Hi. Long time, no post. In early August my family retreated to a small cabin in Maine. I brought along two Kindle books, Clay Shirkey’s Cognitive Surplus and Nicolas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains. I was drawn to both texts because they seemed – or so the media positioned it –  to present opposing opinions on the topic of the Internet and more specifically the social tools now becoming commonplace in our lives.

I read Shirkey’s book first. I enjoyed Here Comes Everybody and his latest did not disappoint (though it did cover much of the same ground). Overall it presents an optimistic portrayal of a world where people, with the capacity to pool knowledge and effort as never before, have ever greater opportunities to harness our collective power to do good. Certainly the Apache’s, Linux’s and Wikipedia’s of the world are testimony to the power of a collective effort.

I then read Carr’s Shallows and it too did not disappoint. Backed by numerous neurological studies, he built a strong, historically expansive case documenting the behavioral changes that come alongside the adoption of our new technologies and tools. Carr helped clarify McLuhan’s original and often mis-attrbuted one-liner ‘the medium is the message’, which has always meant the tools themselves change who we are more than the content they carry. This change, is in fact, the message of a medium.

Triage mode.
More importantly though, in Carr’s descriptions of the shallowing mind, I saw reflections of myself. Specifically in the erratic nature of flitting between Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and the 5 email accounts I actively maintain. Further, I reflected on the nature of my workday while using these tools. I often characterize my day as being in ‘triage mode’. Triage mode finds me focused on a single subject for a short time, trying to rapidly diagnose its needs and the most immediate servicing of that need before jumping to the next thing. The trouble with triage mode is that it is stressful, exhausting and cannot be sustained with any quality for long periods of time. I would also argue that the best ideas and highest quality of output rarely come from triage work.

If Clay Shirkey believes we can use technology to harness the collective brainpower of millions of people, Nicolas Carr is calling into question the individual capacities of those brains to conduct the deep, linear, thought that has historically lead to innovation. This begs the question, ‘Which is better, one million minds shallowly focused but interconnected or one hundred minds, deeply focused but somewhat less connected?’

My experiment.
In many regards this question is a moot point. Our new connectivity is a fact of life. However, it did afford me the chance to think about myself. What I decided is that, unhappy with the frenetic feeling I had (especially in contrast to the relaxed on-vacation state I was in while reading these books) I chose to conduct an experiment over the last month. Here’s what I did:

1. I Turned off the auto-check on all my email accounts. To get email I would need to manually check for it.
2. I set up specific times for email checking and resisted the urge to check email while I was in the midst of other work.
3. I stopped using Twitter and Foursquare altogether and scaled back Facebook to before work, after work, and occasionally at lunch.
4. I put down this blog for a month.
5. I shut down all digital media from 8pm onward during workdays and all weekend until 8pm Sunday night when I allowed myself a check-in to ramp up for Monday.

All of these rules of course were contingent on not having a pressing issue at work to contend with.

I addition to these changes, I picked up a few other habits aimed at retraining my brain toward greater focus on singular tasks. These changes included:

1. I backed off of caffeine. While I enjoy the taste of coffee, caffeine makes me jittery which contributes to the frenetic stress I associate with triage mode.
2. I made a point to read each night before falling asleep. Sometimes I’d only make it ten minutes before passing out but I tried for at least a half hour per day.
3. I throttled back on web use a bit. When I found myself just flitting about aimlessly (the equivalent of channel surfing on TV) I would put the computer down and go find something else to do (often that would be reading).
4. I tried to fit in a few minutes of meditation daily. I have a martial arts background which included some training in Zen. Stilling the mind is a central task of zazen (sitting meditation) and I decided to re-employ this practice, albeit in much briefer sessions.

The results.
The results were noticeable. At first it was difficult. I felt a little cut off and out of the loop. I missed that up-to-the-minute deluge of information, even if 99% wasn’t really all that important of impactful of what I was doing at any given time. A few days in though, I found myself getting reacquainted with quiet.  The first thing I noticed is I mulled things over more. Everything. I wasn’t trying to make rapid fire decisions but rather contemplating options, opportunities and consequences.

I found my temperament at home and at work became more evened out. I was not getting rattled or frustrated as easily, and began experiencing much less of the low-grade background stress of ‘triage mode’. As a result I was more enthusiastic about my work on any given day.

I also began to feel more focused on a task while I was doing it. I was getting better at extending the amount of focused time I could deliver before the ‘itch’ to check in with my email or otherwise ‘take a break’ (read, ‘distract myself’) kicked in.

Generally I became more optimistic. This last note is important. Triage mode put me in a mindset of damage control. I found myself racing from one thing to the next, pressured to make quick, efficient diagnoses of what was needed and then to remedy the need quickly. This can be useful in emergencies. Overdone, it can lead to knee-jerk judgements and substandard solutions. At the very least, it often left me with a feeling of racing just to get it done rather than ‘thinking it through’.

Overall my efficiency and the quality of my work improved and I began to realize that without the constant thrumming of data – often irrelevant if entertaining or interesting – I was able to do better work, quicker. I also found myself feeling better connected to my family in the evenings and on weekends.

Quality of surplus.
I’ve been thinking about Cognitive Surplus and The Shallows ever since embarking on my experiment. Were I to sum it all up, I would say both authors are right and despite the media portrayal, the books are complementary, not opposing, positions. We now have the collective capacity to pool resources as never before. This creates incredible potential. However as with any type of transaction – the time we spend using digital tools is time we don’t spend doing other things. Carr convincingly points to the fact that using any tool necessarily changes how our brains work. It is up to us to be conscious of this and to make wise decisions in accordance with what we’re trying to achieve.

Personally, I feel like I walked into digital media years ago determined to make them conform to my needs . Somehow, along the way, they conformed me to their nature. The outcome was a flitting, short-attention-span, frantically-trying-to-filter-and-respond daily life.

By taking stock of my habits (which often had formed unconsciously as my phone got smarter or I signed up to tinker with a new online service) and then reshuffling my behaviors, I have realized dramatic and generally positive effects. While I’ve softened my hardline experiment a little, I continue to stick to many of the original principles of it because of the benefit they’ve delivered to me.

I believe my experiment has, in short, made my cognitive surplus (and the rest of my cognitive capacities) more valuable to me and by extension, to the people I endeavor to share them with.