The use of technology has a highly positive impact on adaptability, interaction, and execution of any process in terms of time, leading to savings in planning, production, logistics, and intermediation. This applies not only to business but also to our everyday lives in any aspect, such as booking a trip, scheduling an appointment, searching for a job, posting personal photos, expressing an opinion, raising indignation over a significant event, configuring our favorite car, or buying any item delivered in less than two hours, and so on.
We live in a fast-paced society, increasingly accelerated, with adaptability to change occurring in shorter and shorter time spans. The revolution of instant messaging has led us to nearly infinite connectivity with anyone in any remote location around the globe and across different time zones.
This immediacy changes the structure of organizations, but most importantly, it changes the way human beings interact and relate to one another.
The big question is: how does the brain adapt, process information, and handle psychological traits in this new model?
Does Immediacy Negatively Affect the Brain?
Neurologists, sociologists, and psychologists agree that this misunderstood immediacy can cause frustration when demands are at their highest. A generation accustomed to «I want it now, immediately» will develop a behavioral, attitudinal, and aptitudinal structure, different from the current one, for making purchases, interacting with friends or family, and projecting in a work environment.
It is crucial for the educational system and families to try to minimize this frustration effect; otherwise, we will have a society composed of individuals for whom anything that does not happen within the next 5 minutes will have no validity, turning us into beings of instant life where deadlines and planning will become entirely secondary.
How will this affect the work environment? According to human resources experts, it is increasingly challenging for someone to think in terms of medium-to-long-term projects. For a new generation where 6 months can feel like an eternity when viewed from their life’s sequence of immediacy, how will we delimit and analyze this frustration of wanting to «progress» quickly in a professional setting?
Many questions arise regarding the prospect of a new relational model among people, where immediacy can lead to a state of permanent anxiety due to the desire for everything to be instantaneous. Businesses must take this into account, as the one who fails to adapt will lose, not the one who performs poorly, but the one who takes too long to adjust. Projects may become frustrated due to speed; if you don’t do it, someone else will be doing it tomorrow, sorry, in a few hours.
