A Premise

In my previous post, I declared architecture students "to busy for something so frivolous" as sifting through 3000 photos a day, or rather that they would view themselves as such. Following on from this I will be referring to ""I Lie to Myself that I Have Freedom in My Own Schedule": Productivity Tools and Experiences of Busyness". This paper explores not just what people across society actually have to do, but the value they place on being seen to have a lot of work to do. Productivity tools come with a sense of pride in mapping accomplishments, and a value is placed upon these accomplishments. There is a "cultural ideal of a busy citizen". I would hypothesise that this is even more true amongst students of architecture, a discipline that comes with a sort of mythology surrounding the amount of work and stress faced by students.

This would seem an ideal point for some primary research within the school, but I would like to touch on a conclusion drawn in the article, calling for an intentional slowing of daily life, technology to "open the window for slowing down". For example, "GoSlow" is an app. that plugs "serendipitous moments of pause and reflection into a calendar on one’s mobile phone".

Reference:

Leshed, G. & Sengers, P., "I Lie to Myself that I Have Freedom in My Own Schedule”: Productivity Tools and Experiences of Busyness", (CHI 2011, May 7 -12), ACM