Being Present in the Age of the Mind Outside the Brain

being present: An image of looking up into the leafy branches of trees. Photo attribution: James Reis, from his exhibit Closer and Closer

Being present is tough! The other day, Celia and I were walking in Boston’s beautiful Arnold Arboretum when she asked me who’d responded to an email I’d sent. When I pulled out my phone to answer her question, she said she felt she was walking with a third person, a stranger.

Where are our minds?

Once, our minds were in our brains. Before tools, painting, language, and writing were invented, people had no way to represent knowledge outside their heads.
What if Celia had asked her question on a walk ten years ago? I would have either been able to remember the answer — or not.

Today, parts of our minds are outside our brains.
being present: An illustration in shades of blue of the silhouette of a person's head, with a melange of letters contained in a bubble behind them. Photo attribution: pixabay.comMore often or not, answers are available from devices in our pockets. Today we rely on machines for connection with information and others. Machines allow us to research what we want to know or explore.

We also have the routine ability to capture pertinent information in an appropriate secure store outside our brain — an in-basket, notepad, voice recorder, electronic device, etc. This frees us from the need to memorize data so we can work on other things. When we need information, we access it from the external data store, not our brain.

Ridding ourselves of the necessity for our brains to remember everything

Such access allows me to worry less about remembering information I may need. Like my upcoming appointments, background on a client before an initial call, or exploring places to visit on an upcoming trip. This is a core credo of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”

This freedom makes me more productive. It gives me a way to capture fleeting creative ideas that, in the past, I would have forgotten before they could be explored. I especially appreciate these technological benefits as I grow older and my memory is not what it once was.

The downside

Celia’s response, however, illustrates a downside to extending our minds beyond our brains. When we perform a move to secure storage or retrieval from it, the associated technology invariably intrudes into the relationship of being with other people present.

Celia says, “When I walk alone with you, I don’t want to feel I’m also with your 200 closest friends.”

I get it.

When I’m paying attention to my device, I am not present with her.

Some people seem OK with ignoring their partners or friends at the expense of their devices. I still marvel when I see a couple sitting together for dinner at a nice restaurant, both immersed in their phones for the whole meal. I wonder about their relationship, not that it’s ultimately any of my business.

Also, we don’t need machines to connect us when we’re alone. I recently returned from a five-day silent retreat in New Mexico where we did not interact with our fellow participants apart from the start and end and were miles away from cellular and Wi-Fi signals so our devices were off the grid. It was wonderful, and I learned a lot. [Here’s my post about a similar retreat held two years earlier.]

Luckily, compromise is possible between these two extremes while together with familiars: exclusion via total immersion in the digital world and shunning all machine connection while you’re with them.

A compromise

What I think works is explicit respectful negotiation when you want to move from direct presence to accessing devices. I could have said to Celia: “I don’t remember.” [Then I could pause to let her respond: she might have said, “Oh, don’t worry about it,” or “Can you look it up?”] … If she doesn’t respond I can ask: “Would you like me to look up the answer now, or can it wait?”

Sometimes I remember to negotiate to switch my presence in this way. It’s respectful and allows the other person(s) to choose what they want.

I know Celia appreciates it because it places our relationship first.

And that’s important to us.

Getting the best of both worlds

Being present with people you’re with is always important. Taking advantage of our modern abilities to expand our minds outside our brains can enrich our lives together. Negotiating the switch between these two forms of being allows us to get the best of both worlds.

Photo attribution: James Reis, from his exhibit Closer and Closer, and pixabay.com

The most powerful tool for improving your personal work environment

improving your personal work environment: a photograph of an incredibly messy desk. Image attribution: Flickr user harryharrisHave you ever thought about improving your personal work environment?

Your web browser has eight windows open. Each window sports at least half a dozen tabs. Your monitor is festooned with Post-it® notes. Hundreds of handwritten reminders, business cards, file folders, magazines with slips of paper peaking out, and unread articles litter your office desk.

Are you, perhaps, feeling a little overwhelmed by your personal work environment? If so, and this is a habitual state rather than an occasional, acceptable occurrence, read on!

Here is what I have found to be the most powerful tool that will help to restore your sanity when workspace chaos has expanded beyond your comfort zone. (You do have a comfort zone, I hope?)

Losing control

Let’s start with a key question. Why is your personal working environment habitually and unacceptably out of control?

Answer: Because it’s reflecting a way of working that isn’t working for you.

So making changes in your physical environment, by buying twenty plastic filing trays, dumping sixteen piles of paper into file cabinets, switching to an iPad, or even setting fire to your office is not going to solve your long-term problem.

What you need to do is change the way you work. And change, as we all know, is hard.

Luckily, a lot of smart people have spent a lot of time thinking (and written a lot of books) about how to make changes in how you work. Since 1983, I’ve worked for myself, read many of these books, and tried their techniques, usually with limited success.

Getting Things Done

I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done (known as GTD by devotees) in 2005. It’s still Amazon’s best-selling book in the categories of Time Management, Health & Stress, and Self-Esteem. This doesn’t surprise me, as the book is brilliant. Unlike other productivity methodologies, it doesn’t prescribe a complete system for organizing your life. Instead, David explains clearly:

  • The essential workflow processes you need to follow to clear and organize your work-life; and
  • What you need to understand to choose tools and procedures that work for you.

Implementing GTD does not involve throwing out or changing all the ways you work now. Rather, Allen’s approach gives you both a powerful lens to see what is functional in your work-life, and a comprehensive framework for making improvements.

Creating GTD that works for you

Each person’s implementation of GTD is unique. One person may use file trays and 3 x 5 cards to capture “stuff”, and another, GTD software running on a personal computer or mobile device. If email messages are piling up in your inbox, there are GTD approaches to keeping your head above water. Ultimately, you’re responsible for doing the work you need to do. GTD just provides a practical way to create the system that works best for you.

I’m not going to delve more into GTD here. There are plenty of resources on the web, including David Allen’s website and this introductory article from 43folders. But I suggest that to start you simply buy the book. It may turn out to be the best way of improving your personal work environment.

Am I 100% successful at implementing GTD in my work life? No. Sometimes I find it difficult to maintain the necessary discipline. I also have some reservations about David Allen’s approach to reviews. But I have integrated GTD’s key features into how I work, and have obtained a significant increase in productivity. More importantly, I understand why my work environment can deteriorate and what to do if it does. Possessing this understanding is empowering for me.

I hope it is for you, too.

Do you use Getting Things Done? What’s been your experience? Or do you prefer another methodology to organize your personal work environment?

Image attribution: Flickr user harryharris