 Oct. 17, 2002 |
| ASSEMBLY EDITION • SAN DIEGO |
Reluctant to admit overload in your practice and personal life? You're not alone, said futurist Richard Swenson, M.D., whose presentation to a full house yesterday was titled "Overcoming Overload: the Role of Margin in Professional Well-Being." Both the condition and the denial are widespread, said the Menomonie, Wis., physician. Symptoms are all too familiar: tiredness, irritability, depression. One too many glasses of wine. Making small mistakes.
 Austen Perry interacts with her mother, Peggy Perry, during Wednesday's Family CME session. |
Doctors are prime candidates because they tend to overload and are typically reluctant to admit problems. "Stoicism is a characteristic of the profession," Swenson said. "(We) just aren't good at accepting and respecting limits."
But accept they must. The problem is beyond the individual.
The problem is modern life.
"Somebody took the lid off the blender of my life"
It isn't all funny; modern life is full of accelerated stress.
Futurist Tom Peters should be the best equipped to manage change, but he has been so overwhelmed that he moved (backwards, one might say) to a cabin without electricity or plumbing.
The president of Harvard walked into his office and announced that he would be taking a three-month sabbatical -- immediately. The pressure can catch up with anyone.
An old man in Spokane recently took Swenson aside.
"Doc, you're rushin' so fast, you're passin' up more than you're catchin' up to," he said. That's the sort of sentence that could easily give you a headache, but it contains the seeds of profundity. Slow down.
More of everything
The problem, Swenson said, is with the physics of progress.
"Progress works by differentiation and proliferation," he said. "It gives us more and more of everything, faster and faster." Technology and knowledge are expanding at a pace unprecedented in history, and they utterly exceed our ability to keep up.
And yet, by reflex people feel they must.
"I'm not anti-future," said Swenson. Instead, he's a realist. He invited the crowd to look at technology. It fascinates and seduces us with the promises of labor saved and a return to simplicity. Yet it often delivers a more complicated, regimented life.
The interrelatedness of progress brings new problems. People thought inexpensive international travel would mean weekends in Paris, said Swenson, and it has -- but it has also meant the accelerated spread of infection.
What does it mean to you?
Stress. Old-timers say that 'stress is between the ears,' and there is some truth to that, said Swenson. Dealing with the stress is somewhat more complicated now. It means setting margins for both work and life.
"There's very little good science on the upper end of human limits," said Swenson, but ample empirical evidence that many of us are reaching it.
"Meaningful work is a good thing," Swenson said, but chronic overage leads to dysfunction. Overload yourself, and you risk losing your passion and caring.
Swenson used the term 'margin' to describe the space between load and limit, and it's a very viable image. Overloaded ships were once routine, and so were sinkings; you note they happen much less now. Margins on the page give the eye a rest, and margins in between airplane connections remove an unnecessary sort of stress.
Swenson offered many prescriptions to restore life's margins. Here's a sampler:
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