Sometimes the most effective course of action is not the direct effort for you to go and do it, but the act of arranging the circumstances so that it is more likely to happen by itself.
We find bits of pieces of this concept in a range of subjects such as architecture, user interface design, psychology and mysticism.
Architects have to be aware of this, intuitively or not. It makes a difference where you put the doors and the windows and how you arrange the rooms in relation to each other. There will be certain rooms that are more appropriate for intimate encounters, others that will be more appropriate for business activities, etc.
On a website, if you move things around, change the colors, make buttons bigger or smaller, change the fonts, change the use of pictures - all of it will have an effect. People will act differently when they come to your site. How things are arranged might make the difference between just another site that people stay on for 5 seconds, or a runaway viral success.
It is not always the conscious, deliberate actions that make the most difference. It is not always your conscious thoughts that are the most useful. Admit it, you really have no idea how you manage to breathe and digest your food ,and how you put grammatically correct sentences together, and from where you get new ideas. It just sort of happens, based in part on what is going on in your body and in the sub-conscious parts of your mind, and what you somehow pick up from the universe in ways you don't quite understand.
A stage magician or a hypnotist will have a certain skill in keeping your conscious attention occupied, while the real action goes on elsewhere.
Sometimes surprising effects emerge. The sum is sometimes more than the parts. Nature is full of examples of systems and of emergence. Things just happen "by themselves" under certain circumstances, but not under other circumstances.
It is possible to make things happen without doing them. It is magic, but it is also very logical. There's a lot more leverage in spending your efforts on making certain things more likely to happen than in trying to do them all yourself. And it is much easier if you can plug into what actually wants to happen.
11 comments
It's User Experience (not designer experience) , right?
I really like your ideas and look forward to hearing your solutions. I think it is beneficial for the user experience if there is some effort involved (see
www.almarvanderkrogt.nl/blog/archives/2009/02/the_effort_in_e.html). Do you agree?
Effort
Effort is one of the parts of the experience that provides a certain perceived meaning. It usually makes something more valuable, more exclusive, if one really has worked for it. So, if that is the experience one wants to create, cool.
If you have a room in your house that you can only reach by sliding aside a bookcase, climbing a ladder 3 stories, squeezing through a narrow opening in total darkness, while avoiding the spikes in the wall -- you'll feel really special about anything that goes on there, and the experience will be amplified. On the other hand, if you want a place where casual visitors easily can find you, and where you can get rid of them just as easily, that wouldn't be it.
not-acting daily
Hi Flemming,
Making things happening requires more attention and method than actions and interactions.
A very clear example of that is when you let the flow of communication (i.e. email) entering without interacting immediatley, but maybe after one day or even better, one week.
=> you realize people are often driven by laziness or selffishness.
They come to you to solve THEIR problems (their money problems, their power problems, their ego problems, sexual problems, their time problems, their authority issues, and so on...).
By letting things go ("not-acting"), you offer them more than they expected : you give a chance to self-resolution, you do not waste your and their time in interactions. You make them proud of being able to solve THEIR problems. You're generous by giving them a chance to realize they can also be STRONG.
To resume this contribution : stop interacting, give a chance to TIME, our number one ressource.
Next time you send a message, ask yourself what you offer (time, kindness, attention, a couch in CPH for me;-), rather than what you ask for / need.
As one of my mentors said one day : "forget what you give, remember what you get".
Tell me you share my views, make me feel warm and proud !
thank you for your attention,
love and regards,
Yann
Pro-active not-doing
Yann,
I'm just going to ignore you for a few days. Then somebody else will probably answer, or you'll have thought of some other way of feeling warm and fuzzy and appreciated in the meantime. ;-)
But you're right. In many situations where it looks like somebody else wants us to take action, they might really need something else, which is better, but takes less effort. To feel listened to, understood, appreciated. A few seconds of really paying attention, being mindful, might give better results than hours of hard work. Somebody might discover that they already have the solution they were looking for.
Sometimes something needs to be done. But if we start off paying attention, rather than acting blindly, we might well find that it is much less than what it seems. Of we find that a minor adjustment of the assumptions or the circumstances might drastically reduce the amount of work that needs to be done, or amplify the effect thereof.
Geting out of normal acting
"And it is much easier if you can plug into what actually wants to happen."
This last sentence is the key.
Thank you for a great proposal. I agree that there are much more intelligent things we could do if we are able not act instantaneously in reflex to stuff that arise.
To actually get to work with what actually wants to happen, I think we need to shut up some more, sit down some more and listen some more. I have had some very interesting experiences of sitting down a bunch of people and very actively doing nothing else than simply listening for what wants to take place. A great place for innovation.
hope that someting like that could happen at reboot
Dialogue
Some years ago I participated in a group that did Dialogue according to the principles of David Bohm. Which wasn't necessarily *action*, but it was communication from that kind of place. Getting really quiet, turning off the normal compulsions to look good, be the first to speak, sound smart and knowledgable, etc, and instead paying attention to what really needs and wants to be said. It is more honest, more real, and, yes, surprising new stuff is likely to emerge.
Slides
My presentation slides can be found here: www.slideshare.net/ffunch/the-art-of-notdoing
Not-doing e-book
Thanks to Toothless Tiger Press, here is an expanded e-book version of my talk/slides: www.toothlesstigerpress.com/artofnotdoing
werwe
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Who wrote what?
Somehow there's no indication of who wrote what proposal here, so this comment is just to mention that I wrote this proposal for a talk.