machine, plus manage scores and scores of work e-mails on two e-mailboxes as well as her two home e-mail accounts. She has a blackberry, which adds to more e-mails and more phone messages, and a personal cell phone.

Do the math. There are enough electronic impulses in one form or another vying for attention 30 hours out of each day’s 24. We won’t even discuss the total hours she spends on work at home or during her commuting time.

That leads nicely into an article this week in Stephen Barr’s “Federal Diary” column [The Washington Post]. I recall all too well doing those now-defunct Bureau of Labor Statistics annual productivity index calculations when I was a Program Analyst at the Internal Revenue Service.

While Stephen’s article heads in a different direction from my Frazzle Factor discussion here, it drives home how our blessing-and-curse, nemesis technologies have gotten us into quite a mess. How will productivity be measured today? When I did it, overtime was included because those hours represented the total time necessary to produce Widget A or B.

In the case of thousands upon thousands of government workers like my wife who work well in excess of a normal 40-hour week, how will those hours be captured? Who will record and track the hours that salaried employees spend to deliver the program or product? No one, I suspect, as no one really wants to know or cares to know. That’s why you’re salaried. In the absence of incorporating the Frazzle Factor into the equation, how accurate and meaningful can any new productivity measures be?

It’s somewhat liberating to now understand why I’m feeling as disjointed and disconnected as I am. We can embrace and acknowledge the “Frazzle Factor.” Hooray!

But now, can we reduce or eliminate it? I welcome your insights into the solution, if there is one. Maybe we’ll just have to live with it, like planes, cable TV, and outer space.

As for me, I’m too frazzled to think about it.