The Ergonomics of Change

When I started being involved in social activism, one of the most discussed questions was how can we motivate people to be more socially active. The discussion started from how can more people be convinced to join direct protest movements, but I what to take this further and talk about change in general.

Although that period lead me to see some of the best things in people because I was surrounded by wonderful caring and emphatic people, which were just a minority. I also saw a lot of indifference from people, that lead me to ask even more questions about how can change occur when the majority seems to not even care about this.

At that time I was really upset with the level of engagement shown towards change, but in the meantime, I understood more about how people act and relate to the world. And the reality is that people live such a demanding life that most do not have the mental energy to spare towards understanding change. After slaving away o third of the day at work, losing precious time in traffic to get money that barely covers the expense of living, and trying to balance this with a personal and sane life, most people realize that they need more hours in a day. Thus the prospect of understanding nuanced actions that work towards change is quite hard to manage and rightfully so. It seems that if we boil down things, we arrive at one word, comfort. And it is is my opinion after some years of observations and thinking about it. The majority of people will choose the most comfortable way of living their lives, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Just to bring things on a more positive note, comfort is not something we need to judge very hard. If we were talking about just physical comfort, that is not something to guide your life by, but we also have mental, moral and all other types of comfort that have a positive side to them. On another positive note, don't worry, this lethargy of the majority is not the end of the world because change has never emerged from them. Change comes from individuals or small groups that work their way up to the larger society. Thus the majority is not a generator of change, but a receiver of it.

The question now arises, what motivates a majority to adopt a new way of doing things if they praise conform above many other things. The answer is very simple and logic, the change needs to bring a better standard of living, thus the title of the post, ergonomics of change. Meaning that if a new way of doing things comes with an improvement touching on any aspect of the personal life of people, it will have far greater chances of being adopted.

Ergonomics is defined ”as being the process of designing or arranging workplaces, products and systems so that they fit the people who use them”. So the ergonomics of change refers to building change with the immediate betterment of human life in mind. The goal of that change still needs to be massive and disruptive, but there also needs to be this layer of ergonomics of comfort in order to facilitate the adoption of said change.

So, it is my belief that when we want to build a better tomorrow, we need have to act in such a way that it will maximize the chances of success. Thus the concept of ergonomics of change has to be studied further because there are a lot of ways you can relate to human comfort.

It would be fantastic if this discussion would go further so I welcome and await any comments!