I hate having my mind blown too much while I'm drinking my morning coffee, but a short story over on BoingBoing introduced me to the concept of "Cognitive Surplus" - which (I think) is the amount of free time everyone has due to automation. Instead of toiling out in the fields to grow our own food, or slaving over a hot oven every night, mechanized automation in the 50s increasingly gave people more time to think about stuff.
Unfortunately, there was no internet, and s, to fill the gap, we created mindless neverending TV sitcoms. And it's only now that we're starting to free ourselves from the shackles (a good reason why TV watching continues to decline). But as a whole, the amount of cognitive surplus TV sucks up is still insane.
This make realize that when I say 'I just never have the time', I just need to stop watching Hell's Kitchen.
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I dunno, I gave up TV completely several years ago, and I'm still running at just about my cognitive limit. Maybe single parenting saps a similar amount.
At the same time, new uses for that cognitive surplus keep growing.
Part of it is what I call the Alvin Toffler / Robin Williams effect. In "Future Shock", Toffler coined the term "overchoice", predicting that consumers would face an increasing range of choices as sellers continually try to differentiate themselves. The best demonstration I know of this was in Williams' movie "Moscow on the Hudson", when his newly emigrated Russian goes to an American supermarkt for coffee, and sees an entire wall of different coffee brands. Dealing with those choices takes time.
Another factor are the continual calls on your time to "do-it-yourself" - whether you want to or not. I've dealt with "some assembly required" kid's toys where they practically give you a bag of raw plastic , a set of molds, and a general idea of what the toy should look like. Technical support - for anything - often consists of pre-recorded scripts describing the steps YOU need to take to correct the product's problem - with the implication that it must be YOUR fault it is not working.
Once upon a time, traveling by air was simple -you called a travel agent, they bought the regulated price ticket, and you were done. Now, you have to accept that you will pay a premium price, or actively work at finding a lower price - or sacrifice your time to using a longer route.
I could go, but I won't. It takes up too much time.