I have long been concerned by the “do more”, and “be more efficient” narrative which seems to surround our everyday lives. We are constantly seeking to improve in all we do, which I think is a fair endeavour, but at what cost? This was recently brought further into focus as I started reading “Thank You for Being Late: An optimists Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations” by T.L. Friedman as I found myself with an hour to spare while waiting to meet someone. I found myself that bit more content and relaxed as I used the extra hour which had become available to start reading the book and to engage in a bit of people-watching, watching the world rush about its business. But are these opportunities to stop and reflect reducing in frequency and length?
I look at teaching for example, where I qualified as a teacher back in the late 90’s. Looking at teaching now, there are so many more things to consider and to do whether this relates to educational research that we are considering, safeguarding, well-being, health and safety, neurodiversity, and much more. Now all of these things are important but each is another thing to consider, additional cognitive load, or an additional process or task which needs to be completed. Is there an extra resource in terms of time or cognitive capacity to undertake these things? The answer is No. We simply fold them into our everyday workload, which invariably means that although our efforts are getting better, we are also doing more than we ever did before.
Now generative AI can help a little here in that it can help us with some of the heavy lifting and free up some time for us. This particular post was edited with the help of AI although it wasn’t initially drafted with AI; I didn’t draft it with AI as this is very much a brain dump of thoughts and as yet AI solutions can’t interface with the human brain, although that may become possible at some point. But in editing it with AI, I was able to proofread and make changes quicker than I would have been able to do myself therefore reducing the time taken to produce the post. The challenge here however is this still all exists against a backdrop of “do more”, so the time I may have gained through the help of AI may simply be swallowed up by the next task I need to undertake to continue down the road of continual improvement. In effect, the net benefit of AI may be quickly nullified by our continued drive for efficiency and maximising output.
Circling back to teaching, this therefore means that generative AI may benefit teachers for a short period, but that eventually, the benefits may simply dissolve in the face of ever-increasing requirements. But the benefits are so important, that extra time might allow for greater teacher reflection on teaching practice, student learning and student outcomes, it might support greater networking and sharing of ideas plus might support improved well-being for teachers, which I would suggest may result in better teaching, better student outcomes and also better student wellbeing as the students see their teachers modelling good wellbeing practices. The time AI solutions will provide might support us in spending more time on focussing on what it means to be human and on “human flourishing”.
Maybe we need to question to “continual improvement” and “efficiency” narratives in that they need to exist in balance and cannot be assumed to be the “right” path. In relation to continual improvement, I often refer to MVP, minimum viable product and “good enough”. In relation to efficiency, if I wanted to be more efficient maybe I should stop taking breaks or work through my lunch. We also need to consider decreasing marginal gains, and maybe that is where we are now, that a lot of the improvements we are bringing about are minor, iterative improvements, but at the cost of cognitive load, time and other resources which may outweigh the resultant benefit. The extra effort required for each incremental change remains the same, yet the resulting gain is reduced with each change. There is also the challenge of complexity, where more complex processes or systems often bring about greater risk of failure or greater reliance on particular people or tools. And I haven’t even mentioned the speed of change, which the book I am reading refers to in its title, in the “age of accelerations”. So all of this is happening quicker than ever before which therefore suggests the amount of time we have available to adapt to changes is decreasing.
I don’t have any answers here, so the purpose of this post is not to share a solution, but to pose a question. I think I know the answer to the question, but not necessarily the answer to the problem it hints towards, but I think the best thing we can do is to start to talk about it and consider it. So what is the question:
Can we keep adding to the things we need to think about, the processes and the complexity of our lives, or is there a limit?
Technology and Learning 