10. Work, Motivation, and Monday Mornings

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think, and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty? (Nietzsche). We live in the age of knowledge, new technologies, of access to almost any information at our fingertips, resulting in unprecedented connectivity, productivity, and mobility. Work is now mobile, our cell phones have become a reflection of ourselves and we do (almost) everything through their screens and apps: we study, surf the web, work, pay our bills, play games, watch movies and videos, find dates, buy and sell stuff… As such, we seem to have become increasingly more adept at multitasking, but also always seem to be out of time and vulnerable to the ill effects of an information overload and burnout—oftentimes in an authentic hyperconnectivity crash. The result is that we never unplug from work and compulsively check our notifications—every five minutes or less—to see if there are new messages in our e-mail inboxes or if someone has liked, commented, or shared our most recent post on social media.