Category Archives: Personal

Otherwise

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Yoga teacher Andrea Skelly read a poem in class last week, and I have been thinking about it a lot.

The poem is titled Otherwise, written by poet Jane Kenyon.

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.

All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.

But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Welcome to Sunnyside, folks

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I’ve been thinking about how good design happens, organizationally, and I’m certain that it doesn’t happen by simply hiring one or even a team of so-called rock-star designer. Matt Drance wrote about this in his post The Problem with All-Star Teams arguing that you’ve got to have leaders “who care about design and “get” design.”

“That’s not to say you don’t go for the talent if you can; of course you go for the talent. But the work only begins there. The solution to this too-many-cooks problem is leadership.” – Matt Drance

At HIVE 2011, Hillel Cooperman, Co-Founder of Jackson Fish Market, emphasized this idea in his keynote: most organizations don’t have design leadership. They’re using metrics they learned from B-school to apply to something they don’t get, and designers are rarely in decision-making positions.

At the most recent Seattle Info Camp, while Ario Jafarzadeh talked through 10 Observations from 10+ years in the Corporate UX Trenches, I noticed a theme: it’s not just the software and user experiences we work on that are broken, the corporate environment in which we’re working in is also broken.

Today, Marco Arment penned four steps on how to bring good design to a platform, and step one starts with the top, again.

“Demonstrate from the top that high quality and attention to detail are prioritized and appreciated above everything else, including being the first to market, having the most features, or having the most aggressive prices. If you can get those as well, that’s great, but quality will not be sacrificed to do so.” – Marco Arment

Are you seeing this pattern too? Is it too hokey to chant leadership, leadership, leadership? If there are people trying to improve the experience of the users, who’ll improve the experience of the corporations?

Fight Club – 12 Years Later

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When I was 17, I heard this. I don’t remember exactly what I thought of it. I have this nagging feeling that, without the demand of corporate communiqué, I was spending more time with… something else, maybe confirming Hunter S: “I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours,” or maybe dreaming of Brad Pitt.

In any case, now I’m 29, it rings bitingly true.

“I think there’s a self defense mechanism that keeps my generation from having any real honest connection or commitment with our true feelings. We’re rooting for ball teams, but we’re not getting in there to play. We’re so concerned with failure and success like these two things are all that’s going to sum you up at the end”

Seattle for Amit Gupta

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“I don’t know Amit Gupta” is a frequent preface in most posts about Amit Gupta and his fight against Acute Leukemia. What inevitably follows is a brief description of who he is, what he’s done, and most importantly, why the reader should care: this amazing human being needs your help–no, *our* help–to fight for his life.

I learned about Amit through that birdie Twitter, and wasn’t really sure what to do at first. He seems to be popular enough that Seth Godin and other luminaries are helping him fight the odds. If my list of People Big on the Internet is buzzing with #IswabbedforAmit, then what good am I to the cause? How much more help can I bring? I was chillin’ with that villain the Bystander Effect.

A part of me wants to jump on the bandwagon and retweet. Yeah! Retweet all the tweets! A part of me asked myself how effective that would be, and more deeply, it confronted my motives. Would I publicly voice my support because all the cool kids are doing it. Would I do this if it weren’t for all the Internet celebrities? It is, after all, an easy button to click or touch, and I’ll unlock that Groupie badge. Over-analyzing and Analysis Paralysis, yessir, I has it.

Something deep inside, thankfully, keeps it real for me. Whenever I see someone who might be South Asian (if they’re from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), I keep wanting to walk up and ask if they’ve registered in the Bone Marrow Registry.

What this tells me is what The King would say: “A little less conversation, a little more action please”. A human out there needs help. I can do something about it. I don’t need a complicated decision tree to anal-yze that.

So, Seattle, grab your fleece and let’s start walking. I’d like to hold an event, a West Coast party similar to like the one happening in NYC October 14.

What does that mean? Glad you ask. I need help with:

  • If you have experience organizing a drive like this, I would love your help.
  • Getting registration kits and paperwork. (I have no idea how this works.)
  • Contact an agency, like SAMAR or AADP to help.
  • Recruiting as many eligible people to come
  • Securing a venue. It does not have to be a bar/restaurant.
  • Getting good entertainment. Do you know a good band? Are you in a band? Come play for us!
  • Getting food + drink
  • Getting the word out
  • If something like this is already happening. Let me know how I can help and we will have one big ol’ party.

What if I hate parties?

Screw parties! The most important thing you can do is get anyone you know, or suspect might be, of South Asian descent to get tested.

Also, it does not have to be a party in that boozing and groozing way. I can teach a yoga class and lead a meditation session. You come destress and maybe get your cheek swabbed. We all win. (Yes I made up “grooozing”, a cross of cruising and grooving.)

This is for Amit Gupta, and it’s also to spread awareness for the bone marrow registry. I knew nothing about leukemia, but after digging around the Internet, I’ve learned a few things that have propelled me to take action, such as the low chances of finding a genetic match for bone marrow if you’re a minority.

Most often, bone marrow transplant patients need a donor who is of the same ethnic or racial background. BUT, people of color are drastically underrepresented in the bone marrow registry.

Tragically, most adults and children from diverse backgrounds cannot get the life-saving bone marrow transplant they need because there is no match for them in the registry. More donors from diverse backgrounds are desperately needed. – swabacheek.org

So, to summarize:

  • If you are South Asian, please get a free kit in the mail, stick a Q-tip in your cheek, and return it.
  • Hell, you don’t even have to be South Asian to do it, here is the linky poo to the Bone Marrow Registry again.
  • Oh, hey, are you rolling around in Kyle’s money? There is a cost of lab tests and database maintenance that you can help cover.
  • If you’re in Seattle and willing and able to help me put on a little (or big) party of any kind, please write me at dragonc@gmail, or @dragonc on Twitter. Again, if you’ve done this before and can help, I would appreciate it so much.
  • Who the heck is this for again? Amit Gupta. From what I gather he is a pretty swell guy.
Let’s give a spit, Seattle.

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Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid.

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“The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” – Steve Jobs. [Wired, February 1996]

The outpouring of love for Steve Jobs over the past couple days is summed up by Techcrunch writer John Biggs: “Apple and Jobs brought something to technology that it didn’t have before he began – irrationality.”

I can accept this view in the sense that you can’t explain it, people wonder why they’re crying for a complete stranger, and that you can’t understand it, some other people, mostly non Apple users, consider those of us crying crazy and ought to be committed.

Here’s my take: people love their Apple products, so they love the person(s) making it possible. Beyond word processing and making spreadsheets, they have an emotional connection to their devices. But don’t take my words for it. It turned out through neuroimaging that You Love Your iPhone. Literally.

But should we really characterize the intense consumer devotion to the iPhone as an addiction? A recent experiment that I carried out using neuroimaging technology suggests that drug-related terms like “addiction” and “fix” aren’t as scientifically accurate as a word we use to describe our most cherished personal relationships. That word is “love.” – Martin Lindstrom

Ok, love may be completely irrational. It’s also another thing: the third level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The challenge of business: how to serve needs higher up Maslow's pyramid. - Alain de Botton

My questions: What are examples of products in each of Maslow’s level? What do they do? What are their characteristics? What works? What doesn’t work? Most importantly, how do we design to serve up the pyramid, all the way to the Self-Actualization level? 

Design is often viewed as a compromise between business needs, user needs, and technology capability. If we take out the business needs, which I’ll abbreviate as money and profit, and technology, which usually becomes possible in due time, we are left with user needs, or what Interaction Designer Jonathan Korman calls human sense.

Apple has aggressively worked on accessibility for users who are blind or deaf or have other limitations, an effort that makes no “business sense” but surely makes human sense if you read that or any of the countless other articles about what a boon the iPhone has been to the blind.

Money and technology represent the first two Maslow levels and provide shelter, safety, food, water, sleep, sex(?), employment, property, resources, etc. User needs span the whole pyramid, and we address the most basic needs first: the functionality, ie. user must be able to input username.

We have User Interface Design Guidelines for non-functional needs, like consistency and appropriate error messaging. We have usability tests, we have user research data. Yet, how do you spec Love?

My questions: We already have guidelines to create passionate users, what does it take to create self-actualized, compassionate users?  In other words, what are products that make us feel fully human: more fulfilled, more self-aware? What are apps that do this today? 

“We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use. In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.” – Jonathan Ive

One more thing: Am I crazy for thinking about this in product design?

This constant fear: is it insanity or just ambition? - Alain de Botton

Here’s to the Crazy One

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Apple.com screen shot. Wednesday October 5, 2011. 5pm. Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

 

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

It’s raining in Seattle. I am sitting in my car crying.

The Clock is Tickin’

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I’ve been playing Brandon Flowers’ CD Flamingo over and over and over, and then over again, every day for the past… however many days it’s been since it came out.

I like a lot of the songs on the album, and I go through phases with my favorite. My current one is “The Clock Was Tickin’” (it was Magdalena for two weeks before that). The beat’s not bad, but what I really dig is the lyrics.

And the weeks fly by and the years roll on
They say patience is a virtue but the doctor says she don’t have long
You stood up and tried your damndest not to listen
But that clock up on the wall was tickin’

When they told you to clear the room, that’s when it hit you
You watched as the caravan took your sweetheart away
The arguments and fights and money troubles seem so worthless
As the kids throw yellow roses on her grave

And the weeks fly by and the years roll on
The house is quiet now and everything inside it seems to know she’s gone
There’s a picture of you both sixteen years old just kissing
And that clock up on the wall was tickin’ – Brandon Flowers

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I have, specifically the time I have with my parents. Some time last week I had the thought that I need to record down everything about my parents, who they are, what they did, and what their dreams were before they had me. What were they like? When my parents are gone, how will I keep the link with my roots? I wonder if that’s the question children of immigrants face at some point?

Michael Hawley once commented to me, “You’re as American as apple pie.” That may be so, but a part of me is still as Vietnamese as… um… pho bo vien? Anyway, as I get older, I want to get to know my parents more, not as the archetype of father and mother, but for who they are.

I’ve also had a lot of thoughts about the pace of my life and the time that I spend with my parents. I would say that I’m a recovering type A, but I haven’t recovered enough. I don’t know if I would call myself “overworked”, per se. I love what I do, and I’ve got an obsessive personality type to throw myself at things, sometimes to my own demise, like staying up too late, waking up too early, and overcommitting. I want to do it all.

I read somewhere about “the rocker test”, where, when making a decision, think about when you’re 80 and sitting on your rocker on your porch, what will you regret the most? I liked the rocker test concept when I read about it, but I confess, as a mere intellectual concept to entertain. I suspect if I were to put it to the test, I would have to give up a couple (a lot) of things I’ve already built up the habit for, and maybe I just don’t have the guts to admit it to myself yet, because I would have to come clean with myself. Being honest with oneself is the hardest.

Anyway, I’ve gotten off track. The point is, today, I spent a good chunk of it with my parents, and I’m grateful that they’re still healthy and able to enjoy a gorgeous Autumn day with me.

My parents and me, October 2010.

With Great Power – The Responsibility of Doing User Experience Design

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UX is kind of a big deal these days (and not just in Japan), but it has gone a long way since the early days, like… five years ago. It’s a Good Thing, and along with that comes some responsibility.

But first let me give you the backstory for context.

The UX in Me: A Long Time Ago

I became interested in doing User Experience Design during my sophomore year in college. Only, it wasn’t called User Experience Design then. It was Usability Engineering, and User Centered Design, and Value-Sensitive Design, and Library Science.

I majored in Informatics at the UW iSchool, and I totally digged (pronounced /dig gid/) it. I was one of those _really_  annoying and overly enthusiastic kids that would sit in front of the class and go to the professor’s office after class to talk about things like “models of information search behaviors in antiquity”, or something similar reeking of fancy academic speak.

I knew that the other kids talked about me with their eyes rolled in the back of their heads, but I didn’t care (a lot). I drank the Kool-Aid big time, and I was also protected by the bliss of already being an outsider in high school, realizing early on that being popular and cool was not my game to win.

When I finished college, I wanted more than anything to do two things: 1) run off to Thailand to bartend at a dive resort and rock climb, and 2) do User Research for social technologies. 1) wasn’t really an option, at least not while my parents were still paying for my expenses, and 2) was due to an internship I had at Microsoft Research doing participatory design and studying mobile and social patterns.

Getting Jaded

I ended up at Boeing where I worked in the Usability Engineering group and got a taste of, among other things, how inconsequential doing UE was, at least in that context. Don’t get me wrong, there was a ton of good work going on, and I learned how to fit Usability in a larger corporate software development methodology and cycle. But boy, I lost faith fast in how much good I could do in the world with my choice of profession. In other words, I got jaded.

I thought long and hard, and longer and harder, about what I wanted to do in life. I started doing Business Analysis, because BAs get to gather and write requirements and create functional specs, and those specs get read by software developers and they build the code, which become the software, which gets used by the user.

I liked the idea that that’s how I’d make a difference in the world. I was all over it. I read books, I went to seminars. I wanted to be the best requirements gatherer I could be. I wanted to be the T.S. Eliot of functional specs. But, I gradually discovered how requirements gathering was awkward for me. It went against a lot of the things that I had learned and personally believe in when it comes to making software. As the guys from 37 Signals say, there’s nothing “functional” about a functional spec.

Once again, I lost steam. Once again, I dreamt about bartending and rock climbing and teaching yoga on the coasts of Thailand.

ZOMG, UX is Back!

Five years have passed since I graduated with an Informatics degree, thinking I could improve the usability of software for the average user out there and wouldn’t it be great. During those years, I gave up and rediscovered that notion, just to give it up again.

And now, UX is en vogue. I have a theory that this is partly thanks to Steve Jobs, who’s proven that good and thoughtful design actually makes money! I remember doing Usability Engineering and being told, “Thanks for the lovely report, but it’s too late, and we have no time or money”. I remember being told “the user is a four-letter word”, and that “that touchy feely stuff doesn’t pay the bills.”

How time has changed.

The other day, I was reading this article about User Experience in Forbes, (yes, Forbes!!!): Why Apple Will Hold Its Tablet Hegemony With iPad

What is Apple’s “secret” to success? What Apple has delivered in the iPad and has consistently delivered in all of their products is a “user experience.” Somewhere around 1967, our culture began to focus on experiences, not attributes, and ever since then marketers have made millions selling books on branding, emotional branding, rethinking design, conventions of experience, et cetera. Yet, technology companies fall into the same old trap of touting attributes (GB, RAM, 4G, et cetera) instead of theexperience.

If the competition just tries to compete with Apple on functions, they will not be well served. The tablet category is just beginning. Apple has emerged as the clear mind-share leader and the only way to compete is to focus on user experience (usefulness, simplicity, elegance, consistency) not the product attributes.

Where was this article when I was a 24-year-old trying to justify my existence in the professional world?

Consider another article from MondayNote by Jean-Louis Gassée: The OS Doesn’t Matter

Windows will live on — in a PC industry now at a plateau. But otherwise, in the high-growth Cloud and smartphone segments, it’s a Unix/Linux world. We need to look elsewhere to find the differences that matter.

The technical challenges have migrated to two areas: UI (User Interface, or the more poetic—and more accurate—UX, for User Experience) and programming tools.

Now that all “system functions” are similar, the game for hardware and software makers is to convince the user that his/her experience will be smooth and intuitive. Your device will walk on water (with the programmer right under the surface), catch you as you fall, make sure you don’t get your feet wet.

Great, so now the bar is “your device will walk on water”? Can I just have a minute to put some hot air in my head and get some “I told you so” vindication first?

No, really, in all honesty, I’m glad it has worked out this way for the UX profession. Actually, I’m grateful. Grateful that I am in a field that’s getting recognition, which means I get to have a job, which means I get to go to work tomorrow doing something I believe in. I’m grateful that I get to get worked up over first-world-problems, such as, “look at how this form assaults your senses.”

And Now the Dirty Word: Responsibility

So now that I’ve boasted about UX as some kind of Double Rainbow, allow me to bring up the sticks: what I’ve learned about the responsibility of being a UX Designer.

Play Nice

Though I didn’t always enjoy doing other types of work: Business Analysis, Project Management, Product Management, etc., the one thing that I got was experiencing first-hand the challenges of those roles, and I’ve come to sympathize with them. UX Designers can occasionally (and understandably) run into conflict with other roles on their project, and I’m glad I have some perspectives on what they do.

As someone who’s classically trained (uh, whatever that means… to me it means I followed a structured curriculum from people with lots of acronyms after their names) in methods of User Research and Interaction Design, there have been times when I was ready to hurt something, even a cute fluffy animal, when I attended user interviews or acceptance testing.

“Oh my god, for the sakes of everything that’s holy, don’t … do… it!” I would silently think when I hear one leading question after another.

I’ve realized, though, that my findings from user research mean nothing, my wireframes and brilliant UX Guidelines are totally useless if there are no developers coding and breathing life into them. I wouldn’t get to put my headphones on and obsess over the taxonomy of a system if I didn’t have a PM worrying about allocating time and money for the project. I wouldn’t even have a job if I didn’t have someone out there courting clients, selling work for me to do. In other words, I can do no good without all these people. So what if their universe doesn’t include the difference between Utility Navigation and Content Navigation?

UX is not more better than any other roles on a project, and I’ve learned to not get too smug. Or, to get smug, and get over it. :)

Clarify and Eduhmuhcate

I don’t know what the right word to use here is: Educate sounds heavy, Evangelize sounds corporatey (not to mention… uh… churchy?). But, I hope you’ll know what I mean when I’m done.

UX is still new for a lot of people and organization. You can’t just show up and say, “Who wants some UX?” To make things worse, there’s a bunch of *stuff* that goes into what we call UX. In fact, I’m willing to bet you right now that what’s in my mind is not exactly the same as what’s in your mind about UX. It is this fact that makes things so fascinating and frustrating.

UX could mean Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability Engineering, Content Management. UX could mean for some people styling CSS, creating viral videos, and configuring a content management system (it’s not). UX could mean Personas, Wireframes, Scenarios, User Research, Interviewing, Contextual Inquiry, Participatory Design, Prototyping, Dreaming About Unicorns and Rainbows, etc. Are you getting dizzy yet?

(Also, UX for some people is bullshit. Please say a prayer for them.)

My point is, I’ve learned to ask first, “What do you mean by UX?”, and “What is your expectation of how I can help?” If someone wants me to create a Flash or Silverlight spinning ad, I know I’m the wrong tree for them to bark up.

My second point is, I’ve found it really useful to keep educating myself, and then others, especially with being as clear as possible the difference between the techniques, which is different from the goal, and why/when/how to do what for what purposes. The more people that I explain UX to, the more people who can 1) explain UX to other people and generate more work, and 2) the more we can play nice with one another.

Congregate

Before I started doing my Yoga teacher training, before I started taking up meditation seriously, before I ventured into learning Buddhist philosophy, I didn’t know what a sangha was. I didn’t pay much attention to other people doing the same thing I was. Don’t get me wrong, I went to UPA and CHI meetings. I went to InfoCamp and MindCamp and I signed up for all the UX user groups listservs. But I didn’t really think to have… for lack of better words, UX homies.

I mean, I recognized the importance of being part of professional groups, but it was for … you know, resume-building purposes. I didn’t think of people in the field as my support group, or cheap therapy, or, just anyone fun to have a drink with. (And while I’m airing my dirty laundry, when I came into the field, I had a feeling that everyone was older and boring. Who else would get together to knit and talk about indexing? Not me! )

Back to sangha. Sangha is a Pali word roughly meaning “community”, specifically a community of people working towards the same vision. In the Buddhist context, that vision is liberation. Once I realized that I could not meditate on my own without a teacher, I went for help. Then I discovered the benefit of talking to people going through the same experience, having the same struggle, and discovering similar insights.

I took what I learned from that into the UX world. I’d go to workshops not just to learn about the topic at hand, but get to know the participants. I’d seek out prominent people in the field and see what they’re up to. As I get older, I’ve come to see that obsessing over taxonomy and classification is not *that* insane to do on a Saturday night. Either I’m getting more boring, or those things are getting more exciting. Or both.

Regardless, I’m working on building my own UX sangha. Whether we’re rigorously debating the merits of tabs as navigation, or just letting our hair down and wondering what the heck Design Thinking is, we’re bonding, and hopefully supporting each other in this still-nascent field.

To the Future

‘O let not Time deceive you

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Last night, I hung out with my friend Shannon who used to live in Seattle but decided to run off and marry an Italian boy and now calls Milan home (I know, I hate her too.)

Shannon is one of my kindred souls. People used to joke that she was the Irish version of me, or that I was an Asian of her. We are both loud, giggly, always on the go, and blonde (well, she’s the real deal, and I’m a fake (although my boyfriend once told me, “Are you sure your roots aren’t really blond?”)).

We used to climb mountains, rock walls, and trees together. We used to stay up way too late with cocktails and wine, going all over Fremont and ending up at my place, looking over the Ballard bridge and the Olympic mountains, talking about boys and life, and more boys.

When Shannon moved away, I knew it was the end of an era, but it honestly really didn’t hit me until last night. We found ourselves in Fremont again, standing in front of the High Dive. The streets are still here, the bars are still here, but we’re no longer the young twentysomething girls we used to be. Oh, we’re still us, for sure, but we’re both at a different place in life. And I mean that literally, with her living half way around the world.

When we said goodbye, a tinge of some kind of emotion came over me. I don’t know what it was, really. Not totally sadness. It’s hard to describe, but it was this feeling of knowing that we will only see each other a handful amount of times in our lifetime from here on out. This is totally different from before, when we said goodbye, we’d know that we’ll see each other again soon enough, especially when we lived 20 blocks away on Greenwood Avenue. We thought our time together was limitless.

Shannon's idea of breakfast before heading up for a day of hard climbing

Tonight, I overheard a conversation between my parents and a friend of theirs visiting from out of town. They were talking about the last time they saw each other, and when the next reunion will be. For them, I can only imagine that they, too, know their time together is short, even shorter than Shannon’s and mine.

I used to go running a lot around Volunteer Park and Lakeview Cemetery, where Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee are buried. More and more, I appreciate the Paul Bowles quote written on Brandon’s tombstone:

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that.

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.” — Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky.

As I left my yoga studio and looked up at the sky tonight, the full moon was trying to break through the thick Pacific Northwest clouds. Besides than the urge to howl and thump my chest, I smiled at it. It sounds really cheesy, especially in a blog. Oh well, you had to be there. Happy Autumn Equinox.

Shannon having a rare quiet moment on my balcony, probably watching the sun setting over the Olympics

Seven Days Without Twitter

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This time last year, I went on my first meditation retreat. It was a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat, which my boyfriend calls “meditation boot camp”, because I couldn’t bring anything: no books, no journal, no phone, no computer, no facebook, no twitter. I couldn’t even talk or make eye contact with my fellow retreat goers.

“You’re not gonna last a day,” he supportively predicted. I laughed because he knows me too well. I am a child of the internets/multitasking age. I’m a child that grew up with the radio on, the TV blaring, I’m on the phone, on IM, and doing my homework at the same time. I’m the generation where ADD, diagnosed or not, is a common disorder.

On top of that, the temperament, or constitution in the Indian Ayurvedic system, I was born with is characteristic of the wind: airy and fast-moving. Working with the ADD tendency is hard enough, it’s even harder in a culture such as ours, where everyone and everything seems to be all about distraction (for example: a cable news screen would have stock ticker at the bottom of the screen, weather, traffic on top, headline news running across, and four political commentators in separate locations on the main screen, and a tweet stream on the side).

In other words, I’m SOL when it comes to cultivating any ability to concentrate and focus for long periods of time. And yet, focus and concentration is the very thing I’m working on as a dedicated meditator.

Now what?

So, I’ve decided to give myself some bitter medicine. I’ve decided to go without Twitter and Facebook for a while. How long of a while? Well, I lasted seven days this first round. The first day was the hardest, when I would go and justthisclose to opening TweetDeck, when I’d stop myself. I do realize that there are many many useful uses for Twitter. I’d use it if I were stuck in storm in the middle of nowhere. I’d use it if I were at a conference and looking for fellow conference goers.

I had very many normal, ordinary uses for Twitter this past week, like asking for recommendations for places to eat and stay when I was in Portland, Oregon, or wondering if an event I was going to was cancelled or not. I made do without Twitter, however, in keeping with my vow.

So, I’ll be keeping track of my experience, and no doubt write about it here.