Amidst of things to do labyrinth

Working pattern has changed completely in our days, although we hear a lot about companies providing facilities to work from home and do flexi timings, but that actually means we need to work at night or in the weekends or even during annual leaves. Works are no longer done in paper by pen. They are done in computers by computers and we are there to analyse, criticise, regularise and control the works done by them. Their comes the problem. If we need to send a letter to somebody it takes five minutes, we get the reply with in next five minutes and then we need to do the next step the chain continues and a 9 to 5 job expands to 24 hours. This is affecting all the professions. I am in science and can easily feel the difference. Fifteen years ago when I started in this field I was expected to make graphs and the do the analytical calculations in a notebook. The data obtained from the instruments I used then were not so complex. They did not need further back up by theoretical simulations. The information obtained from those studies were also much more crude. But that was the level and everybody were following same way of working. PCs were there but we were still limited to work place. We did not started carrying our laptops with us and we did not have mobiles in our hands. Now every instrument is computerised and is able to deliver large number of data with no time. Data needs to be explained and analysed by us and it creates a pressure on us when the supply of data and their analysis are not done in same pace. The art of doing science has become very elaborate. Detailed structural analysis, functional information and reaction mechanism is required for a peer reviewed publication or grant approval. International collaborations, world class facilities and easy access to scientific information has also mobilised the scientific community as a whole. The gap between developed and developing countries in delivering good research is decreasing and that is also creating extra stress on individual level. Hundreds of students now a days migrate to different countries to pursue their Masters, Phd and Postdoctoral research and then they either stay in the host country or come back to their homeland for better perspective. In both cases they need to be very very competitive and are expected be able to live a highly stressed life. Work is becoming life and when we get little time out of work we try to fulfil all our incomplete wishes and thus get stressed again. This cycle many times creates immense dissatisfaction, chronic health problems and unhappiness. It is a high time that we learn to distinguish between positive and negative stress. Career is needed to be taken care of but there are many other things which are also needed to be cared for.