Got your canary with you?

In the 1900’s, coal miners were mysteriously dying in record numbers. Only when autopsies were performed, did scientists realize that the deaths were due to carbon monoxide poisoning. So the scientists hatched a plan to solve the problem. They planned to detect the gas leak early and then warn the miners to evacuate.

But the problem was: carbon monoxide can’t be seen, smelled or tasted. How do you detect a gas that can’t be detected?

Luckily, scientists discovered that canaries are also highly sensitive to carbon monoxide. They noticed that these small yellow singing birds would die from very low concentrations of carbon monoxide. So they hypothesized: if the birds stopped singing, then it was a sure sign of a gas leak.

When they tested it in the mines, they found that this crude detection system actually worked. Eventually it was mandated that canaries were sent down in the mines with the miners. And while thousands of canaries died, they helped save the lives of thousands of miners.

In today’s society, the work that we do has changed. We no longer work in dangerous coal mines. We work, sitting down all day, staring at computer screens in plushy offices. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have physiological limits. We can’t work 24 hours a day at a frenetic pace. We can’t deal with the constant stress that we feel when our emails follow us home. We’re not superheroes and nor should we try to be.

We need to have “canaries” that help us realize when we’re close to burning out. We need something that will alert us and cause us to change. Because we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of those early coal miners. We have to be more conscious of our limits. So…

Got your canary with you?