The Slipperiness of Convenience

Hello, hello Good Lookers!

Welcome to another Noticing from Just Looking—a monthly-esque newsletter where we celebrate slowness and curiosity, together. I'm your guide Menka. Today I'm excited to share news about my forthcoming book, and we're exploring the theme of frictionless life and what convenience does to our attention.

But first the important stuff: your noticings! Good Looker Stassie King 👀 nearly walked past the "stain" on the left, before discovering the unexpected splash of beauty. Phew!

"I have been working with your cards [60 Experiments in Looking] and being mindful in what I see, yesterday I took a picture of something others might consider a... stain...or not pay attention at all. But at a closer look it was perhaps artwork: glue and glitter splashed on a el. post. My explorations continue, now I am off to Japan next week. This will turn into a wild image hunt, indeed."

My new book: Your Best Digital Life

🇺🇸 April 15th 2025 |🇬🇧 May 19th 2025

My new book "Your Best Digital Life - Use Your Mind to Tame your Tech" is out with Macmillan in just a few days! 🎉

I wrote it over the past two years with my co-author Jonathan Garner who is the founder of the unique training organisation Mind Over Tech. We met in 2017 when Jonathan came along to one of the first-ever Just Looking photowalks in London, and we've been friends and collaborators since.

The book is all about our relationship with digital technology, which is essentially an extension of our minds. It's not one of those digital detox books, it instead focuses on how we can make more of all the time we do spend with our tech. Not just to stay sane and out of harm's way, but to really thrive.

Order by May 19th to join our workshop!

Orders in the first few weeks are super important these days, to nudge the algorithmic curators in the right direction and become findable! So if you think you might want to read it, please consider ordering it now, rather than later.

To thank you for supporting us, Jonathan and I are running a special live workshop on May 22nd for everyone that has ordered a book. Please buy it at your favourite bookshop, and upload your receipt here to reserve your space. In case you can't make it on the day, don't worry, the recording will be shared with those registered.

Noticing the Slipperiness of Convenience

The second chapter of "Your Best Digital Life" starts with the story of a young monk. Johannes Trithemius was a German scholar who became an abbot around the same time as the Gutenberg Press introduced movable type in the 1440s that began the Printing Revolution. This was an incredible innovation, making the dissemination of information super convenient. Trithemius's monks no longer needed to copy out each Bible by hand, they could now get it printed.

Imagine if you were in Johannes' place when the first printing press was announced. Most of us would have immediately downloaded the app (metaphorically speaking), but this guy was carefully contemplating the trade-off. On the one hand it meant wider and quicker access to Bibles, on the other hand his monks would be robbed of the slow and meditative process of creating manuscripts. He explains:

“As he [a monk] is copying the approved texts he is gradually initiated into the divine mysteries...Every word we write is imprinted more forcefully on our minds since we have to take our time while writing and reading. The repeated reading of Scripture will inflame the mind of the writer.”

The point is not about handwriting, but about really considering the trade-off that happens when adopting any convenient new bit of tech. A consideration that flies against our biological and cultural default which is to say "yes" to anything that appears to make our lives easier.

The most subtle of these trade-offs are often linked with how we use our attention. If Google maps is taking care of the directions, we don't need to notice the streets as much. If ChatGPT is taking care of ensuring the tone of my newsletters is consistent, I don't need to notice how I'm feeling when I sit to write. We can attempt to do both – take the easier approach, while salvaging what we value about the more effortful approach – but it's the effort that shapes the noticing.

The latest autonomous AI agents offer to eliminate all kinds of efforts for us, but consider how each new convenience impacts what you'll notice more of, and what you'll notice less of. "Forget about your relationships" is the marketeer's way of saying you don't need to remember the details of each conversation, let your bot keep a tab on that, and also recommend what to talk about the next time you meet that person. This seems genuinely useful in many contexts, but clearly we also lose something by delegating this part of our lives.

In the tech sector "frictionless design" is the process of making a series of actions so easy that we don't bump up against any resistance along the way. Every "pain point" that could result in us leaving an app, abandoning a cart, or finally going to bed is carefully designed and redesigned until the easiest thing is to just keep going. To get more intentional about our use of tech we can experiment with putting back some of the friction.

So how do we do this? This is going to look really different for each of us, which is why our book focuses more on a method than specific solutions. As seductive as they are, there are no universal rules that will apply to everyone, at all times in relation to all tech! What we can share are principles and of course examples.

Here is one way I'm personally making my life more "inconvenient" these days. The photo below documents what's lives inside my bag. All of these tools could be replaced with a single smartphone—the "convenient" option! But using these single-purpose devices instead makes life convenient for me in a different way.

To read a book I pull out my e-reader. To check the time I look at my watch. To take a photo I switch on my camera (and my whole body and mind get ready for a moment of appreciation.) Equally importantly, there are fewer unintentional quick checks and scans of messages and emails that take me on little mental trips I may not want in the moment. So while I do hate having to look after and lug around all these gadgets, I love how I feel when I'm clear about what I'm doing.

In "Your Best Digital Life" there is a section all about the cognitive phenomenon known as goal interference, and there I share this true story about how I used to check the time before I got myself a wrist watch:

Knowing what we are doing – while actually doing it – is the basis of awareness, intention and agency. Anything we can do to signpost that to ourselves "Hey, this is where I am! This is what I am doing" will help close that gap between what we want for our lives, and our actual actions. Sometimes that requires slowing things down by adding some annoying speed bumps along the way. It gives us a chance to choose what serves us, rather than simply sliding along the slipperiest path.

Experiment in Looking

How do navigation tools shape what we notice?

Our use our tech deeply influences what we notice, and what we don't. Take any one app on your phone, and consider how different it would feel if you replaced it with an alternative app or tool. For this experiment, try replacing your favourite navigation tool with these other methods that introduce forms of friction:

• What if you used a standalone satellite-navigation device to guide you (while your phone stays in your backpack)?
• How does it feel if you use a physical map? Does the size of the map make a difference?
• What if you asked an AI bot to take you on a "scenic" path to your destination How does that prime you to notice beauty? (And what does "scenic" even mean?)
• What happens if you go map-less and rely on instinct, signage and speaking to strangers? And what does feeling lost for a few minutes actually feel like?

If you do try this experiment, I'd love to hear how you get on. What did you notice more of? You can reply to this email, or connect with me on Instagram or BlueSky.

Community News

📷 Meetup on 2nd May: Sony World Photography Awards 2025
300 photographs by more than 60 photographers from around the world, displayed across Somerset House in London. A few of us are going to check it out on Friday 2 May 12-2pm. If you want to join, please reply and let me know so I can send you the meeting point. All the info about the exhibition.

✨️ Book: Everyday Wonder
The incredible Sophie Howarth has a new book coming out soon, Everyday Wonder, which I've had a sneak preview of and can assure you of its sublime-ness. Click the photo to check it out.

👀 Five Links about Looking

1. Ditching The Smartphone? (read)
   If you really are thinking of simplifying phone life, then you'll want to read this digital pamphlet by August Lam. It's the best one I've read. My favourite minimal phone is currently the CAT S22 because it has Google Maps and seems unbreakable enough to toss around.
2. List of Activities for Slowness, Together (read)
   Love this one: "Go for a walk and pretend you're in a cozy video game!
3. Notice More About the Moon (read)
   This site offers one of the clearest explorations of the moon I've ever come across, thanks to Dense Discovery. If you want to go down a cosmic rabbit hole check previous newsletters here (Moon) here (Earthling) and here (Dark skies).
4. Learn about Tree Inosculation (read)
   When trees join together at their trunks, roots or branches to share resources this is known as "inosculation" - a Latin word meaning to kiss or unite. There are some great photos on this Wiki page, and once you see them you'll start noticing it everywhere of course. You're welcome.
5. Street Photography without the People (watch 15min)
   Sean Tucker is one of those photographers who is really a philosopher with a camera. In this video he looks at objects rather than people on the streets. Below is a cart he notices that has been personalised by a worker.

Thank you for being part of this community. It's always a treat to hear from you, so please feel free to reach out and share your thoughts about any of this... using physical maps, favourite AI agents, or trees spotted kissing. (I know, it sounds nuts when you say it all together, but its all just about noticing how we notice!)

Yours in curiosity,
Menka

Instagram | BlueSky