Always On Call: When the Workday Never Ends

It is 10:47 on a Tuesday evening. You have just put the kids to bed, finally sat down, and your phone lights up. A message from a constituent. Then another from a colleague on the council. Then a Facebook notification demanding answers about a zoning decision. You are not at work. You have not been at work for hours. And yet you are still on call.

This is the reality that Sverrir Bergmann Magnusson laid bare in this episode of Taming Technology. Sverrir had just finished his master's thesis in Business Administration at the University of Akureyri, and his research hit a nerve I suspect many of us share: what happens to the human being when the workday simply refuses to end?

The Research: When Boundaries Dissolve

Sverrir's thesis focused on something deceptively simple: the work-life balance of municipal leaders in Iceland. But what he uncovered is anything but simple. The executive director of a municipality may work a traditional eight-to-four schedule, but the elected officials exist in a different temporal reality entirely. Once the official workday ends, that is precisely when the demands begin. Citizens send messages expecting instant responses. Other council members forward issues. Social media amplifies every decision and every delay.

"You are always on call. This is a different kind of pressure -- because there is no shift change, no relief coming."

What struck me most was how Sverrir described the expectation culture. People do not just hope for a quick reply -- they feel entitled to one. And when it does not come immediately, frustration builds. As Sverrir put it plainly: people expect instant responses, and they get angry when those responses do not materialize within minutes. This is not about one demanding constituent. It is a structural shift in how we understand availability and what we owe each other in a connected society.

The consequences are predictable and devastating. Sverrir's research points to "stafraen stigmognun" -- digital amplification -- where the natural stresses of public service are magnified by always-on communication. Add the fear of making a public mistake and the FOMO of potentially missing a critical message, and you have a recipe for burnout that is both invisible and pervasive. The boundaries between work and personal life have not just blurred. For many municipal leaders, they have ceased to exist.

AI in the Process: Helpful, But Is It Skipping Something Crucial?

Naturally, our conversation turned to artificial intelligence. Sverrir used ChatGPT during his thesis work, and he was refreshingly honest about it. For summarizing lengthy reports -- some running seventy or eighty pages -- it was, as he put it, fantastic. He also used Icelandic speech recognition tools like Hreimur and Tyro to transcribe research interviews, a quiet but important revolution in how academic work gets done in a small-language context.

But Sverrir is no uncritical enthusiast. The question he raised has stayed with me since our recording.

"Is AI perhaps skipping something that is crucial?"

That single question captures the central tension of our AI moment. The tool is powerful -- it can compress, summarize, and organize at speeds no human can match. But compression is not the same as understanding. A summary, by definition, leaves things out. And the things left out might be precisely the nuances, the contradictions, the uncomfortable details that matter most. What are we gaining in efficiency, and what might we be losing in depth?

I also shared with Sverrir how I use Texts.com to manage the flood of messages across platforms -- a practical tool for an impractical volume of communication. The irony is not lost on me: we need technology to manage the overload that technology created.

The Power Asymmetry: Citizens on Tricycles

One thread in our conversation deserves serious attention: what happens when governments adopt AI tools without public awareness? Imagine a municipality using AI to analyze public sentiment or draft policy responses -- while citizens on the other side of that equation are still navigating the basics of digital literacy.

"It is like they are on tricycles while the government is in Teslas."

I used that image during our conversation and I keep coming back to it. The power asymmetry between institutions and the individuals they serve is not new. But AI accelerates it in ways we have not fully grasped. When a government can process and act on information at machine speed, while citizens are still figuring out which app to use, the democratic relationship shifts. Transparency becomes not just a nice principle but an urgent necessity. We need honest public conversations about how these tools are being used in governance -- before the gap becomes uncrossable.

The Musician's Lesson: The Art of Imperfection

Sverrir is not only a researcher and council member. He is also a musician, and it was from that part of his life that one of the most memorable moments of our conversation emerged. We were discussing the pressure to always be polished, to never show weakness -- in politics, in professional life, on social media. And Sverrir offered a piece of wisdom that felt like it came from a much older and deeper well.

"Allow yourself to be off-key. Because no one is a perfect singer."

He was talking about music, but he was talking about everything. In a world that quantifies our steps, our sleep, and our productivity, the simple act of allowing yourself to be imperfect is quietly radical. It is an act of resistance against the algorithmic pressure to always perform. And it connects directly to the burnout that Sverrir's research documents. When we cannot allow ourselves to be off-key -- when every moment is potentially public and every response must be instant -- we lose something essential about being human.

Finding the Green Zones

So what do we do? The concept of "green zones" emerged in our conversation as something both concrete and hopeful. Green zones are phone-free times and spaces -- deliberate pockets of disconnection. Dinner without devices. A walk without earbuds. An evening where the phone stays in another room. Not grand gestures, but small, intentional acts of boundary-setting.

We also discussed digital fasts -- longer periods of deliberate disconnection. Sverrir practices this, stepping away from screens to let his mind reset. It sounds simple, and it is. That is part of why it works. The difficulty is not the practice itself but giving yourself permission to do it in a culture that equates availability with responsibility.

As someone who spent sixteen years in emergency services, I understand the pull of always being available. Being on call can literally save lives. But I have learned that the emergency mindset does not transfer well to every domain. Not every message is an emergency. Not every delay is a crisis. And our nervous systems do not know the difference unless we teach them.

Closing Reflection: The Human Element

What I took away from my conversation with Sverrir is something that weaves through every episode of this podcast: the human element remains the most important factor. Technology is a tool. AI is a tool. Social media is a tool. But tools do not set boundaries. Tools do not protect our wellbeing. Tools do not decide what kind of society we want to build. We do.

Sverrir's research gives us data. His experience as a council member gives us ground truth. And his instinct as a musician gives us perhaps the most important thing of all -- permission. Permission to be imperfect. Permission to set boundaries. Permission to put the phone down and be fully present in the room you are actually in.

That, in the end, is what taming technology looks like. Not rejecting it. Not fearing it. But choosing, deliberately and with full awareness, when to engage and when to step away. Finding your green zones. Allowing yourself to be off-key. And remembering that the most important connections in your life do not require a Wi-Fi signal.