World Mental Health Day was framed around one blunt message: the workplace now runs at machine speed, and human attention is paying the bill.
Stephanie Kramer, co-chair of the Project Healthy Minds Workforce Lab and chief human resources officer of L’Oréal North America, wrote that workers are being pulled into an endless stream of content, notifications and automated drafts. She said people are 'constantly informed,' but asked whether they are still thinking.
Kramer described what she called a 'converging storm' of overwhelming data volume, always-on intake, the cognitive tax of context-switching, and 'AI sycophancy' — tools built to agree rather than challenge. Her argument is not that technology itself is the enemy, but that workers are being pressured to match machine speed.
The numbers in her piece are stark. Dr. Gloria Mark of UC Irvine, author of 'Attention Span,' found that screen attention spans have fallen from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds today. Kramer also cited Microsoft data showing workers in Microsoft 365 are interrupted every two minutes. Alexia Cambon of Microsoft called that a constant 'consumption tax.'
The piece argues that these interruptions do not just waste time. They force rapid attention-switching, raise stress and drive errors. Kramer said people often use AI to produce polished but low-value communications, then fill the saved time with more low-value complexity instead of creating room for deep work.
She also said real innovation depends on creative friction, not tools designed to make everyone feel 'nice and comfy and cozy.' Anne Morriss, co-author of 'Move Fast and Fix Things,' said the old 'move fast and break things' approach is 'not good for people' and is 'not actually good for business.'
Morriss said the better model is 'good friction' and argued that organizations can go only as fast as the trust they build. She added that leaders should 'move fast and fix things' instead.
The market lesson is obvious: every new layer of software that promises efficiency can also extract a hidden cost from the workforce. Capital rewards clear rules, not permanent distraction. If companies want productivity, they need more than faster tools; they need space for judgment, recovery and actual thinking.
The administrative state and corporate bureaucracy alike love measurable activity. But measurable activity is not the same as value. When every minute becomes a notification, the taxpayer, the investor and the employee all end up funding noise instead of output.
