Why (and How) To Take it Slow With Technology
Headspace paired up with Sesame Street to make some awesome videos about meditation for kids. One I’ve watched with my kids many times is about Grover trying to do too many things at once, so everything sort of explodes in stars:
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6XDe9jPfrI)
Our friendly meditation guide Andy teaches Grover to slow down and do things one at a time. He tells us “when you have a lot to do, breathe in, breathe out, count one, two, then do.” With this system, Grover is able to first eat his breakfast, then get dressed, and finally get on his roller skates for a fun day out.
The message about how technology can help us do so much more with our work and our time has been hammered into our heads over the last few years. And it isn’t wrong - there are so many ways technology can benefit social justice, mission-driven work. It is true that technology can help some things move faster - but it is not always true that we can move fast to access this kind of benefit from technology. We don’t want to end up exploding into stars because we tried to do too much technology at once.
This is why we hear about agile working styles and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) - approaches that acknowledge the need to go slow and take things one step at a time. I haven’t found an accepted term or phrase for the need to move methodically from manual processes to automated processes, but this is another important area where we need to move slow. Maybe we can call it Minimum Viable Automation (MVA).
Make things better one small piece at a time. Only take on the technology that the people in your organization can actually manage. Remember to breathe in, breathe out. I promise, going slow in the beginning will make you go faster later, and won’t slow you down as much with problems and frustrations.
The “How” to do this is the same way to get started and plan out nearly any technology problem or opportunity, big or small - The 4-Step Beginner’s Mindset Flow:
Write it out: Take everything in your head about you data & technology and what you want and need and what you already have and what you love and hate and wish and dream and complain about and laugh about and and and. Everything that you have in your head about whatever your context is needs to come out onto the page.
Draw it out: Take everything that you wrote in step 1 and get creative with it. Use a pen and paper or a design app or finger paints - imagine the world that you will live in when you have exactly what you want and need from your technology, and bring it to life on the page. Remember, there are no limitations. You don’t want to be constrained by your current situation or your past experiences. Go big or go home.
Break it down: Now we get to make a good old bullet pointed list. Taking a look at what we wrote and especially what we drew, try to pull out the granular pieces that make up the beautiful whole. Did you put numbers somewhere in your drawing? How about words? What little bits of information are included? A pro-tip here is to categorize each bullet point you have into one of 3 categories. One, things you know a lot about and could possibly get on your own in your tech systems. Two, things you aren’t quite sure you know how to do but maybe could do some research and figure it out. Three, things you are pretty sure you can’t do or don’t have time to learn and might be better bringing in someone else to help out.
Translate it: For this one you might need some help from a translator - that would be someone who speaks English (or your language or choice) and also “speaks Tech.” In this step you will take all the bullet points and figure out what the possible tech solutions are for them. This step still has a lot of idealism in it - we might find out that to accomplish some of what we want to have would require more money, more expertise, more time, and more will than we actually have to give. That’s ok! We also can find out what we can do right now with the resources we’ve got and make decisions about priorities and where to put our resources.
There is an urgency to social justice work - a need to move towards progress as quickly as possible. I don’t see the slow-down-your-tech approach being in opposition to this at all. Trying to take on technology that no one in our organization can handle, or having too much of it to handle, may seem like we are getting tools for speed now, but in the long run will lead to even greater slow-downs. Moving methodically and with the appropriate amount of professional development and learning about our technology may seem slow at first, but it will give you a better chance of avoiding pitfalls later on and being more able to gain speed over time.
Just remember, count one, two, then do.
