It was the imitation Alex Colvilles that did me in.
While mindlessly scrolling through Facebook one afternoon I came across a friend’s playful experiment with an AI image generator, a program that scrapes the Internet to learn and then combine everything you asked for into an image in short order.
Over the past month I’ve seen astronauts mowing lawns, selfies in the style of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, and on this particular day over a dozen slightly wonky images that drew inspiration from Colville’s style.
It annoyed me. No, it was more than that. It got me really mad. I turned off Facebook, looked out the window and fumed.
Then after a few minutes I fumed at my fuming. Oops you did it again Facebook. You played with my emotions and I got lost in the game.
I resolved once again to limit my social media exposure and went back to my regularly scheduled daily programming, but I couldn’t shake my curiosity over my reaction to the AI art.
It took a few well-timed words from on a podcast from meditation teacher Jeff Warren to shake free my thinking. Jeff was defining his four most important habits for living a happy life: concentration, clarity, care and equanimity.
In other words, put in the work, pay attention, be humble and be chill with yourself and others.
Simple, solid, oft-repeated advice that has been passed down from generation to generation. I’ve heard some version of it from my parents, and I in turn have offered it to my teen daughter. Occasionally I’ve even followed my own advice but the ever-inquisitive journalist in me continues to have my doubts.
Aphorisms? That’s the secret to a happy life? It can’t be that simple.
It is…and it isn’t.
While the sentiment – or let’s call it intent if you’re a practitioner of design thinking, mindfulness, or process improvement – is simple to understand, but acting upon it is not.
At least that’s the case if you’re human.
That’s why those imitation Colvilles annoyed me so much; they challenged core values I hold regarding work, effort, respect and service. It took that AI image generator minutes to process and present an artistic process that took the real Colville years to master.
The machine eliminated the one thing humans need to achieve excellence: time.
Which explains why it’s so hard for us to put in the work, pay attention, be humble and be chill; it demands our time, the one thing we either don’t think we have or don’t want to spend.
We’re so sure we don’t have enough time, we’ve spent the better part of the last century investing what time we do have inventing products, services, processes and experiences that save us time. Tools such as washing machines, smart phones, coffee maker pods, GPS, drive-through windows and web-crawling AI; all designed to save us time.
Which they do…and they don’t because the unintended consequence of saving time has made us impatient for results.
And that has cost us dearly.
In honing our skills and expertise to increase and value speed, we’ve devalued and fallen out of practice with, well, practise. In particular, the patient and deliberate practise of developing skills of concentration, clarity, care and equanimity, all of which are needed to master complex ideas, skills relationships, and problem-solving.
All the things that make us human.
But don’t mistake this observation as a paean to a former age. I have no desire to return to a 12-channel universe, telephone busy signals, or trying to read a folding map of downtown Boston as my husband hurls expletives at detours, one-way streets and delivery trucks.
This isn’t a question of either/or; take time or save time.
It’s and/and.
To lighten our path to a better world, to dare to pursue happiness, we need to take the time upfront so we can save time down the road.
Haste makes waste.
And what are we wasting more than anything? Time.
Time to wrap our heads around all the change and uncertainty flying at us.
Time to understand each other in the face of all this upheaval and stress.
Time to develop new products, services, processes and experiences that solve our deepest, most complex, most human problems.
Hunger. Disease. Poverty. Inequity. Hate. Loneliness. Fresh air. Clean water. A healthy planet.
It’s time.
Time to convert aphorisms into action.
Time to pay attention, be humble and be chill.
Time to put our values to work.
