“We believe in the possibility of better design, that lets us connect without getting sucked in. And disconnect, without missing something important.
And we believe in the possibility of an economy that’s built to help us spend time well, where products compete for net positive contributions to our lives.
Let’s start that conversation now.” —Manifesto from timewellspent.io
I wanted to take a moment to publicly recognize a synchronicity that I suspect will have an enormous impact on the trajectory of my design career. Brooke and I had not seen Tristan Harris’ work or his website, timewellspent.io, when we named our startup’s Medium publication by the same name, Time well Spent. I’ve taken it as a sign to tune into Tristan’s work, and enjoy the shared company headed in the same direction.
Tristan has compiled an incredible sum of research, and beautifully articulates the way in which our technology is designed to pull us in and consume our attention, and ultimately weaken our internal agency to make decisions that benefit us, instead benefiting the companies designing our tools.
We are still in the very early, formative, exciting, and difficult stage of seeking an audience as we make our own push towards designing and developing a game changing ‘time-management’ software product. One of the insights I’ve come away with after diving into Tristan’s work, is that when we talk about time management, we are actually talking about attention management. Early in our brand development process for OnPrio, Brooke and I considered the tag line, focus on what matters. It wasn’t long before we felt like this was weak; it felt kind of obvious, slightly preachy, and not quite actionable enough. It seems the very acute pain point we are all struggling with today is HOW to decide what is worth our focus and attention in a world of infinite information constantly begging for our it.
The direction we are stepping in to help deflate the problem and channel our attention strategically, is to design an interface where users are inspired to take a more proactive approach to apply intentions for their days and weeks (we still have a lot of work to do).
If it is managing our attention that we are actually talking about, then it seems worthwhile to identify the polarities (or opposites) that the subject embodies—in the way that that hot and cold are opposites, yet only a variation in degree on the same subject (temperature). Our attention can be focused, or it can be expansive. Expansive could also mean distracted, lacking intention, or perhaps just relaxed. So I think it would be incorrect for us to emphasize only the focused state on the subject of attention. We need to enjoy an expansive state as well, without feeling the need to be be focused. This is especially true for artists and creatives.
One final thought I’ll add at this time is a bit of a humbling reminder for myself and and others who design UI’s for screens: the most important factor in managing attention is the intention of each individual. A strong intention will not need a user interface to remind them what is important to them. The best we can do as designers is to accurately and intelligently reflect the values a person chooses to input into the product. But if we can do this well, it can make all the difference in the world.
Thanks for reading! Please say so if anything you read here feels questionable ; ) I’d love to absorb comments and insights on how we can better design our tools to improve our agency as human beings to make choices that result in a net positive for our lives.
