be here now
March 5th, 2010 • posts i've written
you may have seen this before
Ever since I put together my slideshare on time (above), I’ve been obsessed with how I personally experience time.
An obsessive fascination with the future makes me good at what I do (thinking about the future) while leaving me almost entirely unable to live in the moment.
I rarely take the time to savor what I’m doing. I think I’ve had the opportunity to sip the finest drinks, eat the finest meals, and meet the finest people – but I can’t really remember as I’m typically trapped in my own head working out a problem or making plans for the future. And if recent conversations are indicative of a larger pattern – I think this future thinking lock-in is a growing trend among people like me.
I watch as we all sit in coffee shops, restaurants, and even movies, with our eyes half glued to our mobile phone. Mobiles quickly went from the thing we pick-up to simply look busy to the things that keep us perpetually busy. I spend a good deal of my time pecking away at my Google Reader; repetitively hitting ‘J,’ exchanging action for stimulus, action for stimulus, planning ahead, thinking about what to share, what to push to my blog, and what will allow me a moment of 140-character performance. I plan my route home, my clothes for tomorrow, my haircut for next week, my speech next month, my thoughts for my next meeting, my schedule for the weekend, my next blog post, my current project, my next project, and anything else that comes orbiting my thoughts.
Being more conscious of this, I’m even more convinced that as designers of experiences, we fail to understand people when we build branded experiences. People are rarely ever prepared to be in the moment when they’re online. Moreover, it’s incredibly difficult to get someone to slow down, breathe, and truly experience the world in front of them. Knowing this, we have two choices: 1) build experiences that play into the future-obsessed state that most people occupy, or 2) break real ground in developing experiences that coerce people into a present-conscious state.
If you’re interested in training yourself to be more present, here are 6 steps from Psychology Today:
- When you’re trying to do something, pay more attention to the activity, the room, the people, anything other than your own thoughts. Get out of your head and into the moment. Here’s a trick: play one of these things is not like the other with things in the room.
- When worried about the future, find things to savor. Much of what we do when we think about the future is collect mental images (often quite negative ones), savoring a momentary pleasure helps you stop catastrophizing future events. As Mark Twain said, “I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
- Breathe. Yes, it is that simple. Take a moment to take a few deep breathes.
- Find your flow. Give yourself a clear task and focus deeply on your work.
- Accept rather than avoid. If you’ve ever tried to not think about something, you know it’s impossible. Accept your thoughts for what they are.
- Keep a fresh pair of eyes. Don’t let routine turn your life into a haze – try to notice what’s new around you, all the time.
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9 Responses (add your comment)
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“People like us”, I think that’s a huge deal. We (designers, planners, strategist, creatives, etc) are constantly consuming as it’s in part our fuel but as you’ve so eloquently stated savoring and learning how to parlay that into great user experience might be a great challenge for us all.
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Bud I’m not gonna lie, could you please do a post somewhere on your thoughts of the time traveling from LOST…SORRY I HAD TO DO IT!
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As it seams to be the case a lot in the last months, I find myself in a similar thought process as you’ve described here. I’m an information (for lack of a better word) junkie who’s constantly craving for progression and I really enjoy this ride. But lately, I discover me observing myself and question myself if I just want to press on forever.
I think I’m looking for a better balance of being in the moment and enjoying progression. I find the zen concept of “full awareness” pretty helpful with training myself to get out of the chase.
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Great observation Bud. I agree that we could all stand to be a bit more present.
However, I think you’re looking at the world a bit too much in the way you experience it and in doing so, you’re making a very broad over-generalization.
You are good at your job because of how much you constantly search for what’s next. However, a lot of the world isn’t wired this way. Not everyone is so concerned about the future. In fact, many of them simply use the web and their mobile devices to get through life’s little (and big) challenges and keep up with their friends and family.
A great number of industrial designers, information architects and user experience designers know this and constantly seek to make brand experiences better for people through understanding how those people use the things they design.
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I am the same way. Be present has to be the hardest thing to do.
I make a rule though to spend time with friends at least once a month. Go out make a night of it with no twitter, no google reader, no email during dinner.
Baby steps I tell ya…
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Our inability to “live in the moment,” has nothing to do with the future.
Maybe it’s just me but I personally think the truth is at once a lot simpler and a lot more harder to take:
It’s not our constant obsession with the future that makes us unable to live in the moment properly, but rather our constant self-obsession. Technology has only made it easier for this to happen.
With iPods, iPhones, Kindles, and laptops.Case in point: In this relatively small post, you used the word “I” 14 times, and “Me/My” 20 times. The closest you get to referencing another person is “We” (a word that still includes “you”) and “People,” which is a more abstract term in this sense.
The future really has nothing to do with this.
If you and I and everyone who posted here spent time thinking about someone other than ourselves, I’m thinking we’d all be better off.
We used to call this kind of stuff understanding, observation, empathy, even sympathy and I’m frankly surprised we need a Psychology Today article to explain this concept.
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I really liked this presentation – very fun to have my brain remember college philosophy. I particularly liked the bit about different notions of time – I remember understanding the rift between Western development and African culture in Tanzania, learning that there were sayings such as “slowly slowly is the way” (e.g. as opposed to “time is money” in English). I remember thinking, your life expectancy might be lower but you are the happiest people I’ve ever encountered. Who is right, I wonder? There is something to be said for enjoying ‘now’.