"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E. B. White
I attended a dinner this week prompted by the wonderful new book The New Digital Age. If you haven't read it yet, stop reading this rubbish and go buy it. The discussion concerned how we make thoughtful consumption choices about mobile and internet technology. For those pondering similar dilemmas, I can share some observations and some questions, but no answers:
1. Show up - wherever you are, 'be there'
Kids under 10 and CEOs make the best conversation partners: neither group will tolerate your BS and neither group entertains the notion that you might have something better to do than be there with them.
What would it take for you to treat every encounter like a tea party with your niece or a sit-down with your boss' boss?
2. Enforce loving discipline
The dinner was device-free. People placed their phones on-silent, upside-down and in a bowl in the centre of the table (NB: not in a swingers-party-kind-of-way). Not once in 3 hours of rich, fruitful conversation did it become necessary to fact-check a claim, play a hilarious video or instagram a shot of the amazing apple crumble. People sat quietly during silences and waited for the conversation to restart.
If we don't need our devices in order to talk about our devices, how often do we really need them?
To test this, ask people to surrender their cell phones in meetings you run. If people have somewhere they'd rather be, let them go there - and don't take it personally.
4. Cultivate ritual
I run towards change, chaos and variety. And yet...I love routine. Catholic masses, Bikram yoga classes, folding laundry. In a world where everything changes, rituals that are the same every time create the empty spaces where peace sneaks in.
Also, old ladies glare at you if you text in church. Blackberries in the yoga studio is a major Zen faux pas. And your sweater-drawer will never look like a Gap display table if you check email while trying to make seams line up.
Where are your empty spaces?
5. Find people who are "leaning out"
One of the dinner guests doesn't have a Facebook profile. Another doesn't own a smartphone. Another has moved his collection of thousands of books around the world multiple times. Each of them has devoted more thought to the significance of "not having" than I have to the significance of "having" a Facebook profile, a smartphone and a Kindle. They didn't change my mind, but hearing about their decisions has changed how I think.
What have you "leaned out" of that everyone else has "leaned into"? What has it cost you and what has it given you?
6. Decide - and then act
Dinner co-host Casper ter Kuile is my mindfulness hero. It is a privilege to call him a friend. I aspire to bring Casper's brand of cultivated authenticity to each of my interactions. But you don't need to travel for 2.5 days on the back of a yak to find Casper sitting on a cushion under an ancient redwood chanting mantras; not only is he very much online, he is conscientiously responsive. He has thought carefully and decided that it is important to be a person who is connected, engaged and reliable. As Casper says "it's one of my values - responsive and courteous (with occasional wit) over email :)"
What decisions have you made about your digital actions? If you haven't decided, has the Internet decided for you?
7. Curate relentlessly
American author Jim Rohn wrote "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with".
If you applied that logic to the five online platforms you spend the most time with, would you make different choices?
I'm not sure that I'd choose the equation: Julia = (gmail inbox + NYT.com + Hulu + Amazon Prime + harvard.edu)/5
Our quality of life is vastly improved by a world where information is ubiquitous and data is almost free. But permanent connectivity isn't zero-cost. For each of us, there is a point where more isn't necessarily better. It's just more.
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