The Age Of Adjustment Highlights How Emotional Lag Shapes Our Response To Fast Moving Innovation

Author: TJ Njozela, executive creative director at Dentsu Creative South Africa

The systems around us evolve daily. Faster software, smarter tools, and new ways of working. The story we tell is one of the constant accelerations. But the quieter truth is that most of our energy goes into catching up. Not because we are unwilling, but because change happens faster than people can process. We’re not just dealing with technological whiplash; we also have to manage emotional lag.

Workflows update before work culture adapts. Strategies refresh before the purpose of re-centers. Adoption of innovative technologies advances before old tech is mastered. And through it all, we are still human: slow, sensory, full of bias, craving meaning in the middle of constant motion.

That gap between change and comprehension is where most of us live now. We are functioning, performing, and delivering, but often half a step behind our own experience.

It is tempting to believe that the fix is to move faster. Learn more. Stay ahead. But the deeper work of adjustment is not accelerating; it is alignment. We do not need to match the world’s pace. We need to tune into the rhythm that makes us operate at our best. To align what is changing around us with what is still true within us.

Do not get me wrong. This is not a call for slowing down. It is a call for recalibration. Adjustment is not as glamorous as innovation. It does not make the headlines of trending platforms. But it is the invisible skill that keeps organisations, and people, from spinning out. Leaders who navigate this well do not chase momentum; they manage meaning. They create space for sense-making between the updates and upgrades. They know that patience has become a strategy. Listening is a leadership skill. Slowing down to interpret is a competitive advantage.

We tend to measure progress by speed, how quickly we respond, adapt, or deliver. Progress, though, at its best, has always been about direction. This is what defines the Age of Adjustment: a collective effort to find coherence in a world that continually refreshes itself. A quiet maturity in how we balance growth with grounding.

When we stop treating adjustment as resistance and start seeing it as refinement, we stop chasing the new and begin integrating what’s necessary. Innovation will continue to progress at its own rhythm, but we are living in an era of transformation; an age where change is unavoidable, and our success depends on our ability to adapt.

We just must remember our own pace.