Your employees aren’t burned out. They’re indoors too much

Michael, a 42-year-old tax accountant, came to my office complaining of chronic anxiety, chest pressure, and what he called tunnel vision. “It’s like I’m stuck inside my screen,” he told me. “Even when I’m not working, I’m holding my phone and my brain won’t shut off.” Is that you? Americans spend 93% of their time indoors. Insomnia, depression, metabolic disease, cognitive decline, chronic inflammation, burnout, insulin resistance, sedentariness, loneliness. We engineered the human animal into a box and spend billions managing the symptoms the box causes. Here is what I want leaders reading this to understand: your people are not burned out. They are indoors too much. In 30 years of internal medicine, I have found that the most underestimated factor in health and longevity is where people spend their time. Indoor work is cognitively rich but biologically poor and screen-intense. I call this Digital Obesity: so overloaded on screen