Generational categories – Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z – are based on the notion that those born within narrow 15-year periods display characteristic behaviour that distinguishes them from those born in years earlier or later.  For example, people born between 1965 and 1980 are supposedly ‘apathetic’, but next generation people are ‘narcissistic’.  Really? 

Like so many anecdotal attempts to categorise people the classification is arbitrary, and has little evidence to support its vague generalisations. Mark McCrindle has dubbed the current cohort (2013-2025) Generation Alpha, a name that is claimed to make sense ‘as it is in keeping

‘What’s wrong?’ is a fundamental question in science research, but the motive for posing it is curiosity rather than a cynical attempt to find fault.  It is also not necessarily an argument for the wholesale rejection of existing views that the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ is sometimes taken to imply. Einstein’s theory didn’t render Newton redundant, any more than quantum mechanics replaced relativity.  Progress in science is a cumulative process where existing findings are consolidated or revised, punctuated by occasional large jumps.

The contemporary version of mindfulness originated in the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who in the late 1970s developed what he called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to help patients cope with chronic conditions, especially chronic pain.  In an influential HuffPost Contributor article, Purser and Loy offered a trenchant critique of what this work on mindfulness has become, which they refer to as ‘McMindfulness’, equivalent to a standard hamburger with little nutritional value.  

Mindfulness has joined a long list of panaceas promoted as offering greater happiness and good health, from supposed ‘Palaeolithic’ diets to meditation.  They all fade more or less quickly in popularity, defeated either by the discipline required to maintain them or being exposed as little more than fads.  Like meditation, mindfulness is promoted in part by invoking the cachet of being ‘Buddhist-inspired’, but to make mindfulness more acceptable as a means for enhancing corporate productivity, there is an accompanying insistence that the modern version is not tied to its Buddhist origins.

‘Surge capacity’, ‘adrenal fatigue’, ‘burnout’, are buzz-words and phrases that have no physiological validity. There is no evidence that feeling tired is a sign of adrenal malfunction: the adrenaline that facilitates action just keeps on being produced. The real meaning of surge capacity is in fact the reserve of hospital health care resources that can be called upon in emergencies, when up to 50% more patients than normal might need treatment.

There’s a lot of speculation about what working life will be like in the future. One option is a hybrid arrangement, with more of us working at least part of the time from home. Some large corporates are insisting that their employees must work from company offices once the pandemic has eased, but setting aside speculation about the pros and cons of working from home or office, whatever your work environment, everyone is affected by the two intertwined constants in life: pressure and change.