Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:17 As always, I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. Welcome to 2026. Today, we're gonna start with a number that is sixty-two percent. 0:25 And according to the 2026 State of Browsing Report spotlight on digital burnout and distraction from Shift, sixty-two percent of users say they experience digital burnout. 0:37 Now, that number should make us all pause, and I'm gonna tell you why. Not because technology is failing, but because people are actually tired. Now let me ask you this then. 0:47 What if people don't embrace technology the way we're all anticipating or even intend? What if they just actually burn out on it? Have you thought about that? 0:58 Now, what if, now think about this, the pace is too fast, the noise is too loud, and then the expectations are simply just too high. Do we need to reconsider our expectations? 1:14 What will this ultimately mean for all of us in our adoption? We're gonna explore all of this on the first segment. Now I'm gonna give you a hint, though. Things might get a little slower, but guess what? 1:27 We just will might all survive, or will we? We must go into this discussion with our eyes wide open. I know that might seem a little tough, but we really need to really think about this. 1:38 That's gonna be the conversation we're gonna have for this first segment. But I want you to ponder that just for a minute while I introduce you to our guests, and then we'll come back and talk about it. 1:48 We are gonna be talking with Brandon Makowsky, he's the Chief Economist at MSI, and we're gonna dig into two new reports that look at what is happening now and what is coming. 2:00 And we're gonna dig into the surge in data center projects and what will reshape infrastructure for the years to come. 2:07 We're gonna look at what will likely unfold this coming year in construction and how-- what that means pretty much to our landscape so much. 2:16 And then I'm gonna wrap up the show welcoming back James Bohnaker, who's the Senior Economist at Cushman Wakefield, and we're gonna tackle some of the biggest takeaways from the latest US economic outlook. 2:28 We're gonna talk about maybe if resilience is still the defining trait or the economy or if there are other risks emerging that demand, I think, immediate attention. 2:38 And I'm gonna actually have him look and talk about whether investors are focusing their energy on which sectors are poised for growth and how AI and other emerging technologies are reshaping the market landscape. 2:52 We've got a lot to talk about today. But first, let's get started. Let's talk about technological and digital burnout and what this might look like in both our personal and professional lives. 3:04 So before we talk about artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies in business, let's look and talk about social media in our personal lives because this is one place I think burnout most often occurs. 3:20 We likely all know people who take social media breaks. We've heard about this. People simply delete their apps. 3:27 Some people actually have bowls in their homes for their teenagers where they put their phones before dinner. They don't like it. We even see people before they-- breakfast. Think about this. 3:38 You go to a restaurant, all these people are on their phones, but now they're saying, "That's it. I can't do it anymore." I-- because the restaurants are full of people looking at their phones and their apps. 3:47 But think about this. Not because they don't value technology, that's not the reason. 3:52 Not because sometimes it's just too much, it's just that it's too much all at once, but because sometimes we just need to focus on people first. 4:02 If you think about it, it's all just overwhelming, but sometimes people need to minimize technology or opt out for the very specific reasons. So let's step back. Maybe it's overwhelming. 4:13 In the study I mentioned at the top of the show, the most popular areas causing burnout include endless notifications. I, I can attest to this. 4:22 Social media overload, uh, we all are experiencing, and switching apps and tabs too frequently. It just-- it gets us from all different directions, right? 4:32 So this is sometimes we all see all too often in our personal lives. But now let's take the same idea and apply it to artificial intelligence. Now this is where I want you to follow along with me here. 4:45 What if people burn out on AI? Okay? What if it feels overused, overhyped, or overwhelming? What if it becomes just one more demanding tool and demanding our attention? 5:02 Just think about that for a second. How will all of this ultimately impact overall adoption? That's what I want you to think about. We all talk about digital transformation, we talk all about this AI-driven success. 5:16 This is what we talk about. We talk about automation, we talk about efficiency, we talk about scale, but people are still at the center of all of it. That's what we still talk about. That's critical. 5:28 But now, and if people aren't on board, where does that leave us? Okay? Let's, let's kinda look at this now from a business perspective, and let's look at some numbers. 5:42 Forty-three percent of respondents say work disruptions interrupt them several times a day. And this burnout we are talking about spans generations differently, which is very interesting when we look at the numbers. 5:56 And when I looked at the numbers and I was r- going through them, it said thirty-four percent of respondents for Gen Zs regularly feel burnout.And only 31% of baby boomers say they never do. I found that interesting. 6:10 Those working in technology, though, often feel more burned out than others do, and that 37% of people in tech-related jobs report regular digital burnout. So what is all of this data telling us? 6:26 Because this is where we always find important things when we look at the data. 6:30 And a lot's gonna change, especially when we talk about AI, and it's very critical to think about this because with AI and data and the way we're looking at things are gonna change, which brings me to my opinion t- for today. 6:43 If we are burned out on all this technology, will you completely fail? Well, in my opinion, no. Let's start there. Absolutely not. 6:53 I don't believe technology burnout leads to failed digital transformation, that's for sure. 6:58 But what happens is this: things might get slower, adoption could take longer, the curve could flatten a bit, the initial excitement of early adoption, but we will all survive. 7:13 And maybe that's a good thing because the pace of change has been crazy, crazy fast, and we will all continue to still leverage technology, that we know. But quite frankly, there isn't another option not to. 7:30 So I'll add, I think technology a- adoption will be the most successful when artificial intelligence, AI, is in the background. It's not in the foreground. 7:42 So it was a conversation actually that I had with Dan Miklovic here on the show that we kicked off earlier this year that got me thinking. 7:50 He told me we're going to see less hype around conversational and generative AI in manufacturing and more focus on embedded AI in business in this coming year. 8:02 So think about this a little bit more, and I want us to digest this a little bit and think about why this matters. 8:08 Because when artificial intelligence works seamlessly in the background, ultimately it isn't about leveraging more technology, and we think about this, but rather using technology in a way that is more thoughtful or more strategic. 8:25 We're really leveraging what it's supposed to do. We're not running around like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off. 8:31 We're thinking about more thoughtfully about how we're using it, leveraging the most information in the best way. 8:38 So digital transformation only works when people want to participate, when they see the true value, when they see the trust in the tools, and when they feel like the technology helps in a way, in a very concrete way. 8:55 When they're just being told to implement something and they don't know why they're doing it, and they're just marching to orders, they're not doing the best that they can, and they're not implementing things in the best way. 9:08 It's not a vision for the future. So here's my tip that I wanna say. Make sure people are always in the conversation. We need to get our teams aligned with what the vision is to understand the implementation. 9:23 So that doesn't mean slow innovation and slowing down innovation. It means implementing the best innovation. It just means changing how we approach it. So it means looking with much more forethought 9:39 of how we go about it, much more strategic approach to it. Always start with that problem that people actually want to solve. And I think we've talked about this, and that's where AI can actually help so much better. 9:55 Not a technology you want to deploy for the sake of technology deployment. I feel like when we talk about AI, we're like, "Everybody's gotta implement AI, AI," but here are some key questions to consider for 2026. 10:07 What friction do you want to remove? It's not, "We gotta implement AI," and that's all I've heard. Everybody has to have AI. But are we asking the right questions about why AI is being implemented? 10:22 What time do we want to get back by implementing AI? What stress do we want to reduce by implementing AI? I, I... We've gotta continue on with that question. And how is our team gonna help us? 10:37 So how can we use technology to help solve some of those business problems by implementing AI? I don't see us taking that next strategic approach and asking our team to look at, at it thoroughly and completely. 10:53 We're just saying, "We've gotta have an AI strategy." And yes, you need an AI strategy, but you need to understand the talents of the team with that. 11:02 Then make sure you introduce the technology in phases so workers can adapt accordingly and adapt fully so that they understand. Give people some control over when and how they adopt. 11:17 Opt-in o- often builds trust, and everybody has to trust what they're doing. Because the next thing we know is we're gonna say there's all kinds of other issues that we have to deal with. 11:29 Forced adoption can sometimes build huge resistance. Resistance in and of itself is gonna slow everything down, and then we're gonna be back to this conversation we started at the beginning of the show. 11:41 In 2026, I truly believe this, the real winners will be the companies that reduce the cognitive load, not add to it. And getting that and understanding why you're implementing AI will be that true approach to success. 11:58 Success will lie in how we approach this. And make sure you are transparent about how artificial intelligence and data is used. 12:09 And the interesting part about data is data and trust-are the new cur-currency because it's gonna be a little different. It's not gonna be we're using data the same way we ever before. 12:20 We've got all these governance issues we're gonna be talking about, and in the next m-months here, in the next several shows and in our blogs, we're gonna explain data is gonna take on a role completely different than we thought we've used in the past. 12:35 We're gonna be looking at everything different- differently than we ever have, and without it, adoption will stall, but it's not gonna be business as usual, and I think that's the thing that most companies are not really looking at thoroughly. 12:51 But with it, transformation will scale, and that's the critical part. But I want you to remember this, and this is really critical. People don't burn out on technology by itself. Let me repeat that. 13:05 People don't burn out on technology by itself. They burn out on poor implementation and overload, and that's the critical problem. That's the thing we need to understand, and then what happens? Your best people leave. 13:23 You thought you have the smartest people, and then they go somewhere else, and then you start all over again. So if you can't get the approach to how you implement and leverage technology correctly, what happens? 13:36 Then it becomes a huge enabler and not an obstacle to success. We need to have you think about what you wanna do. 13:48 So let's get this right and start the new year on the right foot because when you do, you will achieve so much more with the right approach, the right vision, and the right understanding of AI because that's the ultimate goal here, 14:05 and we're wishing and hoping you will have a wonderful 2026. All right, listeners, I'm out of time for this first segment. 14:12 Share your thoughts with me on X @ConnectTheWorld or follow me on LinkedIn and continue the conversation there, and I'm looking for more subscribers here on YouTube, so we're looking for all of that as well. 14:21 Please check out our website at connecttheworld.com, our show website at thepeggySmedleyShow.com. All right, we've got more to come. 14:28 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world, and remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. [upbeat music]
