Yes! I hate that advice that "you're exhausted, so you're probably doing too much."
Normal life is exhausting.
I'm single and don't have kids (except for 🐶; I do own a house and have 5 tenants to manage, which means that I have 5 kids in their 30s 🤣). I just gave a talk on AI at Neurodiversion, and came back to: 100s of emails; taxes; paperwork; health care documents; tech glitches with my therapist; marketing for work; wondering how much food counts as "I will go to the sad grocery store, pay $3 for avocados, wait in line, etc." The grocery store is 5 minutes away, but energy-wise, it feels like an hour.
Last month, I found out that my mortgage lender has been charging me extra for homeowner's insurance since I bought the house in October 2023, even though I purchase my own. The cost of their crappy insurance recently skyrocketed, so overnight, my payments rose $1,000. I spent hours on the phone sorting that out - or so I thought!
I just got back from a work trip, and was expecting to have a refund check in my mail pile, and notice of a payment adjustment. NOPE! I spent 2 hours on the phone yesterday, getting disconnected while being transferred between all of the departments--escrow, customer "service," insurance, none of whom had any power to do anything or see what others were doing. I was being tossed around like a hot potato, and amidst a spotty connection and accents, I could barely understand any of them.
And then one of my 30-year-old children will ask me where the paper towels are and wonder why I look so tired. 😑
There's no such thing as "a simple life."
P.S. This comment was delayed because I had to find my phone to login to Substack, "for security purposes." 😑😑😑😑😑
This is genius! No we humans weren’t made for all this constant communication and tedium! Give me a beach or mountain view and some peace and quiet. Maybe AI will help. Or not….
I often say I wish I was born Amish. I don’t think I could go from the current modern world as a 56 yo to live like I was Amish but I respect that they pretty much use modern conveniences only as required to earn a living.
I have a PW manager with over 500 passwords between my work and home life. I am an accountant by training and am very tech savvy, but I do believe that tech ceased improving my life about a year or two prior to the COVID Lockdowns. Endless frustration ensues when trying to maneuver through the hoops of having to login to get the things that used to be delivered by mail. And now with two factor authentication my phone and my laptop are chained to my side. I work 8-9 hours in front of a computer and then have to spend 1-3 hours 1-3 nights per week to keep up with home life.
And I don’t even try to go to many stores to buy merchandise as most of them (other than grocers) don’t have the levels of stock they once did. At this point I’d go back to 1995 technology in a heartbeat. No cell phone (okay, one for calling AAA in an emergency but too expensive to use otherwise).
I got the notification that you commented just as I was scrolling through my Notion database of passwords 😃
I also remember 1995 tech so fondly - I also had enough of an attention span to read books and write without constant disruptions. In 1995, it didn't feel like your attention was being assaulted whenever you went online. We used to get annoyed at banner ads, but now it's endless pop-ups, autoplay videos, and password requests. (I love browsing the Wayback machine, https://web.archive.org for those glory days.) Companies used to have phone numbers to talk to real people, and now we have to try GetHuman.com or spend hours on hold, pressing numbers, only to get disconnected and restart the process.
I signed up for my first dating website (Nerve personals) in 2002 - you wrote a profile and people could message you! Today, dating apps are full of spambots and micro-transactions that make you pay if you want to get your profile *noticed*. AI filters for the photos, people 'optimizing' their profiles... it's a mess.
Technology *can* be great, but everything flows towards monetization and optimization, so overall there are more possibilities for disruptions and breakdowns that wind up taking 500x longer than the elegant solution we already had 30 years ago.
Somewhere around 2015 or so tech in general abandoned the basic premise of making things truly easier for people through innovation, and pivoted instead toward cramming more and more half-thought-out features and poorly engineered add-ons in order to convince people that progress was marching on as it always promised it would. My refrigerator is a "smart" fridge that pings me at work when my wife is at home and leaves the door open...but doesn't do much else...
Apple 2006: "It just works!"
Apple 2025: "We changed the icons all around and put the settings in a blender because some designer got promoted and had to prove he has some brand new vision. Your phone does 25 new things by default and in order to make them work right or turn them off altogether you have to spend an hour combing through Reddit threads and support pages for each one. You're welcome."
YES!!! I think everything has just been a slow process of enshittification and updates for the *sake* of having an update to ship, without regard for the overall utility. I always wondered about those smart fridges! I remember shopping for one a few years ago and seeing one model with huge Facebook/Twitter icons on the fridge door. Why on earth do we need to incorporate Mark Zuckerberg into my dairy and produce usage?
This also seems to be the result of companies and corporate infrastructure getting enormously complex - they develop new features within their own ecosystem/idea of "what the market wants," and getting even further away from actual customers. I can see a bunch of MBAs making a presentation based on "market research" strategies because they kept reading social media success stories on LinkedIn, and their 60-something executive boss okayed the idea because he didn't want to feel "old and left behind."
And then there’s background cognitive debt: The thousand micro-decisions, mismatched systems, and invisible complexities that drain us before we even begin.
This isn’t about failing to manage time.
It’s about managing a world that’s no longer designed for human-scale living.
You nailed it, Karla.
Peak complexity isn’t just exhausting. It’s dehumanizing.
We don’t need more hacks. We need more humanity in the design.
I am in love with that phrase "background cognitive debt"! Much more elegant than my saying "modern life requires us to have a million browser tabs open in our brains at all times." Thank you so much for the kind words!
After a day (my ENTIRE day) of fighting with phone prompts and online “digital assistants to get some issues resolved with StubHub, Xfinity and an insurance company, I SO get this. I’ve been raging about it for a couple of years. I’d add what I call “interface overload”. Everything we do, no matter what we do, requires learning a new UI, most often right on the spot. It’s so maddening I’m out of words. I’m happy you found the words. Great job - thank you.
Also, technology is beautiful and magical when it works — but more often than not, “working” requires a million things to all function properly. All it takes is one step in the process to go a little wrong for you to break out the wine.
I recently moved to a different bedroom in my house, and still haven’t found the cord to connect to my favorite desk lamp — somehow they got separated in the move. I have a million cords (that always seem to be having an orgy), many of which do fit but none of which work. It seems like the actual cord has somehow disappeared from my house.
I’ve often said to my techie daughter that if someone wants to take down a western nation these days, all they need to do is bomb the data centers. Over. Done.
late to this party. similar to esther above, found this via google from my “why is modern life so exhausting” search. came here immediately to subscribe. so glad to know i’m not alone in my views. thank you.
Thanks for your uncompromising voice. It is a beacon shining in the night dominated by privileged self-help and productivity gurus. By the way...what do you think about Getting Things Done by David Allen and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg? I have not been able to tear those down.
Thank you for so adeptly saying what I’ve been thinking for a long time. Every aspect of modern life has become so absurdly complicated… how are any of us expected to keep up? I work in a high security environment. Every single access door has a different protocol, for no good reason. And don’t get me started with parking apps.
Thank you! One of the fascinating things about this post and the comments and emails I've gotten has been all of these peeks into worlds of complexity I never even knew existed. Access doors with different protocols and parking apps! I had no idea.
Last week, I met someone who worked for a company that did event planning for veterinarian conferences. Between sponsors, vendors, industry-specific news and protocols, etc., etc., both event planning AND the industry of pet care are so complicated that the company is super busy. Insanity.
You definitely should. Id pair it with their will be blood if haven’t happened to see…both are about how capitalism supplanted Christianity. And now on Linkedin we got corporate missionaries re-interpreting “scripture”. I cannot wait to move back to hawaii and unplug like andy dufresne escaping shawshank.
Yes! I hate that advice that "you're exhausted, so you're probably doing too much."
Normal life is exhausting.
I'm single and don't have kids (except for 🐶; I do own a house and have 5 tenants to manage, which means that I have 5 kids in their 30s 🤣). I just gave a talk on AI at Neurodiversion, and came back to: 100s of emails; taxes; paperwork; health care documents; tech glitches with my therapist; marketing for work; wondering how much food counts as "I will go to the sad grocery store, pay $3 for avocados, wait in line, etc." The grocery store is 5 minutes away, but energy-wise, it feels like an hour.
Last month, I found out that my mortgage lender has been charging me extra for homeowner's insurance since I bought the house in October 2023, even though I purchase my own. The cost of their crappy insurance recently skyrocketed, so overnight, my payments rose $1,000. I spent hours on the phone sorting that out - or so I thought!
I just got back from a work trip, and was expecting to have a refund check in my mail pile, and notice of a payment adjustment. NOPE! I spent 2 hours on the phone yesterday, getting disconnected while being transferred between all of the departments--escrow, customer "service," insurance, none of whom had any power to do anything or see what others were doing. I was being tossed around like a hot potato, and amidst a spotty connection and accents, I could barely understand any of them.
And then one of my 30-year-old children will ask me where the paper towels are and wonder why I look so tired. 😑
There's no such thing as "a simple life."
P.S. This comment was delayed because I had to find my phone to login to Substack, "for security purposes." 😑😑😑😑😑
I think the simple life is found in removing oneself from the complex one.
I found this article from googling "why is modern life so complicated" haha! I think you hit the nail on the head. I feel much better!
This is genius! No we humans weren’t made for all this constant communication and tedium! Give me a beach or mountain view and some peace and quiet. Maybe AI will help. Or not….
I often say I wish I was born Amish. I don’t think I could go from the current modern world as a 56 yo to live like I was Amish but I respect that they pretty much use modern conveniences only as required to earn a living.
I have a PW manager with over 500 passwords between my work and home life. I am an accountant by training and am very tech savvy, but I do believe that tech ceased improving my life about a year or two prior to the COVID Lockdowns. Endless frustration ensues when trying to maneuver through the hoops of having to login to get the things that used to be delivered by mail. And now with two factor authentication my phone and my laptop are chained to my side. I work 8-9 hours in front of a computer and then have to spend 1-3 hours 1-3 nights per week to keep up with home life.
And I don’t even try to go to many stores to buy merchandise as most of them (other than grocers) don’t have the levels of stock they once did. At this point I’d go back to 1995 technology in a heartbeat. No cell phone (okay, one for calling AAA in an emergency but too expensive to use otherwise).
I got the notification that you commented just as I was scrolling through my Notion database of passwords 😃
I also remember 1995 tech so fondly - I also had enough of an attention span to read books and write without constant disruptions. In 1995, it didn't feel like your attention was being assaulted whenever you went online. We used to get annoyed at banner ads, but now it's endless pop-ups, autoplay videos, and password requests. (I love browsing the Wayback machine, https://web.archive.org for those glory days.) Companies used to have phone numbers to talk to real people, and now we have to try GetHuman.com or spend hours on hold, pressing numbers, only to get disconnected and restart the process.
I signed up for my first dating website (Nerve personals) in 2002 - you wrote a profile and people could message you! Today, dating apps are full of spambots and micro-transactions that make you pay if you want to get your profile *noticed*. AI filters for the photos, people 'optimizing' their profiles... it's a mess.
Technology *can* be great, but everything flows towards monetization and optimization, so overall there are more possibilities for disruptions and breakdowns that wind up taking 500x longer than the elegant solution we already had 30 years ago.
Somewhere around 2015 or so tech in general abandoned the basic premise of making things truly easier for people through innovation, and pivoted instead toward cramming more and more half-thought-out features and poorly engineered add-ons in order to convince people that progress was marching on as it always promised it would. My refrigerator is a "smart" fridge that pings me at work when my wife is at home and leaves the door open...but doesn't do much else...
Apple 2006: "It just works!"
Apple 2025: "We changed the icons all around and put the settings in a blender because some designer got promoted and had to prove he has some brand new vision. Your phone does 25 new things by default and in order to make them work right or turn them off altogether you have to spend an hour combing through Reddit threads and support pages for each one. You're welcome."
YES!!! I think everything has just been a slow process of enshittification and updates for the *sake* of having an update to ship, without regard for the overall utility. I always wondered about those smart fridges! I remember shopping for one a few years ago and seeing one model with huge Facebook/Twitter icons on the fridge door. Why on earth do we need to incorporate Mark Zuckerberg into my dairy and produce usage?
This also seems to be the result of companies and corporate infrastructure getting enormously complex - they develop new features within their own ecosystem/idea of "what the market wants," and getting even further away from actual customers. I can see a bunch of MBAs making a presentation based on "market research" strategies because they kept reading social media success stories on LinkedIn, and their 60-something executive boss okayed the idea because he didn't want to feel "old and left behind."
💯
I work for Kaiser now, so I am mired in peak complexity. I enjoyed your column! Keep fighting the good fight!
There’s burnout.
And then there’s background cognitive debt: The thousand micro-decisions, mismatched systems, and invisible complexities that drain us before we even begin.
This isn’t about failing to manage time.
It’s about managing a world that’s no longer designed for human-scale living.
You nailed it, Karla.
Peak complexity isn’t just exhausting. It’s dehumanizing.
We don’t need more hacks. We need more humanity in the design.
- Thane
I am in love with that phrase "background cognitive debt"! Much more elegant than my saying "modern life requires us to have a million browser tabs open in our brains at all times." Thank you so much for the kind words!
After a day (my ENTIRE day) of fighting with phone prompts and online “digital assistants to get some issues resolved with StubHub, Xfinity and an insurance company, I SO get this. I’ve been raging about it for a couple of years. I’d add what I call “interface overload”. Everything we do, no matter what we do, requires learning a new UI, most often right on the spot. It’s so maddening I’m out of words. I’m happy you found the words. Great job - thank you.
And thank you for writing!! It’s not just us!!
Also, technology is beautiful and magical when it works — but more often than not, “working” requires a million things to all function properly. All it takes is one step in the process to go a little wrong for you to break out the wine.
I recently moved to a different bedroom in my house, and still haven’t found the cord to connect to my favorite desk lamp — somehow they got separated in the move. I have a million cords (that always seem to be having an orgy), many of which do fit but none of which work. It seems like the actual cord has somehow disappeared from my house.
“Having an orgy!” I genuinely laughed at that!
I’ve often said to my techie daughter that if someone wants to take down a western nation these days, all they need to do is bomb the data centers. Over. Done.
late to this party. similar to esther above, found this via google from my “why is modern life so exhausting” search. came here immediately to subscribe. so glad to know i’m not alone in my views. thank you.
Thanks for your uncompromising voice. It is a beacon shining in the night dominated by privileged self-help and productivity gurus. By the way...what do you think about Getting Things Done by David Allen and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg? I have not been able to tear those down.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear abt the various issues you faced
They sound genuinely argh 😣
Thank you for so adeptly saying what I’ve been thinking for a long time. Every aspect of modern life has become so absurdly complicated… how are any of us expected to keep up? I work in a high security environment. Every single access door has a different protocol, for no good reason. And don’t get me started with parking apps.
Thank you! One of the fascinating things about this post and the comments and emails I've gotten has been all of these peeks into worlds of complexity I never even knew existed. Access doors with different protocols and parking apps! I had no idea.
Last week, I met someone who worked for a company that did event planning for veterinarian conferences. Between sponsors, vendors, industry-specific news and protocols, etc., etc., both event planning AND the industry of pet care are so complicated that the company is super busy. Insanity.
EVERYTHING IS EXHAUSTING.
It’s definitely not just you. Thank you for this essay.
Amen.
Could not agree more...this, too re: the corporate evangelical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35DSdw7dHjs
Love this! And since this is the 1,000,000th time this movie has been mentioned recently, I should finally check it out.
You definitely should. Id pair it with their will be blood if haven’t happened to see…both are about how capitalism supplanted Christianity. And now on Linkedin we got corporate missionaries re-interpreting “scripture”. I cannot wait to move back to hawaii and unplug like andy dufresne escaping shawshank.
Brilliant summary.
I blame the Tech Geeks.
This is their New Religion.
Their new God.
They've mired the world in it with their dime-a-dozen computer science degrees.
And my sense is there will be backlash to the Techie Community over time.
Plenty of people have lost time and money over everything you've outlined and there's ALWAYS someone to blame....
Life is wasted on the living.