Robin Wall Kimmerer on Attention

I’ve been growing mint and watching birds during the pandemic. I am constantly amazed by what I’ve been seeing and learning and how ignorant I was for over four decades of things that were right in front of me. This morning, I came across this quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (via Maria Popova) that resonated in ways that it wouldn’t have a year ago:

We poor myopic humans, with neither the raptor’s gift of long-distance acuity, nor the talents of a housefly for panoramic vision. However, with our big brains, we are at least aware of the limits of our vision. With a degree of humility rare in our species, we acknowledge there is much we can’t see, and so contrive remarkable ways to observe the world. Infrared satellite imagery, optical telescopes, and the Hubble space telescope bring vastness within our visual sphere. Electron microscopes let us wander the remote universe of our own cells. But at the middle scale, that of the unaided eye, our senses seem to be strangely dulled. With sophisticated technology, we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we’re seeing when we’ve only scratched the surface. Our acuity at this middle scale seems diminished, not by any failing of the eyes, but by the willingness of the mind. Has the power of our devices led us to distrust our unaided eyes? Or have we become dismissive of what takes no technology but only time and patience to perceive? Attentiveness alone can rival the most powerful magnifying lens.

Recess

Over the past few months, I’ve been taking regular time in the middle of the week for “recess” with my friend, Yi Zhang. We basically hop on a Zoom, make art, and share. We mainly do it because it’s fun, but there’s a deeper meditation underlying these sessions.

We’ve observed that others seem to value us for how we bring art into our work, both directly and indirectly. However, this is usually seen as a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have, things that are best done on our own versus company time. Why, and what do we lose when we view art this way? As Yi exclaimed, “It’s not optional for me. I need to do this.”

Other things we often treat as outside the scope of work include rest, relationship-building, and self-care. Why, and what do we lose when view these as separate from our work? Some fields do integrate these things. In sports, rest is part of your training regimen. And, in primary education, recess is part of your school day.

Hence, recess. If it’s useful for my 10-year old nephew, it’s probably useful for me too. I don’t have anything too insightful to share about our sessions, other than that I love them, that they energize me, and that I want to do them more often with more people. I also track them on my timesheet as part of my work day. My timesheet is for myself, only — I’m not billing any clients for this time — but it still feels like an important declaration of values and boundary-setting.

This morning, I came across this blog post about a brand of CBD sparkling water called, “Recess.” Here’s their tagline on their website:

An antidote to modern times. We’re just here to help people feel calm, focused, and creative despite the world around them.

I chuckled when I saw it, I think their marketing is brilliant, and I don’t begrudge the person for sharing her enthusiasm (and a discount code) for it. My friend and colleague, Odin Zackman, has often talked about how we should not only take sabbaticals but find ways to bring the essence of these sabbaticals into our every day life. If drinking a can of flavored water does that for you, I am all for it.

And yet, I found it a bit sad for how reflective it seems to be of modern times. Suffering from the chaos of everyday life? There’s a drink for that! Or a drug. Or better yet, an app! Why have actual recess when you can buy a can of soda with the same name?!

Here are some related musings I’ve written about in the past:

  • In my most recent Faster Than 20 blog post on Journey Mapping, I wrote, “We often treat art as optional — nice, but not necessary. Doing this end-of-year ritual with my colleagues the past four years has helped me realize that this is a mistake, not just with Journey Mapping, but with many of my exercises. Practically speaking, when you create something that’s beautiful, you’re more likely to look at it again. More importantly, the act of creation leads to an understanding that’s far deeper and more meaningful than a set of sticky notes can convey.”
  • I participated in a workshop for the CIA in 2006. I mentioned the importance of play, and I saw a lot of backs stiffen, which led to an interesting discussion about what “play” actually meant.
  • One of my regular practices for the past decade (!) has been Wednesday Play Days, which was inspired by Odin. And here’s the exhaustive story of my seven year journey to learn how to slow down and bring better balance to my life.
  • “Art” can sometimes have a narrow definition. In 2013, I wrote about how I consider my work a creative practice. I mentioned “social artistry” — a term I learned from Nancy White — and also shared some of Elissa Perry’s poetry. Both Nancy and Elissa have continued to inspire me in how they bring their art to their work (or their art to their art!).

Planning and Reflection: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Last week, I wrote about my end-of-year Journey Mapping ritual on the Faster Than 20 blog. Yesterday, I saw this kind tweet from David Daly about my post:

I don’t know David, but his tweet made me want to know more about his yearly reflection process. Fortunately, he documented it on his blog. It’s smart and well worth reading. A few things jumped out at me:

  • His reflection starts with a review of his previous year’s goals
  • In addition to his yearly review, he does daily, weekly, and monthly reviews, and he takes notes for all of them
  • His planning naturally follows from his reflection

Even though he’s allocating a significant amount of time for end-of-year reflection and planning, his whole process is both integrated and iterative. As he explains:

There are a few interesting side-effects of the review process. First, they let me see the big picture across timespan we don’t normally have the time to think about. Big change takes time and we are often focused on very small time spans. The second side-effect is it let’s me see my accomplishments more clearly. I had a very good 2019, accomplishing a lot of my goals and pushing many things forward. It’s nice to pause to see the forest for the trees periodically. It also makes it easier to keep pressing forward on the hard things when I can see that I’ve made progress on them or similar hard things in the past.

His process nicely reiterates some things that I constantly find myself harping on.

First, planning and review / reflection are two sides of the same coin. Trying to do one without the other doesn’t work.

Second, long-term complements short-term reflection and planning, and vice-versa. There’s a school of thought that wants to claim that you shouldn’t plan long-term because the world is too dynamic and uncertain, as if everyday learning somehow conflicts with long-term goals, which is a fallacy. As David writes, when you do both, it helps you see both the forest and the trees.

Lessons Learned from 30 Days of Blogging

Last month, I decided to blog every day. As I explained earlier:

For whatever reason, I’ve found writing hard to do the past few years, and this year has been the hardest. I’ve also been disinclined to think out loud, even though I’ve had a lot I’ve wanted to say and share, both personally and professionally.

Mid-way through the experiment, I reported:

What it’s been doing is helping unlock whatever has been inside of me. I’ve been precious about sharing what I’ve been thinking, not wanting to say them unless I can say them well and feeling paralyzed as a result. I’ve also found it overwhelming at times to try to blog. I guess things are crazy in the world right now, and it’s not only affecting my mental health, it’s hard for me to make sense of it all.

Blogging as a practice has reminded me not to be too precious. The less I try to say, the less overwhelming I feel. The more frequently I share, the less I have to worry about saying it all in one piece, which makes it much easier to write. Plus, even though I don’t think I’ve shown it yet, I’m starting to remember what it feels like to write well. I’m rounding into shape again, which always feels good.

The biggest surprise has been that sharing regularly has helped me re-engage with my broader community. I didn’t think anyone really followed this blog anymore, and because I’m rarely on social media anymore, the algorithms seem to have decided I’m not worthy of most people’s feeds. Still, some people are paying attention to what I’m saying, and getting to hear from them has been a treat and is also motivating me to write more.

After having finished the experiment, I’m not sure I have anything different to report, other than to say that I don’t think I had any breakthroughs after 30 days, and I want to keep exercising this muscle. I thought seriously about extending my project through the end of the year, but I opted against it for a few reasons. Even though it wasn’t particularly stressful, it wasn’t stress-free either, and I don’t need the added pressure this month. It also tires out muscles that I’m using for work right now. I can focus on developing these muscles more when work settles down.

In the meantime, I think the exercise still is helping me share more than I was before. This is my third blog post in December. I think a good pace for me is to be blogging about once a week, especially when those posts are more or less organic.

Maybe the most interesting thing for me was seeing what I chose to blog about. This wasn’t just a writing exercise, it was a sharing exercise. I aggregated all of the tags from those 30 days of blog posts and ran them through WordClouds.com to see if I could detect any patterns.

Not surprisingly, I wrote a lot about COVID-19 and the elections. It was nice to see that I wrote quite a bit about collaboration. This wasn’t my goal, but I admit I was curious to see how often I felt compelled to write about “work stuff” — the original purpose of this blog — especially when I had so many other things on my mind. I loved that I wrote about a lot about making — food and art and photography and stories in general.

Finally, I was curious about the people and places I wrote about. Here were people I knew whom I mentioned in various posts (not including my partner and sister, whom I mentioned often and didn’t bother tagging):

I loved seeing this list. My interactions with others play such a huge role in what I think about and how I feel, and I love being able to share this space with the people in my life.

People I mentioned whom I don’t know:

Places I mentioned:

  • Africa
    • Nigeria
  • Alaska
  • California
    • Bay Area
      • Colma
      • Oakland
        • Joaquin Miller Park
        • Mountain View Cemetery
      • San Francisco
        • Fort Point
        • Golden Gate Bridge
    • Los Angeles
      • Forest Lawn
  • Cincinnati
  • Santa Fe
    • Ghost Ranch

The Current Lockdown, Security Theater, and Second-Order Effects

We’ve been under “full” lockdown here in the Bay Area for almost a week. The rules have been much more lax than they were when we first went into lockdown in March. Understandably so — we know a lot more about the virus now than we did when it started. However, the changes have barely been evident to me. All the retail stores are open, and people seem to be out and about just as much as they were two weeks ago.

Outdoor dining, however, isn’t allowed. This smells like security theater. If you can spend 30 minutes in a poorly ventilated store with others — admittedly, with everyone masked — is it really less safe to eat outdoors spaced from others?

I get that you have to do something different (3,000 people dying every day is absolutely horrific), that sometimes it’s the second- or third-order effects that result in the changes you want, not the first. But I feel for folks who are most impacted by these rules (such as restaurants) when it’s not clear that the rules are addressing what most needs to be addressed. It’s also just confusing for everybody, and you have to wonder if the confusion is undermining the point of the order in the first place.

Apparently, this past Thursday, San Francisco changed the rules again, now allowing people to meet with one person outside of their household for an outdoor, spaced and masked walk. Again, this feels safe, but if this is now allowed, what is the theory of change of this whole lockdown again?

It will be interesting to see which way the numbers are trending in a few weeks.