F91W

Mindfulness is the difference between being human and being a zombie. Without it, you are a slave to your instincts and a creature of distraction. To be mindful is to be attuned to the world around you, to be present in the moment, and to be so absorbed that you experience flow.

I sometimes think that the sole purpose of the internet is to prevent mindfulness. An endless succession of hypertextual links make your consciousness bitty and mean. Absorption is interrupted on a regular basis as you instinctively check your email; most of the time you have none (disappointment), occasionally you do (distraction).

However, recently I been wondering whether the internet can be used to aid mindfulness rather than getting in the way. The Hawthorne effect implies that productivity (and, presumably, absorption) increases when you measure what they are doing. What if you could utilize this effect by, say, taking in your surroundings and choosing to publish your thoughts every hour?

This is what I have done on my new website, F91W, which I am going to update every time I hear the hourly chime of my Casio F91-W watch.

The initial inspiration for the site was Tehching Hsieh, a performance artist whose incredible year-long experiments display unparalleled levels of dedication. For instance, Hsieh’s first piece was to live in a cage for a year without talking, reading, or watching television. Later he lived outside for a year. Later still he was tied to Linda Montano for a year.

My experiment isn’t quite as strict (I am not going to wear the watch in bed) and is likely going to be a lot more vulgar (Hsieh pointedly avoided documenting anything as banal as his everyday thoughts), but . . .