Technology allows us to do so much from the comfort of our homes. But just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Once everything is jammed into the same tech, it loses its texture and everything – personal and business – just becomes one blur.  

Why is that important for business? 

When we have the option of bringing everyone into a meeting now – because it can be done by the click of a button – we can make the mistake of prioritizing means instead of best outcome. There is no wrong or right, but we need to consider things like: Does this need to be a video chat, or just a call? Is there any requirement for a shared visual? Do I need to see everyone’s faces?

Now that so many things could be done in a Zoom meeting, everything requires sitting in chair staring at computer. Experiences begin to lose their texture. When everything feels the same, everything feels like everything else you have done that day. We are missing out on the sensory experience of life and are constricted to what is front of you on screen; there is a dimming of the senses that we need to be aware of. If we don’t actively work to add texture, everything starts blurring together, and even fun things don’t feel that different from work. 

It’s also interesting to notice the impact of having markedly fewer unplanned interactions, or how a thing feels different when you don’t have a kinetic experience of it. Places have a different texture. As The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows so aptly describes it, there is a sense of kenopsia, or the eeriness of a place left behind.

In order to see people, we have to be more intentional about it; everything is more contrived by necessity, and we have to consider what connections we actively want to strengthen. A lot of the whimsical things of life have been lost; the nuance of experience, the surprise, is missing. 

As mentioned in the Power of Moments, we mark time by moments, and our days have no distinct moments in them anymore, so everything blurs. Even things that could feel like moments are jammed into same conduit as everything else and begin to lose their distinction. Everything gets shoved into the same-shaped container. Observing the moments is the antidotes to the personal and mental fatigue. We need to find ways to add texture into our experiences again. 

Resources Mentioned

The Power of Moments, by Chip and Dan Heath. https://heathbrothers.com/the-power-of-moments/

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