Play researchers’ findings indicate that self-directed play, for both children and adults, nourishes the human spirit and helps develop resilience, independence, and resourcefulness. Yet, our desire to be efficient and productive, and our tendency to over-schedule and over-program, has crowded out opportunities for self-directed play in our education system and in our lives at home.
Filed under Uncategorized
“My mom should look at me when I talk to her. She always only looks at her iPhone! It makes me mad!” This was the response of a ten year old, when asked: “What rules would you make for your parents regarding the use of technology?”
We’re quick to make rules for kids when it comes to the use of technology. Is this working? Is there another way?
What if the kids are just imitating us? What if we put the phone down? What if we could set a great example for kids regarding the appropriate use of technology?
And – what if doing this turned out to be as beneficial for us, and our relationships, as it would be for them?
Mark Matousek, in a Psychology Today article, wrote, “You learn the world from your mother’s face. The mother’s eyes, especially, are a child’s refuge, the mirror where children confirm their existence. From the doting reflection of its mother’s eyes, a baby draws its earliest, wordless lessons about connection, care, and love, and about how being ignored – which every child is sooner or later – makes the good feeling disappear.”
Where are those good feelings for this frustrated eight year old girl? “I used to snuggle with my mom in the morning. Now, she’s always playing Scrabble when I curl up next to her. She should stop playing Scrabble and cuddle with me!”
At brunch, my friends, both doctors on call, frequently check their iPhones. It’s not surprising that their one year old constantly reaches for the iPhone, often jamming it in his mouth. The iPhone is the target of his parent’s attention. Why shouldn’t it be the target of his attention?
Psychologist Dan Siegel, tells us that a mother’s gaze plays a crucial role in the development of empathy. “We learn to care, quite literally, by observing the caring behavior of our parents toward us.” When mom’s gaze is fixed on the screen, might this have an impact on the child’s ability to be empathic?
A twelve year old noticed that, even in front of the television, his father was missing in action: “My dad used to watch TV with me. Now he’s like, sitting next to me, on his iPad or iPhone, and it’s like I’m alone. My dad should watch TV with me for real. Like he used to.”
We’re also teaching the next generation how to be safe on the road. Or not. “Texting while driving isn’t even legal. My mom and dad do it all the time. They won’t stop even when I tell them to stop. And it’s not legal, right? Grown-ups shouldn’t text and drive.”
Imitation and modeling are among the most powerful tools we have for creating behavior change, particularly for children. When we start making rules for our kids around the use of technology, let’s enlist them in the process. They’re loaded with wisdom.
Filed under Uncategorized
Conscious Computing Allows Technology to Become a Prosthetic for Engaging with Our Full Potential
Personal technologies today are prosthetics for our minds.
In our current relationship with technology, we bring our bodies, but our minds rule.
“Don’t stop now, you’re on a roll. Yes, pick up that phone call, you can still answer these six emails. Watch the Twitter stream while working on PowerPoint? Why not?” Our minds push, demand, coax, and cajole. “No break yet, we’re not done. No dinner until this draft is done.”
Our tyrannical minds conspire with enabling technologies and our bodies do their best to hang on for the wild ride.
Glenn Fleishman posted on software that disables bits of the computer to make us more productive and to minimize distractions. Programs like Freedom, Isolator, RescueTime, LeechBlock, Turn Off the Lights and others were mentioned — all tools that block distractions. This software category is called: Internet Blocking Productivity Software. Users can choose to disable Internet access and/or local network access. Users claim that software like Freedom makes them more productive by blocking tempting distractions.
I’m not opposed to using technologies to support us in reclaiming our attention. But I prefer passive, ambient, non-invasive technologies that address our bodymind, over parental ones.
Consider the Toyota Prius. The Prius doesn’t stop in the middle of a highway and say, “Listen to me, Mr. Irresponsible Driver, you’re using too much gas and this car isn’t going to move another inch until you commit to fix that.” Instead, a display engages us in a playful way and our body implicitly learns to shift to use less gas.
Glenn was kind enough to call me for a comment as he prepared his post. We talked about email apnea, continuous partial attention, and how, while software that locks out distractions is a great first step, our ultimate opportunity is to evolve our relationship with personal technologies.
With technologies like Freedom, we take away, from our mind, the role of tyrant, and re-assign that role to the technology. The technology then dictates to the mind. The mind then dictates to the body. Meanwhile, the body that senses and feels, that turns out to offer more wisdom than the finest mind could even imagine, is ignored.
There are techniques and technologies that actually tune us in to our bodies, and our nervous systems. These technologies let us know when we’re stressed, or when we’re engaged. One of these technologies, from Heartmath, has been particularly helpful to me. A clip goes on the earlobe, and is connected to a small, lightweight box, that can sit next to the computer. There are lights on the box that indicate the state of the nervous system. One of these products, the emWave2, can be used while doing work on the computer (in other contexts as well). Heartmath also offer software games that work with the emWave2. The 5-10 minute games involve actions that are totally controlled by the state of your nervous system.
At the heart of compromised attention is compromised breathing. Breathing, attention, and emotion, are commutative. Athletes, dancers, and musicians are among those who don’t have email apnea. Optimal breathing contributes to regulating our autonomic nervous system and it’s in this regulated state that our cognition and memory, social and emotional intelligence, and even innovative thinking can be fueled.
Scientists, like Antonio Damasio, Daniel Siegel, and Daniel Goleman, have shown us that aspects of our intelligence come from sensing and feeling and that our bodies offer a kind of wisdom.
Thirty years ago, personal computing technologies created a revolution in personal productivity, supporting a value on self-expression, output and efficiency. The personal communications technology era that followed the era of personal productivity amplified accessibility and responsiveness. Personal technologies have served us well as prosthetics for the mind, in service of thinking and doing.
Our focus has been on technologies as prosthetics for the mind, and human-as-machine style productivity. This has led to burn-out, poor health, poor sleep, and what I call email apnea or screen apnea. We wonder where our attention has gone. Turns out, it’s right where we left it — with our ability to breathe fully.
We can use personal technologies that are prosthetics for our beings, to enhance our lives. I call this Conscious Computing.
We can use technology to help enable Conscious Computing, or we can find it on our own, through attending to how we feel. For advice from a musician on how to do Conscious Computing, I interviewed the organist, Cameron Carpenter.
Conscious Computing with the help of passive, ambient, non-invasive Heart Rate Variability (HRV) technology is poised to take off over the next few years. It has the potential to help all of us learn the skills that musicians, athletes and dancers have, that immunizes them from email apnea.
With a musical instrument, it’s awkward at first. All thumbs. Uncomfortable. We don’t know how to sit, stand or breathe. With practice, a musician becomes self-contained versus merged with the instrument. So it will be with personal technology. Now, a prosthetic of mind, it will become a prosthetic of being. A violinist with a violin. Us with our gadgets,. Embodied. Attending. Self-contained. Present.
Chris Anderson’s April 7, Google+ post describes the quantified self lifestyle:
Philips DirectLife, Nike Fuelband, Polar FA20 Activity monitor watch, a Withings scale, a Zeo, and Runkeeer on the iPhone.
Chris’ wife has a FitBit, Zeo, and Runkeeper. The kids wear Zamzees. To say that movement is tracked is an understatement.
But where does quantity meet quality?
What else might we measure?
I’ve long been a proponent of measuring heart rate variability and galvanic skin response – which can indicate how relaxed or stressed we are.
What about measuring how many minutes or hours we are not sitting in front of a screen? How many minutes or hours we spend outside? How long we spend enjoying a meal or how much we enjoyed a meal?
Does our current focus on measuring steps and calories keep us in a cerebral thinking and doing state, and distance us from being more wholly embodied, sensing and feeling?
Do our current quantified self activities measure what’s easily measured or do they measure what really matters? What else might we measure?
Filed under Uncategorized
I haven’t always been a fan of video games. I’m a fan of getting outside, enjoying fresh air, exploring tide pools, walking on a trail or in the park. I love cooking, baking and crafting. It just never occurred to me that adding more hours in front of a screen could be a path to joy.
Over the years, in over the shoulder mode, I’ve loved watching friends of all ages engage — with a full on passion and joy, and my latest HuffPo post describes one such moment.
Filed under Uncategorized
These last few months, I’ve linked up with Mike Hettwer to create TEDxMidwest. On a flight to Chicago now and super excited about the terrific speakers and great friends who plan to join us in the inaugural year of this event.
Special thanks to Chris Anderson, TED Conferences, for his vision and for offering a program for local TEDx events. Special thanks to the TEDx team for their support, with a special shout out to Lara Stein and Ronda Carnegie.
Filed under Uncategorized
This past weekend, at SciFoo 2010, during one of Nat Torkington’s Lightning Rounds, I had a chance to talk about childhood play patterns of scientists, of all of us, and about the benefits of self-directed play. Here’s an earlier blog post on the topic.
Please join the discussion in the Talk To Me section of this blog, and share how you played as a child. Alone? Social? Both? Were you a builder and a maker? Did you create your own experiments? Did you have favorite objects? Do tell!
Filed under play, Uncategorized
How does an intention form and gather energy? Is a goal an intention without the passion? Is a goal from the mind only and an intention from our entire being?
For you, talk to me about intentions — what they are, how they form and gather energy…
Thank you.
Filed under Uncategorized
One of my favorite 8 year olds can’t get enough of his Wii. I enjoy this child and hung out with him recently while he played his favorite video game. He was hunched over on the sofa and I promise you, his breathing was undetectable. With some coaxing, he moved to a wooden chair. For the first 3 minutes, he sat up straight, then he smiled at me, said, “I like to slouch,” and continued his game slouched in the wooden chair.
Did I mention that this is how he spent his Saturday morning just before going to an appointment with the doctor helping him with his ADHD issues?
Shallow breathing and temporary breath holding up regulates the sympathetic or fight or flight nervous system response. I call this email apnea. If your child has ADHD or impulse control issues and also hunches in front of a computer or video game or in front of the television, it might be time to consider an intervention that involves teaching a breathing technique that up regulates the parasympathetic or rest and digest response.
I recently spent some time playing with the HeartMath emWave Desktop software. With short games, a player manages his/her breathing pattern as part of game play.
At TEDMED 2009, Dr. Daniel Siegel mentioned research he’d conducted using breath training to manage ADHD.
Sometimes pharmaceuticals are the most effective option for treating a condition. In many cases, for conditions involving impulse control, regulation of emotions, ADHD and other attention issues, it may be worth looking into options that help”re-set” the autonomic nervous system: various breathing techniques, Buteyko, Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, cranial-sacral, and certain forms of acupuncture.
Performance, particularly dance and music, often involve training in breathing techniques. The same is true for certain sports.
The way we breathe is central in regulation of attention and emotion, cognition and memory, and social and emotional intelligence.
Filed under attention, breathe, breathing, email apnea, exhale, health, overwhelmed, screen apnea, stress, technology, Uncategorized
Today, I don’t own an iPad. Last week, I had no intention of buying one anytime soon. The Wall Street Journal, All Things Digital, D8 Conference, has seriously cracked my resolve.
Lisa Gold, showed me her iPad a few weeks ago, and talked about her experience with the iPad:
“When I use it, I don’t have email apnea because I sit or recline comfortably, I’m relaxed, and I breathe. When I’m sitting at my desk, in a chair, staring at my computer screen and clutching my mouse, I’m physically uncomfortable and I often find myself holding my breath and feeling slightly anxious. Instead of forcing my body to adapt to the demands of the computer, iPad adapts to me and the different ways I want to use it. My iPad can’t completely replace my computer, but I find myself using iPad more and the computer less. And it has made me much more aware of how using a computer affects my body.”
Filed under Uncategorized
I was surprised when a couple of Highly Regarded Silicon Valley folks, canceled a leadership themed dinner due to lack of interest.
Is this an interesting topic to the current generation of CEO’s and senior executives — especially those under 40? I asked a serial entrepreneur, CEO friend of mine: “Not so much,” was his reply.
Reflecting on why this might be the case, I started to think about parenting, and how very different Dr. Spock’s parenting advice fifty years ago, is from one of today’s parenting gurus, Alyson Shafer, in Honey, I Wrecked the Kids: When Yelling, Screaming, Threats, Bribes, Time-Outs, Sticker Charts, and Removing Privileges All Don’t Work.
I’m still working through my thoughts on this. However, I’m coming to believe that by looking at how parenting practices have changed over time, we can learn a lot about how management practices have and might continue to evolve.
For those familiar with today’s parenting guidance, and working in the business world — do you have insights and stories to share?
Filed under Uncategorized
A few weeks ago, when I checked my inbox, there was an email from Lianne Raymond. Her request:
I am asking you, as one of the women I look to for thought leadership, to contribute your idea of “what is dying to be born” in the world right now- maybe it is already in the process of happening and you will shine the light on it – it doesn’t matter: whatever way you want to interpret that phrase is welcomed and encouraged, as part of the beauty of the end product will be our multi-faceted ways of viewing the world, with each view reflecting the others.
You are on this list because somewhere along the way you made a difference in my life through your words. So thank you so much for being a part of my life and growth, whether or not you become a part of this.
With much love,
Lianne Raymond
Click on the link below, for Linda’s page, to read my piece on Presence in What is Dying to Be Born?
The link, What is Dying to be Born, will take you to the entire book:
Filed under attention, connection, engaged, health, reflection, Uncategorized
I’ll be writing a series of posts on something that is troubling me — our personal and collective dialog about health. We seem to be using the language of war, and our greatest opportunity is to seek peace. We speak passionately about what we don’t want, and the joy is in the aspiration, the dreams of what we want, both for ourselves and as a larger community.
I come to this from a very personal place, as well as from a place of believing, that for all of us, nothing could matter more.
Shifting our language can shift us toward more powerful and positive possibilities. I welcome your comments and stories here and on the Huffington Post.
Excerpt from the first post in the series:
I have grown weary of this American dialog, a dialog of mind at war with body. Mind always right, of course. Mind, the dictator. Mind, the jailer. Body, the servant. Body, the victim, of mind, the bully.
Filed under Uncategorized
FIRST stands for: For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology. By 1992, Dean Kamen was becoming increasingly concerned about our ability to effectively compete in business given our declining ability to educate students in science and technology. Kamen and his friend, Dr. Woodie Flowers, had a wild idea: create a competition–now a “coopertition”–where teams of high school students, working closely with mentors, design and build a robot, in a six week period, then compete both regionally and nationally.
Filed under Uncategorized
When Jack Hidary told me about National Lab Day, I got chills. The tag line for National Lab Day is: A National Barn-Raising for Hands-On Learning. Using the internet and social computing technologies, with the support of the White House and the business and scientific communities, National Lab Day reaches out to the education community, providing a tool set that brings context, community, and passion to education, and that has the potential to transform our educational system into a true learning community.
Filed under innovation, O'Reilly Radar, play, Uncategorized
The book that had the most impact on my thinking in 2009, was: Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul, by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan.
It inspired me to chat with Nobel Laureates, last June, at a gathering in Sweden, about their play patterns as children. When these men talked about their work in the lab today and their childhood play patterns, it was the same conversation. They played passionately as children and the emergent questions and interests they had as children were still central in their work, albeit more evolved.
More recently, I started carrying a Flip Video recorder with me and interviewing friends and people I meet here and there. One friend, Mike, talked about his stamp collection — the excitement of opening the bag of envelope corners with colorful stamps affixed, the thrill of tracking on a map where each stamp was from and learning a little about each country, and the sense of possibility and curiosity about a larger world with so many different cultures. Mike went on to major in international relations and does global policy work today.
Matt Ruff was clear from the age of five that he wanted to be a novelist. He read voraciously, invented imaginary worlds and has confidently and successfully pursued these dreams as an adult.
Over the holidays, sitting with my mom and little sister, I began asking them what they remembered about my childhood play patterns. ”You were into everything,” my mom recalled, “You had science experiments going in the basement with mice, you baked and sold cookies door to door, you were constantly crafting and making things, and you started hosting dinner parties at the age of twelve.” My sister remembered the science fair projects, chess club, and all the making and building projects.
I remembered being positively obsessed with the notion of infinity and with Ann Cutler’s, Instant Math, and number patterns. My dad was a willing co-conspirator in any building project — one of the most memorable: building an incubator to hatch chicks. I had rock, stamp, and coin collections. I loved to bake and cook from a young age, and then found ways to sell my wares in the neighborhood — my mom always made me reimburse her for cost of goods.
Working with the kids next door, we produced circus performances. I was involved in every aspect of production, program development, marketing, logistics, and pricing, for both the entry fee and goods sold. We also organized summer crafting programs for young kids in the neighborhood. I loved co-creating these businesses — with neighbor kids I’m still very friendly with today (no, not through or because of FaceBook).
By age eleven, I wanted to learn how to bake bread and didn’t know anyone who could teach me. Trial and error and fifty loaves later, I could do it blindfolded and could easily modify a recipe successfully. If I’d done this in school, I’d have gotten a failing grade after the first few loaves. Thanks to my parents, I could try as often as I wanted and analyze and question what was going wrong and right each time.
I read voraciously, both fiction and non-fiction, and visited the library frequently. As a child, I created books. As a teenager, I wrote both prose and poetry and was the editor of my high school literary magazine.
I fearlessly rode my bicycle all over the northern Chicago suburbs — seriously, everywhere. My bicycle was my freedom. I sang with friends in high school and later in college.
I loved to travel and between baby-sitting and a waitress job that paid fifty cents an hour plus tips, I traveled all over the U.S. and to Panama, French Canada, and Europe, as a young teenager — on my own or with friends. I loved meeting weavers in rural Holland, drinking my first cappuccino at the age of fifteen in Panama City, and picking blueberries just outside of Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada. People fascinated me – I wanted to understand everything about creativity, intelligence, learning, and communication. I still do.
All of these themes are active today, both in my work and in my play. I taught (K-6, university) and worked as a children’s librarian the first decade of my career, spent the next two decades in high tech, where I’m still very active, and this last year, helped co-found a fresh sauces and puddings company, Abby’s Table. I serve on many Advisory Boards, both for profit and not for profit, covering a range of areas from technology to health to education to the environment.
How are your play patterns alive today, in what you do as an adult? Once you start writing, even a paragraph or two, about your childhood play patterns, you’ll see the power of play.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to comment on your childhood play patterns here. What couldn’t you wait to do when you got home from school or on a Saturday? Does your work and play today share themes from your childhood play? I hope this new decade is a decade where play is celebrated and acknowledged as the key to passion, joy and a productive and fulfilling life.
Filed under play, Uncategorized
Someone always stops me in the hall at a conference or asks anxiously after a talk: How much time should I spend in front of a screen? At what point should I pull back and take a break? Should I stop every 30 or 45 minutes?
My response is always the same: How do you feel? Your body is wiser than your mind in these matters.
The challenge is, most of us, especially the brainy future thinking high tech types, tend to favor the inclinations of the mind. The mind, for many of us, is often tyrannical towards the body. ”Just stay up 3 more hours. One more all-nighter. A Red Bull or two and I’ll meet this deadline! No walk until this paper is done…”
Our always-on lifestyle has favored thinking and doing. As we move toward a lifestyle that seeks quality of life, we’ll find ourselves valuing sensing and feeling. We see the first signs of this in the various food related movements that are gaining popularity: slow foods, Farmer’s Markets, and preferences for artisanal and local organic foods.
The operative questions are: How do I feel? What would feel better? These questions can help create a flexible, flowing workstyle that will enable the wisdom of both body and mind to come through in everything we do.
This piece also appeared on the Huffington Post.
