Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

If I ask you to remember where you were and what you were doing when you first heard about the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, chances are very good that you will be able to tell me in great detail your memory of that day, and how you heard about the attacks. Especially if you live in the US and you were 10 years old or older on that date. But the research shows clearly that you would be wrong about the majority of your memory.

Flashbulb memory is very vivid — Remembering traumatic or dramatic events in great detail is called “flashbulb memory” by psychologists, and has been studied for several decades. Emotions are processed in the amygdala part of the mid-brain, and the amygdala is very close to the hippocampus. The hippocampus is involved in the long term coding of information into memories. So it is no surprise to psychologists that emotionally laden memories might be very strong and remembered vividly.

But the memories are full of errors — It turns out, though, that those memories are full of errors. Ulric Neisser researches memories like these. In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded upon take-off. Any of you reading this who are old enough to remember the Challenger explosion probably remember it vividly, i.e., as a flashbulb memory. Neisser took the opportunity to do some research. The day after the explosion he had his students (he is a professor) write down their memories of what had happened, where they were, what they were wearing, what the TV coverage was like, etc. Three years later he asked them to write down their memory of the event again. Most (over 90%) of the 3-yr later reports differed. Half of them were inaccurate in 2/3 of the details. One person, when shown her first description written three years earlier, on the day after the event, said, “I know that’s my handwriting, but I couldn’t possibly have written that”. Similar research has been conducted on the 9/11 memories, with similar results.

The Forgetting Curve of 1885 – In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus created a formula showing the degradation of memories:

R = e^(−t/S)

where R is memory retention, S is the relative strength of memory, and t is time. The graph at the top of this post is an example of this formula. It’s called the “Forgetting Curve”. Because flashbulb memories are so vivid, it was thought that perhaps they were not as subject to forgetting as other memories. But it turns out they are. Which is kind of disturbing, when you think about it. Because they are so vivid, we are SURE they are accurate and real. But they aren’t nearly as accurate as we think.

Take-Aways – I can think of many ways that we (falsely) rely on people’s memories of events, whether dramatic or not: for example, conducting user or customer research. We often ask customers to remember a particular encounter with a website, software, or an in-store experience. We may have to realize that the memories, although vivid, might not be accurate.

What do you think?  Can you think of situations where you perhaps rely on people’s memories more than you should?

For more reading and information:

Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong, Harper Collins, 2010

Daniel Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory, Houghton Mifflin, 2001

Neisser and Harsh, “Phantom Flashbulbs: False Recollections of Hearing the News about Challenger”, in Winograd and Neisser (eds) Affect and Accuracy in Recall, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 9-31.

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For many years psychologists thought that flashbulb memories were not as

Photo by Katie Ricard

I have been doing a lot of public speaking about my book and the ideas of persuasion. Early in my talks I often discuss John Bargh’s research on how much we are influenced by factors that we are not aware of. Bargh had people unscramble sets of words to make sentences, for example, he would ask people to choose 4 out of 5 words and make a sentence out of them:

he florida today lives now in

would become: “He now lives in Florida”.

Some people would get sets of words that had a theme of old: such as Florida, retired, old, elderly. Other people would get sets of words that had a young theme: such as youth, energy, lively.  A third group would get neutral words that were neither old nor young. After unscrambling the words and making sentences he would then have them walk down the hall to find him. Bargh measured how long it took each person to walk down the hall. People who had been using the “old” words, took much longer to walk down the hall. They had been unconsciously affected by the words. But when asked if they thought the words had influenced them they said no, and when I talk about this study I get the impression that most people in the audience believe that others would walk slowly, but that these words wouldn’t have affected them.

“I’m not that influenced” — In another example, I share in my talks about the power of social validation: how ratings and reviews at websites have a huge influence over what people decide to do (it’s because when we are uncertain we look to others to decide what to do). And everyone in the room nods and talks about how this is true, that other people are very influenced by ratings and reviews, but most people I am speaking to think that they themselves are not very affected. I talk about study after study on persuasion and how much we are affected by pictures, images, words, and that we don’t realize we are being influenced. And the reaction is always similar: “Yes, other people are affected by these things, but I am not.”

The third person effect — In fact, this belief that “others are affected but not me”, is so common that there is research on it, and it has its own name: the “third person effect”.  The research shows that most people think other people are influenced by persuasive messages, but that they themselves are not, and that this perception is false. The “third person effect” seems to be especially true if you think you aren’t interested in the topic. For example, if you are not in the market to buy a new TV, then you will tend to think that advertising about new TVs won’t affect you, but the research says that it will.

Why do we deceive ourselves this way? — So why the self-deception? It’s partly because all this influence is happening unconsciously. We literally aren’t aware that we are being influenced. And it’s also partly because we don’t like to think of ourselves as so easily swayed, or so “gullible”. To be gullible is to not be in control, and our old brain, the part of our brain that is concerned with survival, always wants us to be in control.

What do you think? Why do we believe that others are so easily influenced but not ourselves?

For those of you who like to read research:

Bargh, John A., Mark Chen, Lara Burrows. 1996. Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol 71(2), 230-244.

Chen, Yi-Fen, Herd behavior in purchasing books online, Computers in Human Behavior, 24, (2008), 1977-1992.

Bryant Paul; Michael B. Salwen; Michel Dupagne, The Third-Person Effect: A Meta-analysis of the perceptual hypothesis. Mass Communication and Society, 1532-7825, Volume 3, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 57 – 85

Perloff  Third-Person Effect Research 1983–1992: A Review and Synthesis.
Int J Public Opin Res.1993; 5: 167-184

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I’ve submitted to speak at South By Southwest (SXSW) next spring. The talk I’ve submitted is: The Psychology of Web Design: Interactive Behavior Explained.

SXSW has an interesting way of deciding who the speakers are — 30% of their decision is based on votes. So if you go to the description of my talk (click on the logo above, or go to my page at the site) and vote yes, then it increases the chances of my presentation (panel) getting picked. (Vote early vote often?)

If you like the topics I write about in this blog, please consider voting. And while you are there you can peruse (and even vote for) some of the other great submissions.

Thanks!

Photo by Dave Grave*

You are at work reading a report that one of your colleagues has written and you realize that you’ve just read the same sentence about three times. Instead of thinking about what you were reading, your mind wandered.

Mind wandering is similar to, but not the same thing as daydreaming. Psychologists use daydreaming to refer to any stray thoughts, fantasies, or stories you imagine, for example, winning the lottery, or being a famous celebrity. The term mind wandering is more specific, and refers to when you are doing one task and then fade into thinking about something that is not related to that task.

Mind wandering is a very common phenomena – We underestimate our mind wandering; according to Jonathan Schooler of UC, Santa Barbara, we think our minds are wandering about 10% of the time, when it is actually much more. In normal every day activities our mind is wandering up to 30% of the time, and in some cases, for instance when driving on an uncrowded highway, it might be as high as 70%.

Wandering minds annoy some neuroscientists – Some neuroscientists became interested in studying wandering minds because they were such an annoyance while doing brain scan research. The researchers would have subjects do a certain task, for example, look at a picture, or read a passage, while scanning for brain activity. About 30% of the time they would get extraneous results which did not seem to be related to the task at hand. That’s because the subject’s mind was wandering from the task at hand. Eventually the researchers decided to start studying the wandering rather than just getting annoyed by it.

Why a wandering mind can be a good thing – Mind wandering allows one part of the brain to focus on the task at hand, and another part of the brain to keep a higher goal in mind. So you are driving and paying attention to the road, but you are also thinking about when you should stop for gas. Or you are reading an article online about a thyroid medication called Synthroid that your doctor thinks you should take, but your mind wanders to the idea that you should put that appointment on your calendar. Mind wandering might be the closest thing we have to multi-tasking. It’s not really multi-tasking, (which doesn’t exist…you can see my previous blog post on that), but mind wandering does allow you to keep important goals in mind while doing one thing.

Why a wandering mind can be a bad thing – Much of the time when our mind wanders we aren’t aware of it. More “zoning out” than “mind wandering”, this means that we can miss important information. For example, if you are supposed to be reading that report from your colleague, but you are instead thinking about what to make for dinner, that’s may just mean you are being unproductive. We aren’t usually aware when we are zoning out.

More mind wandering = more creativity – The researchers at UC, Santa Barbara have evidence that people whose mind wanders a lot are more creative and better problem solvers. Their brains have them working on the task at hand, but simultaneously processing other information, and making connections.

Mind wandering and the internet – I’ve been thinking about the fact that the ability to quickly switch from topic to topic is what the web does really well.  Is web surfing related to mind wandering? Here are some of my mind wanderings on this topic:

• Do we like web surfing because it enables this type of wandering?
• Rather than designing web sites to try and hold people’s attention should we design to encourage wandering?
• Should we build in feedback about the wandering so that it is easier to get people back to the original thought?

What do you think?

If you like to read research:

Christoff, et. al., Experience sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind wandering. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, May 11, 2009.

Mason, et. al., Wandering Minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought. Science, January 19, 2007.

Photo Credit: : http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveograve/

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It’s been a while since I created a survey to collect some information from my blog readers; so here are a few questions for you. I would so appreciate it if you would take a moment to respond — you can either reply via a comment, or send me an email with your responses to weinschenk@gmail.com

Here’s what I’d love to know:

1. Who are you? In other words, what work do you do? Where do you live?
2. Have we met in real life? Before or after you first read the blog?
3. Have you read my latest book, Neuro Web Design?
4. How did you find the blog?
5. How long have you been reading/visiting?
6. What topics would you like me to write more about? Write less about?
7. Is my current pace of about a blog a week right for you? Would you prefer more or less?

I hope you will respond either via email or comments! It will help me make decisions about blog content. Thanks!

You are given a frequent buyer card for your local coffeeshop. Each time you buy a cup of coffee you get a stamp on your card. When the card is filled you get a free cup of coffee. Here are two different scenarios:

Card A: The card has 10 boxes for the stamps, and when you get the card all the boxes are blank.

Card B: The card has 12 boxes for the stamps, and when you get the card the first two boxes are already stamped.

Question: How long will it take you to get the card filled up? Will it take longer or shorter for scenario A vs. scenario B? After all, you have to buy 10 cups of coffee in both scenarios in order to get the free coffee. So does it make a difference which card you use?

The answer apparently is yes. You will fill up the card faster with Card B than with Card A. And the reason is called the “goal-gradient” effect.

The goal-gradient effect was first studied in 1934 by Hull with rats. He found that rats that were running a maze to get food at the end would run faster as they got to the end of the maze.

The goal-gradient effect says that you will accelerate your behavior as you progress closer to your goal. The scenarios I describe above were part of a research study by Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky, and Yuhuang Zheng (full reference is below).  They decided to see if humans would behave like the rats. And the answer is, yes they do.

Here are some important things to keep in mind about the goal-gradient effect:

• The shorter the distance to the goal the more motivated people will be to reach it.
• You can get this extra motivation even with the illusion of progress, as in Scenario B above. There really isn’t any progress (you still have to buy 10 coffees), but it seems like there is some progress so it has the same effect
• People enjoy being part of the reward program. When compared to customers who were not part of the program, the customers with the reward cards smiled more, chatted longer with café employees, said “thank you” more often and left a tip more often (all statistically significant for you research buffs out there).
• In a related experiment the same researchers showed that people would visit a web site more frequently and rate more songs during each visit as they got closer to a reward goal at the site. So this goal-gradient effect appears to be generalizable across many situations.
• Motivation and purchases plummet right after the goal is reached. This is called a “post-reward resetting phenomenon”.  If you have a 2^nd reward level people will initially not be very motivated to reach that 2^nd reward. Right after a reward is reached is when you are most at risk of losing your customer.

And for those of you who want to read the original research:

Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky, and Yuhuang Zheng, The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected:Purchase Acceleration, Illusionary Goal Progress, and Customer Retention, Journal of Marketing Research, 39 Vol. XLIII (February 2006), 39–58.

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A man is walking down a busy city street on his way to an appointment, and he sees what looks like a college student drop a folder of papers. The papers scatter on the ground and the man glances over but keeps on walking. What do you think? Why didn’t the man stop to help with the papers?

If you answer “Well, he’s a self-absorbed person who doesn’t usually help out strangers on the street” then chances are likely that you have just made a “fundamental attribution” error. People have a tendency to give personality based explanations for other peoples behavior more weight than situational factors. Instead of explaining the person’s behavior in the story above as being due to his “self absorption”, you might ascribe his behavior to the situation, for example, “He’s late for a critical meeting with the bank and doesn’t have time to stop today. In other circumstances he would have stopped.”

Research on the fundamental attribution error shows the following:

• In cultures that value individualistic behavior (like the USA),  it is common to ascribe behavior of other people to personality. The fundamental attribution error is common in these cultures.

• On the other hand, in individualistic cultures people tend to explain their OWN behavior to situational factors more than personality factors.

• In cultures that value collectivist behavior (for example, China), people make the same fundamental attribution error, but not as often as in individualist cultures

• Most of the research has to do with individuals deciding on personality vs. situational effects, but some research has been done on group decisions and whether they are influenced in the same way. It seems that they are. People attribute the decisions of a other group to the individual member’s attitudes, but attribute the decisions of their own group to the collective group rules.

Why do we do this? – I think the best theory about why we make the fundamental attribution error is that when we believe that personality causes our behavior that makes us feel that we have more control over our life. And we (especially in the West) need to feel that we have that control.

Can’t stop making mistakes — The research shows that it is very hard to stop make the fundamental attribution error. Even when you know you are doing it, and even if you know all about it, you will still make the same error.

Is “fundamental attribution error” the same as “correspondence bias”? – Psychologists like to come up with lots of terms. Both terms have been used, and they are often used interchangeably. However, some psychologists argue that what I’ve been describing is actually the correspondence bias, and that the fundamental attribution error refers to the REASON for the correspondence bias: that we underestimate situational factors. Well, that sounds like hair splitting to me!

But maybe I’m just saying that because I’m a curmudgeonly psychology nut who doesn’t like to agree with people (ok, that was just me trying to make a joke by showing correspondence bias!).

So what’s the take-away? — Now that you know people tend to make this error, what can you do about it? Probably not much in terms of getting people to change their interpretations of others’ behaviors. But try and build in ways to cross-check your own biases. If your work requires you to make a lot of decisions about why people are doing what they are doing, you might want to stop before acting on your decisions and ask yourself, “Am I making a Fundamental Attribution Error?”

If you’d like some fairly heavy reading on the topic, I recommend:

Bawronski, Bertram. Theory-based bias correction in dispositional inference: The fundamental attribution error is dead, long live the correspondence bias. European Review of Social Psychology, 2004, 15, 183–217.

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I am one of those people who loves giving speeches and presentations. From what I have heard, I’m in a minority. Many people dislike giving speeches, but I’ve always had a hard time understanding that. My delight in giving talks is probably tied up with my love of theatre, my desire to be the center of attention (although I am actually an introvert), and my need for approval (and hence applause). People often tell me that I’m a great presenter, or that they loved my talk, or that my talk was the best one at the conference etc etc. so my love for speaking seems to work.

But in all honesty, I’m never quite satisfied with the talks I give. I think most of the time I am improving, but I am always running the presentation through my head afterwards, saying, “oh, I should have …”.

Over my 30 year career of crafting and delivering speeches, classes, and presentations, I’ve attended seminars, read a lot of books, had private coaching, studied some of the “masters”, and experimented with the art and craft of speech making and speech delivering. I’m always looking to improve. I’ve learned a lot about presentations and speeches over the years, and below are my 10 Most Important Secrets of Powerful Presenters:

1. Always be working on the next level — This past May I was a speaker at the (wonderful) UXLX conference in Portugal. The conference was organized with two days of ½ day workshops sprinkled with 20 minute TED-like talks, and a final packed day of back to back keynotes. I was on late in the afternoon of that last day, so I got to hear masterful presenters talk about user experience all day. I was very impressed, not only with the content and creative ideas, but with the delivery. I decided that, although I’ve got some favorite talks I’ve been giving, it’s time to “up my game” yet again. Since then I’ve been experimenting, going to a higher level in my craft. Everyone is at a different place in their presentation or speech crafting skills. You don’t have to become the best speaker in the world overnight. But you do need to analyze your strengths and weaknesses now, and decide what “taking it to the next level” means for you right now. What do you need to do, and how will you get there? Make sure you pick a realistic next level that you can reach within a 6 to 12 month timeframe. Then go after it. Always know where you are now, and what the next level is.

2. It’s ok to have your own style – There is no one way to be a great speaker. Being a great speaker doesn’t mean that you have to open with a joke, or that you have to have highest quality photos in your powerpoint deck. There are some things that all great speakers have in common (see the rest of the points below), but you can experiment and come up with a “style” that works for you. Are you funny? Serious? Warm-hearted? Controversial? Pick what you are comfortable with and then make it your own.

3. Craft your speech – Although some people are good at “extemporaneous” speech making, most of us need to carefully craft our speeches. A formula I often use (modified from what I read in Tim Koegel’s book: The Exceptional Presenter) is:

a. Statement/description of the current problem situation
b. Description of the consequences of not doing anything differently
c. Description of the action you could take that would solve the problems
d. Specific “call to action” (exactly what is it you want the audience to do as soon as the talk is over)

What is really neat is that you can take a,b,c above and create a 10-30 second version of them. Then you start your talk with the mini version of the a,b,c. That launches the talk and you spend the bulk of the talk giving proof and examples around a,b,c, then close at the end with d.

For d.  I like to ask myself (or my client who I giving the talk for), “What is my objective? At the end of the talk, when people are leaving the room, what is it I want them to be saying to themselves? Saying to others? What action do I want them to take immediately (make sure it’s a realistic action).” Then I craft my talk around that call to action.

Voila! (French for “there it is!”) . You have crafted a powerful talk.

4. Only use visuals and props when they are necessary to get the point across or will add novelty and interest – if you have visuals, slides, or a powerpoint or keynote deck it should ONLY contain items that have visual interest or are necessary to make a point. If you are discussing the new electric car that your group has prototyped you probably want to have a picture of the car, or a model or the actual car. If you are showing the new website design then you probably will show the new site on the screen. But if you do not have something necessary or interesting to show then you should SHOW NOTHING. The idea of just talking without visuals may make you nervous, but when you think about it, it is quite absurd to be showing your talking points or notes on the screen in front of everyone. And isn’t that what a lot of people put on their Powerpoint or Keynote slides? NEVER EVER have Powerpoint or Keynote bullet talks that have the major points of what you are saying at the time in the talk. That is your outline and your notes and does not belong on the screen in front of everyone. The slides and visuals you are using are not for you at all. You need to learn to work from notes or note cards so that you are not dependent on what is on the screen to know what you are supposed to say next. And remember, not all visuals have to be slides in a Powerpoint or Keynote deck. You can use props to make your point, like the programmer I saw once who held up cooked spaghetti to talk about poorly written code, or Jill Bolte Taylor who uses a real human brain when she gives her talks on her experience having a stroke.

5. Speak in a loud clear voice – Practice speaking loudly and clearly. If you can, hire a voice coach (not a speech coach, not a singing coach, but someone who can teach you how to use your voice more effectively). I worked with Sandra McKnight from Voice Power Studios. She was great at diagnosing my voice strengths and weaknesses and helping me to develop a stronger and more effective speaking voice.

6. Video yourself talking and then fix the weird things you do – We all do it. We jingle the change in our pockets or rock back and forth on our heels. Or we mess with our hair, or cross our arms and look forbidding. Find out what your “thing” is that you do that will be distracting to the audience. You don’t want them to be looking at you and wondering when you are going to do “it” again, rather than concentrating on what you are saying. If you watch a video of you presenting you’ll see (and be able to correct) all the weird things you do.

7. Be passionate – What inspires people most is when you are inspired too. Let your interest and passion for your topic shine through. If you aren’t passionate about what you are saying, then figure out how to adjust the content so that you are.

8. Use stories – There is research that shows that people process information best when it is told in story form. So use lots of stories in your presentation to get your points across. The preference is for real stories that happened to you, as they will be the most believable.

9. Look at people in the audience – The best speakers have eye contact with the audience. Pick one person in the audience and look at them for about 3 seconds while you are talking. Then switch to someone else, then someone else and keep going. You can probably look at or close to everyone during the course of your talk.

10. Practice, practice, practice – Pick one thing at a time to change or improve or try out. Then DO IT. The more you speak and the more practice you get, the better you will become.

There are many more great ideas, but I wanted to keep this to the top 10. If you are interested check out the workshop I teach on the topic.

So what are some of your favorite tips that I left out?

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Photo Credit: Mr. Thomas

Ok, I’ll admit it, I am exaggerating a little bit when I say people are inherently lazy. What I really mean is that people will do the least amount of work possible to get a task done.

Is lazy another word for efficient? – Over eons of evolution humans have learned that they will survive longer and better if they conserve their energy. We’ve learned that we want to spend enough energy to have enough resources (food, water, sex, shelter), but beyond that we are wasting our energy if we spend too much time running around getting stuff.

How much is enough? — Of course questions about how much is enough, and do we have enough stuff yet, and how long should the stuff last (and on and on), still vex us, but putting the philosophical questions aside, for most activities most of the time humans work on a principle that is called “satisficing”.

Satisfy plus suffice = Satisfice – According to Wikipedia, Herbert Simon was the person who coined the term satisfice. It was originally used to describe a decision-making strategy whereby the person decides to pick the option that is adequate rather than optimal. The idea is that the cost of making a complete analysis of all the options is not only not worth it, but may be impossible. According to Simon we often don’t have the cognitive faculties to weigh all the options. So it makes more sense to make a decision based on “what will do” or what is “good enough” rather than trying to find the optimal or perfect solution.

Designing with satisficing in mind — So if people “satisfice” rather than “optimize”, what are the implications for those of us who design web sites, software, products, or even design surveys? Satisficing leads to some interesting design guidelines which I’ve listed below.

Design web sites for scanning, not reading – In his excellent book Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug applies the idea of satisficing to the behavior you can observe when someone comes to your web site. You are hoping the visitor will read the whole page, but we know that “What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don’t even look at.”

Assume that people will look for shortcuts — People will looking for ways to do something faster and with less steps. This is especially true if it is a task they are doing over and over.

But if the shortcut is too hard to find — Then people will keep doing it the old way. This seems paradoxical, but it’s all about the amount of perceived work. If it seems like too much work to find a shortcut then people will stay with their old habits (they are even satisficing about satisficing).

Provide defaults — Defaults  reduce the amount of work. When you provide defaults on a web form, for example, the person’s name and address is already filled in, this means there is less that people have to do. The downside of this is that people often don’t notice defaults, and so may end up accepting a default without knowing. Here again, the answer lies in the amount of effort. If it takes a lot of work to change the result of accepting a “wrong” default, then think twice about using them.

Take care with the order and wording of your survey questions – Satisficing is particular difficult for surveys. People will get into a “groove” of answering all the questions the same way because it’s easier and they don’t have to think. If your survey is more than a few questions long you will have to mix it up, and provide different options and formats for the questions or you will find that a given individual has chosen twenty-five “6′s” in a row on your scale.

What are your experiences, either as a user or a designer, with the concept of satisficing?

Photo credit by Mr. Thomas

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Two weeks ago my iphone was stolen (or I might have lost it –  I’m still not sure). I’ve been fascinated by the psychology of what it felt like to not have a cell phone.

Of course, there was a time when no one had cell phones — It’s hard to remember these days, but I actually spent a large part of my life without a cell phone. You would never have known that by my initial reaction. I was in the Schaumburg, Illinois Ikea store when I realized that I didn’t have my phone. I had made a call from the store, so I knew I’d had the phone went I went in, but it was now gone. I searched all over the store to all the places I had been (it’s a big store and I had been in the store for over an hour). I checked with the customer service desk to see if anyone had turned in a phone. No luck.

Panic and powerlessness – As I reluctantly walked out of the store I felt both panicked and powerless. Was my phone in the store somewhere? Had it been stolen? Should I stay until I found it?  I was on my way to someone’s apartment in Chicago, and the plan was that I was supposed to call her when I was close. But now I couldn’t call. What if she wasn’t there, because she was out running errands waiting for my call? Not only could I not call her, I had lost my map app. What if I couldn’t remember how to get to the apartment? What if I had a flat tire (if you read my blog you know that recently happened). I could feel my heart racing. I took a deep breath to calm myself down as I pulled out of the parking lot of Ikea. I had been to the apartment several times, I was fairly confident I could find it. Plus I realized I had my iPad which has the same map app, so I was fine there. And if I had a flat tire or an emergency I’d figure it out at that time. I made it to the apartment, and the person I was meeting was there. First crisis averted.

From panic to peace — What was most interesting, though, was what happened over the next 4 days. I didn’t have a cell phone. I was visiting with family and friends. I relaxed. No one could reach me, no one from work would call while I was with my family. I couldn’t check my emails. I couldn’t call anyone else. I found that I was “in the present’ more. I had to commit to a particular plan of action, and couldn’t change my mind, call someone and change our plans. You would think that all that opportunity to change your mind would put you “in the present”, but I found it was the opposite. I had to commit to a course of action, but once I did that I let go of all the mental chatter about possibilities, changes, decisions, and just experienced the present moment. If I really needed to make a call everyone around me had a phone, but I found that I didn’t even need or want to use anyone’s phone.

I reluctantly buy a temporary phone — I decided that if my iphone wasn’t turned in by Sunday night then I would go buy a no-contract, very inexpensive “temporary” phone (until the new iphones come out.. .a wait of a few weeks). When it was time to go buy this temp phone I found I was reluctant to do so. I didn’t really want a phone, but felt like I should have one for the drive back home from Chicago to Wisconsin. So I purchased a Net 10 no contract service and an LG phone.

Net 10 almost a flawless user experience – To activate the no-contract phone took about 3 minutes and was an easy and usable process and website. Wow, you rarely hear me say that!

(What to do BEFORE you lose or phone or it’s stolen) — Here’s an aside. I found out after I lost the phone that there are simple (and free) things you can do to protect your phone, your email, your passwords, and your data in the event your phone is lost or stolen. I didn’t realize this and I hadn’t done any of those things! Don’t be like me.

New iPhone on its way — Today I (along with probably millions of others) ordered an iPhone4. Everyone is oohing and aahing about this phone, but I am reluctant.  My days of no (or at least, limited), cell phone interruptions will be over. I’m thinking of having some cell phone moratoriums — days when I turn off my cell phone and go back to that living-in-the-present mindset.

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