Every morning, before I even leave my bed, my hand instinctively reaches for my phone.

It is no longer simply to check the time or turn off the alarm. Instead, it has become a way of finding out what happened while I was asleep. Messages from colleagues, a new email, notifications from different applications, and breaking news all compete for attention on a small screen that takes only a few minutes to check.

Yet, by the time those few minutes pass, I often feel as though my day has already started before I have had the chance to truly wake up. Thoughts begin racing through my mind. Tasks that need to be completed compete for my attention. I find myself planning meetings, preparing responses to messages I have not even opened yet, and remembering unfinished work from the previous day.

In that moment, I realize that I have not started my day by choosing what deserves my attention. Instead, I have started by responding to what notifications have decided is urgent.

For a long time, I considered this normal. After all, it is part of the modern life we all experience. But over time, I began asking myself a different question: Is this constant feeling of being busy really caused by the amount of work we have, or have we become part of a culture that turns busyness into a permanent state of mind—even before our day begins?

Who Decides How Our Day Begins?

Technology has transformed many aspects of our lives. It has made communication faster and access to information easier than ever before. However, these benefits have also introduced a new challenge: our attention has become a resource constantly competing with dozens of applications, platforms, and messages.

The challenge is no longer only about managing our time. It is also about protecting our ability to focus.

Every interruption, no matter how small it may seem, takes a portion of our attention and makes returning to the original task more difficult. Research by Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, has shown that frequent interruptions can require significant time before people fully regain their focus, helping explain why many of us reach the end of the workday feeling exhausted while still unable to complete the tasks that mattered most.

Over time, exhaustion does not come only from the amount of work itself. It also comes from constantly shifting between tasks, moving between emails, meetings, messages, and notifications until our minds become more occupied with managing interruptions than with doing meaningful work.

How Did Busyness Become Part of Our Everyday Lives?

If we ask someone today how they are doing, one of the most common responses is: “I’m busy.”

This phrase has become so familiar that it almost feels like a natural description of life. Without realizing it, we may have turned busyness into an unspoken measure of commitment, importance, or success.

Yet being busy is not the same as being productive.

A full day of responding to messages, attending meetings, and checking emails can pass without bringing us any closer to the goals we originally set for ourselves. The issue is not a lack of effort, but rather the fragmentation of our attention across dozens of small tasks that consume mental energy and leave little space for deep thinking and meaningful work.

Psychological research has also shown that what we often call “multitasking” does not mean that the brain is performing several tasks at the same time. Instead, it rapidly switches between different activities, creating additional cognitive demands and affecting the quality of our focus and performance.

In Human Rights Work, Protecting Mental Well-Being Is Part of Protecting the Mission

This issue becomes even more significant in human rights and humanitarian work, where pressure does not come only from the number of tasks, but also from the nature of the work itself.

People working in these fields often engage with human rights violations, painful testimonies, and ongoing crises. They frequently feel that there is always another urgent issue requiring immediate attention.

As these pressures accumulate, ignoring exhaustion can become a habit. Taking a break may even feel like a failure to fulfill one’s responsibilities.

Yet this creates a difficult contradiction: work dedicated to protecting human dignity cannot be sustained if the people carrying out that work gradually lose their ability to focus, empathize, or make thoughtful decisions.

The World Health Organization emphasizes that mental health in the workplace is not an individual concern or a personal luxury. It is a key component of building sustainable and effective organizations. Creating work environments that support mental well-being contributes to better performance and helps reduce stress and burnout.

This is particularly important for human rights organizations, where effective work often depends on careful listening, thoughtful analysis, and strategic thinking—abilities that become difficult to maintain under constant exhaustion.

Sustainability Begins with Caring for Ourselves

We may not be able to reduce the number of messages arriving on our phones, stop the flow of information, or change the increasingly connected world we live in.

But we can rethink how we respond to this reality.

This may begin with simple actions: giving ourselves a few quiet moments before checking our phones in the morning, creating periods of uninterrupted work away from notifications, and recognizing that rest is not a break from meaningful work—it is part of sustaining our ability to continue doing it.

Setting clearer boundaries between work and personal life, whenever possible, also helps protect the mental space needed for recovery and balance.

Most importantly, we need to remember that caring for our mental well-being is not selfish. It is an investment in our ability to continue our work, make better decisions, and provide stronger support to others.

Perhaps the First Decision We Make Each Morning Matters Most

The next morning, the alarm rang as it always does.

My hand reached toward the phone, then stopped for a moment.

I left it on the table.

I opened the window and took a breath of fresh air before allowing notifications to enter my day.

The messages had not disappeared.

The meetings had not decreased.

The world had not become any less demanding.

But something had changed.

I realized that while I may not be able to control the speed of the world around me, I can choose how I begin my day and how I protect my attention and mental well-being.

Perhaps sustainability—in human rights work and beyond—begins with this simple realization: caring for those who defend rights is just as important as defending rights themselves.

Because caring for ourselves is the first step toward being able to care for others.