This new age that we live in provides us with medicines, mobile phones, streaming services and much more.
But with all these advances in technology can come a whole range of problems — and problems mean frustrations.
Modern life is frustrating, and it’s usually the small, seemingly insignificant things that, over time, all add up to an even bigger frustration.
These small things have a knock-on effect for the day ahead — another reason they can be so annoying.
A late train might make you late for a meeting, or your phone running out of battery could mean you can’t reply to an important message.
We all cope with many little frustrations every day.
A new study has revealed the 40 things we find most annoying about modern life.
They range from:
- advertisements without a ‘skip’ button
- tangled earphones
- calls from unknown numbers
- running out of phone battery or data
- a cracked screen
- intermittent Wifi connection
- forgetting passwords
- late trains
- paying extra for luggage on flights
- autocorrect on your phone
- speed cameras
- not being able to fast forward the live TV and
- someone nabbing the social media username you wanted.
Not having enough leg room on a journey, a crying baby on the plane, websites with contact forms instead of email addresses and bars or shops which no longer accept cash payments are also featured on the list.
How many times do you complain on a typical day?
The study also found that during a typical day, adults will complain an average of three times.
Not only that, they almost half admitted to enjoying a whine or moan over the inconveniences modern life throws at them.
Nearly a quarter reckon complaints come from those who enjoy the attention.
Some said it is their national trait to moan and groan. While the study was done in Britain and three in four thought, it’s a typically British trait to have a moan or a groan about things. I am sure if you are an American or an Australian, you are a moaner and groaner too.
People like to whine because it’s easier to whine than find solutions.
It seems like some people have a low frustration tolerance.
What is Low Frustration Tolerance?
Low frustration tolerance (LFT), is a concept used to describe the inability to tolerate unpleasant feelings or stressful situations.
It stems from the feeling that reality should be as wished and that any frustration should be resolved quickly and easily.
People with low frustration tolerance experience emotional disturbance when frustrations are not quickly resolved. Their behavior is then directed towards avoiding frustrating events, which, paradoxically, leads to increased frustration and even greater mental stress.
There could be many reasons for LFT, such as one’s mental makeup. ADHD has been closely linked to low frustration tolerance.
Your expectation levels are also a contributor. But it is the slow build-up that causes the scale to tip.
You can tolerate your partner’s phone notification going off at full volume a few times, but when it goes on day after day, late in the night, and your loved one refuses to do something about it, can get on your nerves.
Low frustration tolerance manifests differently in different people:
- Habitual procrastination of tasks or activities that cause frustration.
- Impatience
- Need for immediate gratification
- Easily gives up when challenged
- Easily irritated by everyday stressors.
How To Build Frustration Tolerance
- Accept them. Things will go wrong, even those that shouldn’t go wrong. Life won’t always be easy. “Shit happens!” Forrest Gump rightly concluded. So suck it up.
- Take a few deep breaths. Breathing helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the calming part of the nervous system. It slows down emotional reactions to the triggers and helps you calm down.
- Frustration is the emotional reaction to thoughts. Change your thoughts and manage your reaction.
- Turn them into opportunities. Take action. Fix the source of frustration, as Malcolm McLean did.
Malcolm Mclean owned a trucking company in the early nineteenth century. His job was to transport goods to the shipping yard for shipping abroad. Once, he got the contract to transport cotton bales to the port of Hoboken.
He brought the cotton bales but had to wait almost an entire day till dockworkers could load the crates full of cotton onto the ship.
Dockworkers and longshoremen would load and unload crates and barrels by hand. It was a slow, slow process.
So out of frustration, McLean asked himself: why can’t they load entire trucks onto the ships themselves?
And he realized why.
Because it was impractical for a truck owner to lose his truck for weeks at a time while the ship was sailing the seas.
Also, the trucks were heavy and would lead to unnecessary weight being added to the ships.
But McLean didn’t want to keep on putting up with the wait.
He wanted to find a solution.
Not long after, a solution came to him — divide the truck. Break the container from the wheels.
That was it. McLean invented the shipping containers that changed the face of world trade.
What is frustrating you at the moment?
How can you turn it into an opportunity to invent a solution?
Is it not being able to write every day? How can you turn that into an opportunity?
Is it calls from unknown numbers? How can you address it so that they don’t annoy you or waste your time?
Is it the amount of data on your phone? What can you do to keep it under check?
Once you find the solution, you can help several people who are frustrated by the same problem.
You might change the way things are done.
One of my sources of frustration is digital clutter. Here is what I have been doing to tackle it.
- Folders and Documents: Once a week, I will spend half an hour deleting old files and documents.
- Emails: Delete the ones I don’t want, archive the ones I want to keep, and act. Although I would love to have a zero-email inbox, we all know that strategy doesn’t work. The next best strategy is to organize them in folders. That is what I have been doing. I do them by the sender’s name. This way, I can mass delete emails from Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, and sources like that.
- Newsletters: Like everybody these days, I subscribe to several newsletters. But I have unsubscribed, most of them only keeping the ones I read regularly.
- Images: I have removed all duplicated images, made physical photo albums of travel pictures, and saved the ones I want to keep in cloud storage.
- Social Media: I have restricted social media to once a day, usually at night, while my energy levels are low.
- Phone Apps: Each quarter, I go through phone apps and delete any I am not using anymore.
- Backup: All my files are backed up on cloud storage.
All these measures have helped me save time, reduce stress, and improve productivity.
