We Are Not Machines | Lab Notes

Jamey Maniscalco (00:01.304)
So today, I want to explore an idea that has stuck with me since my conversation with productivity coach and consultant, Emily Gaeda. So I think many of us are treating ourselves like machines. And I think modern life is really continually training us to do that. So for so much of my life, especially in college, graduate school, and in my early professional career, I believed some version of more hours equals better work, that more effort

makes better outcomes, more productivity equals success, sleep less, push harder, optimize everything, be efficient, keep moving. And honestly, part of me thought that if I could just become disciplined enough or organized enough or efficient enough, that everything would eventually click together, that I would feel fulfilled, balanced, and that I'd be successful. But looking back on this,

I was increasingly expecting myself to function like an industrial machine. More input, more output, better performance. But before we jump into all of this, if you find this content helpful, please, please, please like, subscribe, hit the alert button. This is a no cost way to support me and to support the channel. Thank you so much. So.

I think our modern culture reinforces this idea that humans can and should function like machines. We celebrate busyness. We celebrate exhaustion. We celebrate grinding. We say things like, and grind, hustle harder, or I'll sleep when I'm dead. We admire people who seem endlessly productive, those who are constantly available, always building, always doing, always optimizing.

And I think over time, many of us internalize the message that more output equals more value. But humans aren't factories. Brains don't work like industrial machines. Attention fluctuates. Motivation fluctuates. Energy fluctuates. Our creativity fluctuates. And our recovery matters. We talked about attention recently on the show.

Jamey Maniscalco (02:18.082)
how increasingly our environments are pulling our attention outward. We talked about rest and how many of us intellectually understand recovery matters, but emotionally struggle to allow ourselves to slow down. And both of these points really point towards something bigger. As humans, we function best in rhythms. Not an endless output, but an effort followed by recovery, focus followed by rest.

stress followed by recovery, movement followed by stillness. And that rhythm, that's not weakness, it's biology. And increasingly, modern life and the way it's structured is asking us to override that biology. We have notifications and information constantly coming at us, endless stimulation, work follows us home. The expectation that we should always be reachable is common now.

We should always be responsive, always be productive. And one of the consequences of this is that rest starts feeling uncomfortable. Recovery starts feeling like laziness and productivity slowly becomes our identity. I still feel this. I feel it really deeply. There are weekends where I struggle to relax. There are evenings when slowing down feels really uncomfortable and I push myself to work right up till bedtime. There's still moments where I catch myself thinking,

You could be doing more or you should be doing more. And I increasingly wonder what expectations that I'm placing on myself that I would never place on another human being. What would I expect someone to care to work endlessly? Now I'm gonna go back, Evan.

Jamey Maniscalco (04:15.022)
I'm gonna go back to and I increasingly wonder.

And I increasingly wonder what expectations am I placing on myself that I would never place on another human being? Would I expect someone I care about to work endlessly, to ignore their recovery, to never slow down, never unplug, never need quiet or personal space? No, of course not. But many of us quietly expect that exact thing from ourselves. And thriving in the modern, always on world,

may involve remembering something that's really simple. We are biological organisms, not industrial machines. Brains need sleep. They need recovery and movement. They need connection and reflection and quiet. They need space away from things that are important. And importantly, those things aren't barriers to thriving in this world. They directly support it.

There are things that we need to reengage with, and we need to spend more effort reengaging with them because the environment is not conducive to it. So as we think about moving forward in this world and what productivity means and what living a healthy, thriving lifestyle mean, we need to think about how we can integrate the biological rhythms of effort followed by rest, intention followed by recovery.

into our rhythms of work, rhythms of home, and rhythms of the seasons of our lives. So I hope this was helpful, and I'll see you next time on Next Door Neuro.