(I promised my friend I would write this post some day–here you are, buddy.)
A great way to achieve goals is by enumerating problems first and then solving them. However, this method has a blind spot — value can also be added not by solving pain but by making what is good better.
A good manifestation of this is the “you don’t know you need it until you have it” phenomenon. My friend and I would spend hours discussing why I thought he should get a touch phone. “I don’t perceive any problems with my life that a touch phone could solve,” he would say. Well, I used to think that too at the end of my Freshman year in college, as all my friends tried to convince me to buy a cell phone.
So–for the benefit of my friend–here are the things that having a touch phone (iPhone specifically but the argument can easily be used for any touch phones) enabled me to do that I never even thought of being able to do
- I can figure out how to get from Grand Central to Columbia University by subway. Previously I either had to take a map with me, look for a map at the station, or get on a train that was hopefully the right one and look through the map there. I can even tell how long the trip’s going to take.
- I can figure out where that restaurant at which I was supposed to meet my friend was–I only remember the name. Previously I would have to call someone or ask and hope they would know.
- I can mark where I parked my car so I don’t have to worry that I’ll forget the day after when I have to pick it up.
- I know when the train leaves Grand Central so I can spend more time hanging out with my friends rather than stranded at the train station.
- I can very quickly resolve these bets that I often make with others, related to some particular factoid that we disagreed on at dinner.
- I will never, ever forget anything because I can write a note to myself at any point.
- I will never, ever be bored because I can
- Listen to radio
- Play games
- Listen to audiobooks
- Read books
- Listen to music
- Write a post in my blog
- I can pretend to be a good cook because I can pull up a recipe anytime
- I can recommend a restaurant to a group of people based on their recommendations
I’m just going to stop here because, quite frankly, it’s like listing the benefits of the Internet (the “touch” part is incredibly useful because it makes user experience bearable — doing most of the above on a WAP-enabled phone or even a real browser but with a keypad-activated cursor is a pain in the neck).
Of course, one drawback of making good things better is that your expectations are raised. I remember thinking a month after I got my iPhone, “This is the most user-friendly, useful device I have ever used. My life is so much easier and richer right now.”. Now, two years in, I am very frustrated with it. It’s unresponsive, the lack of Flash annoys the hell out of me, I have to spend so long looking up directions. In fact, I’m just a much more discerning customer.
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I’m not sure I buy it.
I think it depends on what metric you evaluate as making your life better. You can try and come up with standard objective measures (live longer, have more purchasing power) but I think these are kind of missing the point. Dead Poets Society is a pretty cheesy movie, but at one point Robin Williams says something pretty neat:
“And medicine, law, business, engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for.”
It doesn’t illustrate my point exactly, but it’s eloquently put and characterizes the flavor of my feeling. It’s important to have certain basic standards, but everything above a certain point is irrelevant and achieving existential success requires something else. If you need a more established source, Kahneman’s studies on happiness versus wealth are good.
To bring it to a point; is the constant desire to be filling every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of distance run leaving you a little breathless?
I’ve been thinking about what metric I would use. It’s not wealth, or comfort, or the ability to do rare things. I have a beef with happiness — it’s a perfect thing around whose pursuit to build a nation (precisely because it’s so not well-defined yet uncontestably something we should all strive for).
My objective du jour is one of embracing change — or, to put in other words, a philosophy of moderation. According to it, I would want to have an iPhone, but I would want to leave it at home every so often. It’s like filling some minutes with sprints and some with standing still. I’ll get somewhere, and see a bunch of more than the distance-runner, and get a better workout than one.
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