Wisdom 2.0: Living Consciously In A Connected World

Soren Gordhamer,Wisdom 2.0 Summit Organizer

I am filled with gratitude to Soren Gordhamer for his vision of bringing together an amazing group of people who work in the area of mindfulness and technology for Wisdom 2.0, a three-day event aimed at addressing an compelling issue: "The question for most of us is not if we will use the technologies of our age, from cell phones to social media, the question is how can we do so with mindfulness, meaning, and wisdom?"

Soren is the author of the book, "Wisdom 2.0" and writes about mindfulness and technology use for Huffington Post and on Mashable.  If you want to explore the intersection of technology use and mindfulness, follow Soren's work.

Technology stress and information overload have been around for decades.  I've been looking for ways to reduce techno stress since I first started working in the nonprofit technology field in 1992.  As a trainer or doing shoulder-to-shoulder coaching, I'd hear people complain about information overload, anxiety, etc and started to incorporate techniques for reducing it. 

The new framing for this familiar issue is one of balance.  Being online or living a connected lifestyle is something many of us do - and as smart phones, Facebook, ipads, and other technology tools become part of lives, we have to examine our relationship with them and find balance.

Here's my notes (and live tweets):

Managing the Stream: Living Consciously and Effectively in a Connected World

The first panel discussion was called "Managing the Stream: Living Consciously and Effectively in a Connected World" that featured Bradley Horowitz (VP, Google), Chris Sacca (Advisor Twitter),  Greg Pass (CTO, Twitter), and Roshi Joan Halifax (Upaya Zen Center).  The question was really how do you say yes to a connected yes and an inner life as well?

Don't React All Day To Email

Chris Sacca made some good points about being proactive with your email, as opposed to reacting all day. "Your in-box is your publically displayed to do list.   If the first thing you do when you get up, is check your email. Don't live that way."  He said that there are only 24 hours in a day and you have to make choices about your time.  He did this by teaching himself to be selfish and not respond.   He also talked about changing his brain chemistry.  "Every time we see new email in our box, it produces a positive feeling.  I had to reteach my body not to respond in this way."

Chris offered this advice: "Don't just pick the low hanging fruit in your in box. Think about how you can make a difference.  Try ignoring your email." 

Bradley Horowitz from Google was very funny, he said, "You have to learn how to turn gmail off and live in it, in my case I can turn all of email off."  What he was saying that you have to integrate periods of time where you can step way from the computer and distraction and reconnect with yourself and the environment.

Understand the Two Different Types of Attention

Roshi Joan Halifax pointed out that there are two types of attention:  receptive and focused - to explain the difference between being on Twitter which she called a "Karma accelerator" and meditation which she practices daily.  She said that her attention and presence in a world of hyper connectivity is the most precious thing she has.   Her approach is to balance connection and disconnection and understand when and how to use the different types of attention.

Chris Sacca quipped that he usually attends technology conference where most people in the audience are buried in their smart phones or laptops and that this conference was the one where felt the mostly everyone was paying attention to him.

Organizational Culture of Balance Is Important

Sacca, Horowitz, and Pass talked about the importance of creating an organizational culture that honors balance.   They talked about how Google has "no meetings Thursdays" and the audience applauded.  Google recognizes that most people's work days are filled with distractions and that there is perhaps one hour a day when people are at their peak productivity.  By removing the distractions, they hope to increase it two hours a day.  Greg Pass, CTO/Twitter, teaching new employees something called "Twittokinetics" and advises them to pay attention to what their doing, understand & own the problem & realize learning opportunities.

A second discussion panel looked at Awareness and Wisdom in the Age of Technology and included Kaitlin Quistgaard (Yoga Journal), Tami Simon (Sounds True), Gopi Kallayil (Google) and Leah Perlman (Facebook).  This was quite an interesting mix of perspectives.

Be Self Aware of How/Why You Stay Connected

Tami Simon offered a self-reflection on her technology use, she's a blackberry user, sharing her inner feelings on why she grabs her blackberry on a Friday evening.   She talked about how it made her feel and her motivations underneath.   She made an insightful observation - that before we had this connected lifestyle, what distracted us was our inner thoughts or "thinking."  She reaching for her blackberry facilitated "hyperthinking" with others.

As Tami Simon noted, "The most important connection with technology is the one with yourself."  That you have really look inward to your own patterns and use before you can be mindful.  I'm inspired to start doing this.

Take Care of Yourself First

Gopi Kallayil from Google advised the audience that if you do nothing else every day, do these three things:  1) Sleep 2) Meditate 3) Exercise.   He went to admit that he isn't always successful, but has learned to make these a priority over "the face to answer every email."

Playfulness

Leah Perlman talked about her journey from being burned out by technology to finding happiness and fulfillment from balanced technology use.  I just loved her approach to making a game out of not being always on.  For example, she does "haiku email day" where she answers each email in a haiku in the hopes that people won't send long winded reply emails.   

She also plays another game with the battery life of her phone at the end of the day.  She said that by the end of the day she'd be racing to an electrical outlet.  So, now she trys to limit her phone use and end the day with more and more battery power.

The best question from the audience was "Is there an App for that?" or an app that can help you with meditation or mindfulness or keep you out of your email.  I was sitting next to Robert Jackson who does the Quiet Mind Podcasts and had an ipad with his meditation app on it!

The day ended with a conversational keynote with Tony Hsieh on Zappos culture of happiness. I've heard Tony's speeches and presentations and he is fantastic. I enjoyed the conversational approach.   He gave a review copy of his forthcoming book to everyone at the conference!   One of the interesting questions came from the audience about how they create happiness in their community.  It strikes me that Zappos might be a great example of lethal generosity.

Conclusion

We're all struggling with balance of technology and a purposeful life.  We need to reflect inward and examine our motivations, patterns, and use of technology - understanding when we're mindful and not.  Then we need to integrate ways of finding the right balance.  That balance is not a simple on and off switch - it is understanding how to integrate focused and receptive attentions into our online and offline lives.  And, there is also the issue of organization culture - how is your organization honoring a balanced use of technology and incorporating that into your working style.

Questions:   How are you mindful about your online technology use both personally and professionally?  How does your organization honor balance in the use?

Comments

[tresha thorsen]

Wow. Beth. Thank you. I didn't know of this conference, saw a few tweets in your stream, came on over here. Mindfulness is everything. Our most connected relationship though the one most ignored and not really taught how to facilitate is the one with ourself. I'm not techno goddess (yet) :) but it's what motivated me to create my blog thoughtbythought...to help talk up what i do know: how to create that relationship with yourself..so we can know our why on every level and not do anything 'just cuz' we think we're supposed to. I attended an event last week with 150+ women at least 80% only email users (the talk was on how to use twitter by @leslie--leslie poston) with many being apologetic they dont know how yet...and that pointed to the other side of overload...feeling guilty for not knowing stuff....

At any point, all of us have to check in with ourselves, know the why we do anything and be sure we find that rhythm that allows us to fulfil in all the arenas that matter most to us. The same women apologizing for not yet being on twitter have raised beautiful families and created community organizations. They've essentially done twitter "live" their whole lives.
Thank you for these notes..and for all you constantly do to educate all of us. I hope to see this topic continue to grow and become included as a session focus at every main conference. If we're not practicing self care and nurturing our thoughts, how are we able to continue giving in the arenas we feel most needed?

:) Thanks for all you do.

[alison leigh siegel, mft]

Beautifully written, spoken and much needed info for all of us. Thank you and it was great to meet you! Alison Leigh, Sit.breathe.calm/planet mindful

[Levinson Axelrod]

Thanks a lot for sharing this information. It's great learning about social media and the way it has integrated into businesses and personal lives. Well written article and extremely useful.

[Britt Bravo]

Thanks for sharing your reflections, Beth!

The comments by Gopi Kallayil about sleeping, meditating and exercising really resonate with me. It's sorta like the Move, Play, Connect, Reflect post I wrote awhile ago: http://havefundogood.blogspot.com/2010/02/daily-have-fun-do-good-practice-move.html

As many of the people you wrote about mentioned, when we make technology a priority over face-to-face connections with others, quiet time with ourselves, and time out in nature, we feel out of balance.

[Beth]

Thanks for the pointer to your post!  So true.  The conference was inspiring and great reminder about making time and space for mindfulness.   It sounds like you're much better about that than me!

[Paul Zelizer]

Thanks for this great summary Beth. I was there and think you've collected the most valuable information in a concise way. Of course, the live version was a bit more powerful. :~)

[Linda Wood]

I just attended a mindfulness training at my daughter's public school, and it ws wonderful to see the connection to social media today. Thanks for the post.

[Barb Chamberlain]

This is great. I've also been thinking about this question of mindfulness as a way of managing too many chances to be distracted (blogged about it recently: http://biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2010/04/social-media-drinking-from-firehose.html).

I've recently started testing Foursquare as a possible tool for developing a campus tour. That has meant using it to understand the user experience: checking in, realizing that just checking in makes for a boring tweet, learning to add a comment that makes it into a "real" tweet, looking at tips from people on venues.

I then realized that thanks to Foursquare I was tweeting at times I otherwise would not have, spewing the kind of brain droppings that are reason to unfollow me.

What's a tad scary is how quickly--less than a week--it became automatic to check in as soon as I arrived somewhere.

That may have something to do with me just getting into it as I was traveling to DC and back so I had more interesting stops than usual in some of my days. I don't even care that I'm mayor of 4 places or have unlocked a bunch of badges--that doesn't give me a buzz--but I'm checking in all over the place. (In fact, I learned that if you check in too quickly at too many stops because you're walking around your campus creating venues for a tour, Foursquare stops awarding points.)

The reminder that we do have the power to ignore email or any of the rest of this is important. I blame email for what I think of as induced adult-onset ADD: If I pause while writing something I save the work and often as not pop over to email instead of giving myself that space in which to actually think. I'm then pulled off into that to-do list I didn't create (great way to think of it) instead of going back to the task I was working on.

There's something a little Pavlovian about it all that is very far from mindfulness. We all need these reminders to stop and breathe before clicking.

@BarbChamberlain

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He did this by teaching himself to be selfish and not respond. He also talked about changing his brain chemistry. "Every time we see new email in our box, it produces a positive feeling.

[Mazarine]

Dear Beth,

Thanks for writing about this! I wrote a whole post today, http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/shut-facebook-3-tips-digital-detox/
3 tips for digital detox, and then I came and found this resource!

Appreciate you taking the time to blog about this conference.

Mazarine
http://wildwomanfundraising.com