How can we shortcut these missteps that undermine our efforts to plan our days strategically and effectively? Either with or without the help of Google and its apps, one solution is to materialize the process through what behavioral scientists call “unpacking,” or breaking down a large task into its component parts.
Here’s an analogy. About half of the people who wear glasses or contact lenses to correct their vision do so because they experience hyperopia. You might know it as farsightedness. Some kids develop hyperopia as early as in their preschool years, and teachers sometimes mistake their inability to (literally) focus on the schoolwork on the desk in front of them with hyperactivity or behavioral problems. But simply by getting the right pair of eyeglasses, these young children can suddenly sit in their seat, listen and concentrate, and do better in school. The glasses make the details of what’s before them clear and concrete, and the kids are better equipped to excel.
Like those now-bespectacled children, we all increase the odds of success when we make ourselves accountable to not only our goal but the path to it as well. We must see the details that stand between us and what’s further off. On the other hand, we decrease our odds of success if we just focus on what’s to come in the future. It’s not enough for us to say, for instance, that we want to graduate from college, move across the country, or switch careers. We have to take that large and long-term interest and break it down into manageable mini-goals. We have to see the details of the path underneath and in front of us. Receiving the mortarboard and diploma requires planning out each semester’s course load. Uprooting a family and transplanting to the other coast demands deep investigation of schools, career opportunities, and housing options. When we unpack our distal aspirations, we better appreciate, plan for, and navigate the difficulties of getting from here to there. When we track our progress at the micro level and review the advancements we’ve made, we make ourselves accountable to our own aspirations.
In Sight, In Mind
Photographers swarmed like flies around cut fruit in the tropics, snapping at the beautiful and creatively clad patrons at the opening for the Museum of Modern Art’s Items: Is Fashion Modern? Chunky neon eyeglasses on slim faces. Sequin skirts under shaggy sweaters. Flower headdresses. The costumed panoply was clickbait for the cameras. It was dress-up for the chichi crowd who came to see what 111 objects the curators had selected to comment on contemporary society. Superficially, the pairing of selections seemed as unusual as my choice to start this book while pregnant with my first child. A burkini sat in the same space as a WonderBra. A fanny pack alongside a fur coat. Leather pants up against loafers. What connected these items, though, was that they all revolutionized culture, politics, identity, economy, technology, and of course fashion—and still hold currency today.
I was lucky to snag a ticket to the party while in some intense throes of evading a much-needed music lesson, and invited my friend Carly, who is always—and certainly was that night—far better accessorized than I. We set out on a mission to find one piece in particular. I had read about Giorgia Lupi and knew that her art appeared in the show. I didn’t know what form it took, or in what artistic medium it appeared. We were running blind in this operation, but that night I was Indiana Jones and this was my holy grail. The two of us went through the galleries, searching each placard for the artist’s name, as methodically as two women whose hands had just been filled with (then drained of) prosecco could. We went through the show front-to-back, back-to-front, then front-to-back again. We asked a few people. But with an open bar and a lively social scene, no one was really there that night to offer curatorial guidance.
When the festooned revelers started to run thin and the party was nearing an end, Carly begged off from our hunt. We left the gallery space and turned the corner toward the museum exit. Only then were we smacked in the face with the capstone exhibit—Lupi’s mural! It wasn’t clothing. It wasn’t a handbag. No fashion house had designed it. This single piece of two-dimensional art comprised easily a hundred times more surface area in the show than any other piece. Envision a wall three stories tall on which appears a freely flowing set of musical staffs, on which are artistically rendered clutches of notes. This wasn’t a show about sound or harmonies. The notes on the staff were not intended to represent particular acoustic frequencies or durations. Instead, each of the 111 musical notes represented a piece of clothing or accessory that appeared in the show. The relevance of the garb to history and contemporary society was symbolized by an element of Lupi’s composition. The color of the note’s head and the size of its flag signified something about the origin of the corresponding item or its consequence to society. There was a red quarter note drawn as part of a phrase. Rather than suggesting a change in the melody of the piece, that red note stood in for the Converse All-Star sneakers that Carly and I had seen on the feet of a mannequin a few rooms back. The red paint signified the shoe’s role in rebellion. The note’s location in the middle of the piece identified its temporal place in fashion history. As the score unfolded from left to right, I noticed whole notes representing hijabs that were placed well before the sixteenth notes standing in for headphones. Like a clutch of windswept dandelion stamens, several notes gathered together. One stood in for red lipstick, another for Chanel No. 5 perfume, and a final one for men’s ties. The mural’s legend offered the theme that bound these three together: power. Each wardrobe element and its trimming told a story about society. Lupi had extracted that story and synthesized, quantified, reprocessed, and reproduced it in this schematic form, which resembled modern art itself. This gorgeous, sprawling mural was, essentially, an infographic: data made visual.
I first came upon Lupi and her professional partner Stefanie Posavec through a different, though no less astounding, project. I found them in their diaries—or their project Dear Data, to be more precise. Lupi is Italian and lives in New York. Posavec is American and lives in London. They met at an event that mixed graphic designers, engineers, journalists, and scientists. Virtual strangers to each other, they clearly clicked, because a plan was hatched to embark on a relationship that required daily maintenance, constant monitoring, and weekly reporting. Every Monday they chose a theme they wanted to quantify for the next seven days. The number of times they smiled at strangers. The types of doors they passed through. What, when, how often, and with whom they drank. The frequency and sources of their feelings of jealousy. Every compliment they gave or received. The sounds they heard in their vicinity every hour they were awake. All the times they laughed. The urban animals they passed by.
Each week was a different theme, and at every moment of the day they remained vigilant for and recorded instances related to the theme. They tallied up their results and shared them with each other. But not in the form of a spreadsheet or as numbers of any sort. Each drew her results by hand on a postcard, producing translations of her experience into a miniature Kandinsky-like painting worth, at that time anyway, the cost of the postage stamp it took to mail it to the other.