The times displayed on Grand Central’s departure boards are wrong – by a full minute:
This is permanent. It is also purposeful.
The idea is that passengers rushing to catch trains they’re about to miss can actually be dangerous — to themselves, and to each other. So conductors will pull out of the station exactly one minute after their trains’ posted departure times.
You might call this time-hacking; you might call it behavioral engineering; you might call it comical. Regardless, it seems to be working. Grand Central boasts the fewest slips, trips, and falls of any station in the country.
Once heard Carnegie Hall starts their performances eight minutes early [or late] for a similar reason. Curious what other time hacks exist to accommodate New Yorkers.
[T]he brains of people in remote places seem ready to focus on the task at hand, while the brains of their urban counterparts seem prepared to explore the ever-changing conditions of city life. Certainly explains why some country folk find the city overwhelming, and some city folk find the country a little dull. Nothing personal — strictly neural.
And:
[C]ity dwellers have developed a form of attention that puts priority on “the search for potential dangers or new opportunities.”
[Image source: “Oliver Twist,” “The Catcher in the Rye” from the Fictitious Dishes series, Dinah Fried. “The photographs in this series, Fictitious Dishes, enter the lives of five fictional characters and depict meals from the novels The Catcher in the Rye, Oliver Twist, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Moby Dick.” Be sure not to miss Dinah’s collaboration on Tiny Little Words and certainly don’t miss What Book Should I Read.]
In college, I used to underline sentences that struck me, that made me look up from the page. They were not necessarily the same sentences the professors pointed out, which would turn up for further explication on an exam. I noted them for their clarity, their rhythm, their beauty and their enchantment. For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time.
That’s Jhumpa Lahiri, with a first piece in the New York Times’ Draft, a series about the art and craft of writing.
Constructing a sentence is the equivalent of taking a Polaroid snapshot: pressing the button, and watching something emerge. To write one is to document and to develop at the same time. Not all sentences end up in novels or stories. But novels and stories consist of nothing but. Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches. Their nature is at once solitary and social. Sentences establish tone, and set the pace. One in front of the other marks the way.
I have to photograph it. It is my impulse. But rather than capture by underline, my reflexes have changed. Today, falling in love with a sentence, my instinct is not to use markup (analog or digital), but the quick snap-and-post with a device had became the embodiment of affection for me. Sentences do indeed remain unsettled organisms: alive, uncapturable, magic. Many years, many formats, and many sentences later, the sentence remains.
For many, perhaps the majority, of us, our suburban lives were spent sealed in air-conditioning, interspersed with moments of purported discomfort as we transitioned between the homes, cars, McMansions, big boxes, gyms, schools, Olive Gardens, and Arby’s drive-thrus that characterized our daily lives.
But then:
The wish for sustainability and energy efficiency has permeated our society and building profession. This has led us to the rediscovery of windows that can be opened and closed, a step towards unsealing our lives. Today’s less expensive mix of low-to-mid-rise buildings does not create the wind tunnel effect more expensive full-block towers create for pedestrians and inhabitants wanting to open windows. …. Being a pedestrian, or one of our ever increasing army of bicyclists, is a proven step towards unsealing ourselves from an air-conditioned lifestyle.
As we continue toward unsealing ourselves from suburban environments, perhaps we’ll see even more of the “outdoors” “indoors.”
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton by way of Farnam Street. He continues, “Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the last moment.”
Why are these “observation wheels” reaching landmark status in some places when other, more vernacular gestures might better fit the context of a place?
My answer is not to cynically decry these wheels, but to consider them as the same exciting, moving observation points first explained by seventeenth century observers. Understanding their ongoing success — premised on fun and excitement — is consistent with my opening call for more studied reflection about relationships of people and the communities around them.
[W]hen we move by foot today … it always seem to involve brief, intense tromps motivated by a single purpose. We walk to the garage to get to the car. We walk from the mall parking lot to Best Buy. We walk from Gate 4 to Gate 22 in Terminal B.
Also:
We also seem to be losing our capacity for in-depth walking. Walking is now short-term scanning. Thoreau liked to spend four hours every day rambling, free of tasks and immediate goals. He lamented that his fellow townsmen would recall pleasant walks they’d taken a decade ago, but had “confined themselves to the highway ever since.“ ”The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing,“ Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of his friend. “If shut up in the house, he did not write at all.”
With respect to long walks, let’s consider the value of the short-term. The shortcut.
Shortcuts are sort of secrets for locals. A shortcut out loud might sound something like, “Oh, to get to the freeway, actually take a right instead of a left. It will be 10 minute shorter.” But a shortcut is never done. Once you’re let in on the shortcut, you want more. You can always save more time. You can always imagine a shorter way. And there probably is.
All secrets are not shortcuts, but all shortcuts are secrets. Perhaps then shortcuts are secret handshakes. Perhaps they’re secret handshakes for a public. A private public.
Consider that un-long walks are not anti-walking, then, but rather pro-shortcut. Pro-secret. Pro-belonging.
Evolution is a tricky item to articulate. For me, meandering and rippling best characterize the way I evolve over time as they’re both an intentional and serendipitous process — one activity inspiring and feeding another, yet not one thing being conscious of the other. The “meandering” is the serendipity; the “rippling” is the intention. If one is to grow, whether by meandering, by rippling, or by intending, one must diverge at critical and unexpected places.
There it was — as persistent as it had always been. A stubborn, short, quiet hair on the arm of my jacket this afternoon. My hand went up to brush it away, and then it stopped. Routine interrupted.
There it was. Although several weeks before, my beloved red dog had peacefully passed away. My closest companion of 12 years had once shed — generously and unadulteratedly — across the things of my life. And while she was gone, here: her trademark doghair still stood.
How lucky I had been for the red hair. How lucky I had been for the loyalty two companion animals provide: commingled, intertwined, co-habitated. Shedding upon one another our lives such that when we went back into the world, we had these small red badges of courage.
In our dozen years together, this animal taught me more about being a person than any person I’ve known. Importantly:
Learn at least one impressive trick.
Shake when wet.
Wag.
When off the leash, it is best to run to a loved one.
Accept treats from strangers energetically yet cautiously.
Roll in grass whenever possible.
Wonderful things can sometimes be found in the trash.
Barking is a last resort.
Know when the right time is to let go of what you love.
True life partners do exist.
Lucy passed away November 15, 2012. The loss devastated me so deeply and personally that I couldn’t speak of it at all. Now, I think back on what I have been known to say, “When in doubt, trust the one covered in dog hair.” Trust them, and know they’re carrying badges of much more.
Peer over someone’s shoulder — on subways, at desks, at kitchen tables — and chances are good you’ll quickly find a list maker. Inventories, enumerations, lists are sensemaking for nonsensical things.
Lists guide and advise. Not only do they provide temporal structures for moving through a day space, they demand coherence, story, and priority. “What’s your number one priority on this project?”“What’s your top ten list of apps?” “What are the top x of y,” people ask, the content mattering not at all, in contrast with a hunger for the list itself. We have numbered lists, therefore, we are.
Hence, when recently asked the “five things all designers should know,” I offered a list.
Leadership is 50 percent fiction/50 percent nonfiction. That is to say, leadership is the confidence in knowing what you know and what you know you’ll know. It’s the ability to speak confidently, knowledgeably, and easily about the latter that sets some apart. Be comfortable with the fiction.
2. Know presence from present.
It’s a relatively mundane thing, after all. It’s what we do when we show up – we’re present. However, presence is different from present. In both cases, one is there. But presence offers those also there the resonance and memory of something larger than just being there. When you show up to talk about your work, are you present or do you have presence?
3. Make practice spaces.
Design is only as meaningful as the way it is communicated. Think not of design reviews and presentations as the only opportunity to talk about your work. Consider every day an opportunity to talk about the thing you believe in. Look at the exchange with your barista, the dog walker, the phone call with your great aunt, the family dinner table all as opportunity to test out your idea in the wild. Life offers a practice space for an idea. Use it to practice live.
4. Find a yes threshold.
We do a lot of filtering. A lot of filtering out interesting from not interesting, smart choices from the less smart, good email from spam, nourishing from the draining. We have less practice saying yes. Instead of practicing filters, try practicing good ways of saying yes. Accept invitations. Say yes to the offer to have coffee, to write a post, to do a project. Practice saying yes and not only will you expand your networks, but you’ll learn your yes threshold so you can use it wisely.
This morning I had cereal, fruit, and milk. Same as yesterday. And five years yesterday. Truth is, I have the same thing every day. Little routines of sameness create a foundation that’s trustable. Trustable small frameworks make whatever unpredictability that happens throughout the day more doable. Whether its thank you gift, a way you take a photo, a song, frameworks create possibilities for what’s possible.
As for making any of these part of a daily routine? Add it to the list.
Obama, recently, revealed part of his framework for simplifying his decision making process,“ namely: same suit, different day. Brian Eno nicely outlines the same as cowboys versus farmers:
Describing his philosophy of studio work, Mr. Eno tries out another big metaphor: cowboys versus farmers. Most of what happens in a recording studio is repetitive monotony, tilling the same soil over and over to make slight improvements — insufferably boring, in his view. Mr. Eno prefers to see himself as a cowboy — or, even better, a prospector — constantly seeking out new territory, never staying in the same place for long.
“In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person,” Mr. Eno said. “I take the same walk every day and I eat in the same restaurants, and often eat exactly the same things in the same restaurants. I don’t adventure much except when I’m in the studio, and then I only want to adventure. I cannot bear doing something again, or thinking that I’m doing something again.”
