The primary activity of the modern human is mental, informational, and, above all, focused. Sitting with a phone in the restroom, a person processes as much data as people previously could not grasp in a lifetime. Regardless of the content we consume, what matters is the fact of constant stimulation by such a massive array of information. Today, one can create new books daily with access to guides, templates, other authors, and AI, without leaving bed — without losing quality, if there is a desire to do so. In the past, a single endeavor could take an entire lifetime.

Thus, the window of productivity and the brain’s real potential to create something new (whether qualitatively or quantitatively) is far smaller than that of the body, whose needs likely gave rise to the 8-hour workday — a cycle suitable for physical labor enterprises, not mental ones. We are just beginning to explore the “muscular” capabilities of the brain, and therefore they require the same approach as modern training for any muscle: consistency and intervals between tension and relaxation for growth.

Otherwise, overload and breakdown occur — it has already happened and is compensated for by the monotony and meaninglessness of most tasks and professions in the classical labor market: no one works a full 8 hours, but merely repeats templates to maintain the status quo. The brain’s only escape is repetitive rituals that require no mental effort, as they are already built into our habit systems. We rest by doing the same things because we no longer think deeply — and the excess of this leads to the degradation of both the individual and the systems. The world does not stand still, yet our institutions — political, economic, religious, and others — exist on the same foundation for centuries.

When a computer’s memory is full, it begins to make errors precisely because it lacks space to generate something new; thus, it stubbornly repeats old algorithms waiting for correct command execution, thereby developing fragmentation and code errors. The system becomes a virus for itself. Humans are no different — the only difference is that a computer’s memory can be upgraded and expanded in an instant, whereas a human requires systematic work to develop their thinking and cognitive potential. We need to build upon the potential laid within us, not seize it recklessly.

The spread of laziness and attention deficit across all spheres of society is not a bug, but a feature. It is the inner response to the outer world’s incorrect course of action: everything around demands that we look at it — but we forget to see ourselves and what truly matters to us. Now, a person can accomplish something effectively and with high quality in a couple of hours, dedicating the rest of the time to rest and recovery, celebrations, and loved ones, only to later produce equally high-quality and new work, rather than multiplying the errors of past experience by reproducing what is no longer effective here and now. This is exactly what the entire progress of the labor market has strived for — to work long enough to stop working altogether; so that the very sensation of work disappears in the moment of its performance, becoming instantaneous and light. Not because we are abandoning labor, but because we have learned to perform it on an entirely different level of rationality: through cooperation and technology. We are unwilling to admit that any past was useful in its own time — to the present, it applies only as a lesson and experience, not as a reason for exact reproduction and rumination. The past is necessary only for deconstruction and building a future from its materials — a future that is different and unique.