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What does it mean to spend our time well?

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I spend a lot of my time

3
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thinking about how to spend my time.

4
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Probably too much --
I probably obsess over it.

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My friends think I do.

6
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But I feel like I kind of have to,
because these days,

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it feels like little bits of my time
kind of slip away from me,

8
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and when that happens, it feels like
parts of my life are slipping away.

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Specifically,

10
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it feels like little bits
of my time get slipped away

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to various things like this,

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like technology -- I check things.

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I'll give you an example.

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If this email shows up --

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how many of you have gotten
an email like this, right?

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I've been tagged in a photo.

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When this appears,

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I can't help but click on it right now.

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Right? Because, like,
what if it's a bad photo?

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So I have to click it right now.

21
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But I'm not just going
to click "See photo,"

22
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what I'm actually going to do
is spend the next 20 minutes.

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(Laughter)

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But the worst part is that I know
this is what's going to happen,

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and even knowing
that's what's going to happen

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doesn't stop me
from doing it again the next time.

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Or I find myself in a situation like this,

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where I check my email
and I pull down to refresh,

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But the thing is that 60 seconds later,

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I'll pull down to refresh again.

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Why am I doing this?

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This doesn't make any sense.

33
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But I'll give you a hint
why this is happening.

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What do you think makes
more money in the United States

35
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than movies, game parks
and baseball combined?

36
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Slot machines.

37
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How can slot machines make all this money

38
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when we play with such small
amounts of money?

39
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We play with coins.

40
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How is this possible?

41
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Well, the thing is ...

42
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my phone is a slot machine.

43
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Every time I check my phone,

44
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I'm playing the slot machine to see,

45
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what am I going to get?

46
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What am I going to get?

47
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Every time I check my email,

48
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I'm playing the slot machine,

49
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saying, "What am I going to get?"

50
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Every time I scroll a news feed,

51
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I'm playing the slot machine to see,

52
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what am I going to get next?

53
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And the thing is that,

54
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again, knowing exactly
how this works -- and I'm a designer,

55
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I know exactly how
the psychology of this works,

56
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I know exactly what's going on --

57
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but it doesn't leave me with any choice,

58
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I still just get sucked into it.

59
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So what are we going to do?

60
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Because it leaves us
with this all-or-nothing relationship

61
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with technology, right?

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You're either on,

63
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and you're connected
and distracted all the time,

64
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or you're off,

65
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but then you're wondering,

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am I missing something important?

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In other words, you're either distracted

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or you have fear of missing out.

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Right?

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So we need to restore choice.

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We want to have
a relationship with technology

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that gives us back choice
about how we spend time with it,

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and we're going to need
help from designers,

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because knowing this stuff doesn't help.

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We're going to need design help.

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So what would that look like?

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So let's take an example that we all face:

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chat -- text messaging.

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So let's say there's two people.

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Nancy's on the left
and she's working on a document,

81
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and John's on the right.

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And John suddenly remembers,

83
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"I need to ask Nancy
for that document before I forget."

84
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So when he sends her that message,

85
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it blows away her attention.

86
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That's what we're doing all the time,
bulldozing each other's attention,

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left and right.

88
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And there's serious cost to this,

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because every time
we interrupt each other,

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it takes us about 23 minutes, on average,

91
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to refocus our attention.

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We actually cycle through
two different projects

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before we come back
to the original thing we were doing.

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This is Gloria Mark's research
combined with Microsoft research,

95
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that showed this.

96
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And her research also shows
that it actually trains bad habits.

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The more interruptions we get externally,

98
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it's conditioning and training us
to interrupt ourselves.

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We actually self-interrupt
every three-and-a-half minutes.

100
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This is crazy.

101
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So how do we fix this?

102
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Because Nancy and John are in this
all-or-nothing relationship.

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Nancy might want to disconnect,

104
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but then she'd be worried:

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What if I'm missing something important?

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Design can fix this problem.

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Let's say you have
Nancy again on the left,

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John on the right.

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And John remembers,
"I need to send Nancy that document."

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Except this time,

111
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Nancy can mark that she's focused.

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Let's say she drags a slider and says,

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"I want to be focused for 30 minutes,"

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so -- bam -- she's focused.

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Now when John wants to message her,

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he can get the thought off of his mind --

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because he has a need,
he has this thought,

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and he needs to dump it out
before he forgets.

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Except this time,

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it holds the messages
so that Nancy can still focus,

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but John can get the thought
off of his mind.

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But this only works
if one last thing is true,

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which is that Nancy needs to know
that if something is truly important,

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John can still interrupt.

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But instead of having constant
accidental or mindless interruptions,

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we're now only creating
conscious interruptions,

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So we're doing two things here.

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We're creating a new choice
for both Nancy and John,

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But there's a second, subtle thing
we're doing here, too.

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And it's that we're changing
the question we're answering.

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Instead of the goal of chat being:

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"Let's design it so it's easy
to send a message" --

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that's the goal of chat,

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it should be really easy to send
a message to someone --

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we change the goal to something
deeper and a human value,

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which is: "Let's create the highest
possible quality communication

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in a relationship between two people.

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So we upgraded the goal.

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Now, do designers
actually care about this?

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Do we want to have conversations
about what these deeper human goals are?

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Well, I'll tell you one story.

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A little over a year ago,

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I got to help organize a meeting

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between some of technology's leading
designers and Thich Nhat Hanh.

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Thich Nhat Hanh is an international
spokesperson for mindfulness meditation.

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And it was the most amazing meeting.

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You have to imagine -- picture a room --

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on one side of the room,
you have a bunch of tech geeks;

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on the other side of the room,

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you have a bunch of long brown robes,
shaved heads, Buddhist monks.

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And the questions were about
the deepest human values,

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like what does the future
of technology look like

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when you're designing
for the deepest questions

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and the deepest human values?

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And our conversation centered
on listening more deeply

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to what those values might be.

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He joked in our conversation

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that what if, instead of a spell check,

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you had a compassion check,

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meaning, you might highlight a word
that might be accidentally abrasive --

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perceived as abrasive by someone else.

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So does this kind of conversation
happen in the real world,

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not just in these design meetings?

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Well, the answer is yes,

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and one of my favorites is Couchsurfing.

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If you didn't know,
Couchsurfing is a website

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that matches people
who are looking for a place to stay

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with a free couch, from someone
who's trying to offer it.

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So, great service --

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what would their design goal be?

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What are you designing
for if you work at Couchsurfing?

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Well, you would think
it's to match guests with hosts.

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Right?

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That's a pretty good goal.

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But that would kind of be like
our goal with messaging before,

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where we're just trying
to deliver a message.

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So what's the deeper, human goal?

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Well, they set their goal

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as the need to create lasting,
positive experiences and relationships

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between people who've never met before.

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And the most amazing thing
about this was in 2007,

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they introduced a way to measure this,

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which is incredible.

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I'll tell you how it works.

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For every design goal you have,

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you have to have
a corresponding measurement

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to know how you're doing --

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a way of measuring success.

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So what they do is,

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let's say you take two people who meet up,

191
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and they take the number of days
those two people spent together,

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and then they estimate how many
hours were in those days --

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how many hours did
those two people spend together?

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And then after they spend
that time together,

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they ask both of them:

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How positive was your experience?

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Did you have a good experience
with this person that you met?

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And they subtract
from those positive hours

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the amount of time
people spent on the website,

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because that's a cost to people's lives.

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Why should we value that as success?

202
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And what you were left with

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is something they refer to as "net
orchestrated conviviality,"

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or, really, just a net
"Good Times" created.

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The net hours that would have never
existed, had Couchsurfing not existed.

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Can you imagine how inspiring it would be
to come to work every day

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and measure your success

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in the actual net new contribution
of hours in people's lives

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00:10:19,353 --> 00:10:21,954
that are positive,
that would have never existed

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if you didn't do what you were
about to do at work today?

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Can you imagine a whole world
that worked this way?

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Can you imagine a social network that --

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let's say you care about cooking,

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and it measured its success
in terms of cooking nights organized

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and the cooking articles
that you were glad you read,

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00:10:41,994 --> 00:10:44,971
and subtracted from that the articles
you weren't glad you read

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or the time you spent scrolling
that you didn't like?

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Imagine a professional social network

219
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that, instead of measuring its success
in terms of connections created

220
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or messages sent,

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instead measured its success in terms
of the job offers that people got

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00:11:01,417 --> 00:11:03,246
that they were excited to get.

223
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And subtracted the amount of time
people spent on the website.

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Or imagine dating services,

225
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like maybe Tinder or something,

226
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where instead of measuring the number
of swipes left and right people did,

227
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which is how they measure success today,

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instead measured the deep, romantic,
fulfilling connections people created.

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Whatever that was for them, by the way.

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But can you imagine a whole world
that worked this way,

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that was helping you spend your time well?

232
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Now to do this you also need a new system,

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because you're probably thinking,

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today's Internet economy --

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today's economy in general --

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is measured in time spent.

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The more users you have,

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the more usage you have,

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the more time people spend,

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that's how we measure success.

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But we've solved this problem before.

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We solved it with organic,

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when we said we need
to value things a different way.

244
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We said this is a different kind of food.

245
00:12:07,067 --> 00:12:09,116
So we can't compare it
just based on price;

246
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this is a different category of food.

247
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We solved it with Leed Certification,

248
00:12:13,761 --> 00:12:17,208
where we said this
is a different kind of building

249
00:12:17,232 --> 00:12:21,379
that stood for different values
of environmental sustainability.

250
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What if we had something
like that for technology?

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What if we had something
whose entire purpose and goal

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was to help create net new positive
contributions to human life?

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00:12:38,971 --> 00:12:42,326
And what if we could
value it a different way,

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so it would actually work?

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Imagine you gave this different
premium shelf space on app stores.

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Imagine you had web browsers
that helped route you

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to these kinds of design products.

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Can you imagine how exciting it would be
to live and create that world?

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We can create this world today.

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Company leaders, all you have to do --

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only you can prioritize a new metric,

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which is your metric for net positive
contribution to human life.

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And have an honest
conversation about that.

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Maybe you're not
doing so well to start with,

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but let's start that conversation.

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Designers, you can redefine success;
you can redefine design.

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Arguably, you have more power
than many people in your organization

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to create the choices
that all of us live by.

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Maybe like in medicine,

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where we have a Hippocratic oath

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to recognize the responsibility
and this higher value

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that we have to treat patients.

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What if designers had something like that,

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in terms of this new kind of design?

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And users, for all of us --

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we can demand technology
that works this way.

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Now it may seem hard,

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but McDonald's didn't have salads
until the consumer demand was there.

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Walmart didn't have organic food
until the consumer demand was there.

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We have to demand
this new kind of technology.

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And we can do that.

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And doing that

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would amount to shifting
from a world that's driven and run

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entirely on time spent,

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to world that's driven by time well spent.

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I want to live in this world,

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and I want this conversation to happen.

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Let's start that conversation now.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)