Posts Tagged ‘time’

be here now

05 Mar, 2010 • posts i've written • 9 comments


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.

to a decade unrealized

04 Jan, 2010 • posts i've written • 6 comments

Dear Two-Thousand-Teens,

You’re the unborn son/daughter of an entire world – what a heap of expectations – that’s the bad news, unfortunately.

The good news? Well, it’s an amazing time to be alive. And there are so many amazing people to be alive with who are dedicated to making the world a better place during your time with us.

Oh, and the technology… It’s an amazing time to be alive with a pair of thumbs. And you have 6.7 billion pairs of them (give or take a few unfortunate accidents).

But the most fascinating tech isn’t what’s in our hands, it’s what’s in our heads. We, the once predictors of rocket cars, summer vacations on Mars, and robotic sexual partners, we the over-achievers and over-dreamers, we’ve begun to fail at predicting the new pace of technology. Our wildest dreams are now in our nearest grasp.

From Ray Kurzweil, he of the Singularity,

Progress is exponential–not just a measure of power of computation, number of Internet nodes, and magnetic spots on a hard disk–the rate of paradigm shift is itself accelerating, doubling every decade. Scientists look at a problem and they intuitively conclude that since we’ve solved 1 percent over the last year, it’ll therefore be one hundred years until the problem is exhausted: but the rate of progress doubles every decade, and the power of the information tools (in price-performance, resolution, bandwidth, and so on) doubles every year. People, even scientists, don’t grasp exponential growth. During the first decade of the human genome project, we only solved 2 percent of the problem, but we solved the remaining 98 percent in five years.

But Two-Thousand-Teens, let’s not lump you in as the next decade. You’re more than that. You’re our second chance at a new century. We’ve stumbled, we’ve lost the faith in ourselves, we’ve made promises we knew we couldn’t keep, and we’ve spoiled the first few blank pages of our masterpiece. But that’s why you’re here. Again, expectations… but in this endeavor, you are not alone.

But, Two-Thousand-Teens, we have our work cut out for ourselves.

Between 1910 and 1920:

  • Thomas Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture.
  • Motorized movie cameras were invented, replacing hand-cranked cameras.
  • The crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne.
  • Mary Phelps Jacob invented the bra.
  • Gideon Sundback invented the modern zipper.
  • Stainless steel was invented by Henry Brearly.
  • The pop-up toaster invented by Charles Strite.
  • Short-wave radio was invented.
  • Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays.
  • Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, discovering a new source called radium.
  • Einstein published his general theory of relativity.

From the most banal experiences of the 21st century to the most sublime, much of the foundation was put in place during that second decade of the 20th century. It’s the same story again – the world we want to build, the society we want to live in, the future we want to dream, it all begins right now.

Like you, our dreams are yet unrealized and perhaps even undreamt. Two-Thousand-Teens, remind us to be hopeful, to be bold, to make ridiculous predictions, and to attempt foolish feats. To borrow a phrase, remind us that he not busy being born is busy dying.

To the inhabitants of the Two-Thousand Teens, let us not make another resolution for another year. Let us make a resolution for the 21st century and let’s use our time here to realize it. For perhaps the first time in our modern history, our vision is small compared to our grasp. Our culture is afflicted with short term thinking, quarterly demands, and our obsession with the present. It’s our future that matters most.

And let us have the strength to weather our mistakes and our misfortunes.

The phrase too big to fail was perhaps first uttered right before the Titanic embarked and sank in those icy waters in 1912.

World War I, the Great War, The War to End All Wars… well, didn’t. But within the decade it took with it over 16 million lives and 16 million possibilities for a different world.

Two-Thousand-Teens, we’ll never know who among us will have the pleasure of seeing you through. But while we’re here, it’s a pleasure to have you, and a pleasure to be your partner.

I promise not to take you for granted.

there’s more time than the present

11 Nov, 2009 • posts i've written • 5 comments

There's More Time Than The Present
View more documents from Bud Caddell.


How do we design experiences with an understanding for how humans perceive time?

I’ve been obsessed with this deck from Matt Jones ever since I posted it last week. Presented with a few days off myself, my obsession was allowed to run rampant. I cherry picked quite a few things from his presentation and then dug a little deeper with the help of a couple books and the internet.

I would have liked to spend a wee bit more time with this one, but I’m trying out this new philosophy of not letting ‘the perfect be the enemy of the good.’

I’d love to hear some thoughts on this one, so donate your two cents in the comments.

time as a material for design

26 Oct, 2009 • posts i've written • 4 comments

DxF2009, Utrecht: "All the time in the world"
View more documents from Matt Jones.

Time + Data = Story

Lots of excellent stuff here, too much to cite, but definitely worth a spin.

Don’t say I don’t show you new things.

the hours of discovery

24 Feb, 2009 • posts i've written • 2 comments

The internet never closes. It never shutters its doors to load the shelves full of content again. And for that matter, the internet operates outside of traditional timezones, too. But I’ve noticed certain behaviors amongst myself and my friends and followers. I’m particularly interested in the hours of before we all slink into bed. Those hours we meander. Those hours we discover.

Here are some random links I got some tweeps to send tonight:

My followers are mostly from the US, so that does help create these shared hours. Interestingly enough, I’m building a secret little project (codename: AYSS) that operates on discovery and mystery. It’s a system that requires involvement to play, so I’ve gotten a fair amount of feedback asking for more ways to lurk. After tonight, I’m curious about only making that content available during a brief window late in the evening. I want to catch people during this time of invested browsing.