This is the first how to article about the FAOCAS (read: focus) process of Experience Curating. If you're new to this series or the concept of Experience Curating, click here for the article introducing curating your existence.
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Living intentionally is both an art and a science.
You can find it in minimalism, religion, meditation, and many other places. But to practice mindful, meaningful, rewarding Experience Curating, you must filter your entire present and past with intention.
Your filtering process can fall anywhere on the objective/subjective range. Personally, I'm very subjective when I filter my experiences.
It's just a gut feeling when, for example, I know that the meal I just ate, a piece of food in that meal, a snippet of conversation with friends during the meal, or the story told after the meal is worth curating. I constantly ask myself:
- Did anything about that experience resonate?
- Could I or someone else benefit from select moments of that experience?
- How could I unlock the potential of this experience in the context of how I want to share my life and be useful?
However, some people are more objective.
They use science or a formula to evaluate whether an experience should be curated. But nobody can filter or curate in an entirely objective way.
Each system and person is inherently subjective in the weighting and biases within it. That's not a bad thing, as long as you acknowledge it. Actually, your unique perspective provides the essential human element of curating.
Artificial intelligence and algorithms can aggregate experiences better than humans, but they can't judge what experiences have meaning, to whom, how, and why.
The primary goal is to curate only your best experiences, regardless of where you fall on the filter spectrum.
It can be tricky, but using these steps will help you craft solid internal filters.
1. Fight the Battle Within
Joel the Minimalist fights against Joel the Curator because Minimalist me says, “Little to nothing is gained from comparison and judgment.”
But Curator me says, “Minimalist Joel, you're killing me, man! Comparisons are essential so I can determine what is a best experience.”
Joel the Curator often wins the battle because he knows we must judge current people, places, and events against the past to rank an experience.
You can oversimplify by asking, “Is this experience better than the last ninety-nine similar experiences?” and if the answer is yes, curate it.
However…
That becomes troublesome if you have two seriously groovy experiences back-to-back. It's not an issue of percentiles – top 98% or 99.999% – to me. Instead, it's a matter of remembering why I curate a type of experience, what the future benefit may be, and who could benefit.
After you reconcile the competing forces within you, the “why” filter becomes the biggie.
2. Your “Why” Filter
Your internal filters determine the motivation behind curating a specific kind of experience.
For example, your motive for curating a room full of Golden Retriever figurines is different than the reason for curating a personal library. The dog items fulfill a need for aesthetic beauty and to show off your eccentric side. The personal library scratches the itch for continuous learning and inspiration.
That means you'll need to constantly switch your curating lens for different experiences.
Don't worry, though. Identifying experiences worth curating gets easier as you archive more of them. Through quick slice-and-dicing in your archive, you can easily compare a recent experience against already curated ones to decide:
Is this as good as or better than other similar experiences?
It's time to refine your “why” filter if you answer yes to every other experience (or be grateful for a truly amazing life). If you answer yes once a decade, then it's time to poke more holes in your filter (or live it up more).
You'll fluctuate on the subjective/objective filter range as you shift from right-brained emotional or spiritual experiences to left-brained measurable experiences. That's OK because there's no “right way” to filter every possible kind of experience.
3. Your “What” and “Who” Filters
What you curate and who you curate for will radically alter your filters. Compare these two scenarios of curating pictures, but in different mediums and for a different audience:
- You just bought a digital camera and started snapping pictures of family, flowers, and the neighbor's pretty kitty like a maniac. And why not? Each picture costs nothing and everything seems worth capturing right now. The goal is to share a big Facebook album so that all of your friends can pour through them to understand your daily life.
- You just inherited an antique analog camera that takes forever to set up and only snaps one picture a minute. You only plan to take a dozen pictures because each one costs a small fortune to develop. Besides, the goal is to get a single picture into National Geographic.
You're filtering the same “what” (pictures), but the difference in digital versus analog volume and in the target audience is vast. So you'll need different filters to get 2,000 digital pictures taken down to five pictures shared on Facebook than you will to sift a dozen analog pictures down to the perfect one for National Geographic.
Stay tuned for more “what” and “who” filter tips in later resources on Experience Curating.
Intentional Internal Filters: The Takeaway
Creating a hierarchy of which internal perspective trumps another – and when – is hard. But few things are more helpful for filtering experiences.
Being able to instantly shift your “why” filter for various experiences builds upon winning the battle within. And then mastering your “what” and “who” filters provides another essential layer in the filter process.
Live intentionally and rock the “F” out of FAOCAS.
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I’ve never stopped to think about when and why I filter information. It’s usually just a strong feeling.. the voice in my head says “I HAVE to save this for later”.
Yeah, me too. And it’s usually for a pretty slight reason; like “This article makes this point really well. I’m going to save it in case it comes up in a discussion one day.” But then I don’t know where or how to save it!
I have the answer to “where” coming up on Thursday, Shanna. The first “A” of FAOCAS is all about archiving and you’ll dig that one. How to save your experiences is trickier and it’s a combination of all the steps of Experience Curating. The step on “Organize” should give you a starting framework for how to organize all those awesome articles.
The way you filter is kind of like me then, Ethan. I just have this switch that flips inside me saying, “Dude, you need to curate that. It’s going to be useful in the future.” But although curating can happen at any time, I’d recommend having a few “why” filters in place so you don’t get a garbage in, garbage out problem. I’ll be talking more about the archiving aspect of Experience Curating on Thursday… but in the meantime, I hope that voice keeps shouting “I have to save this!”
I love the battle between Minimalist Joel and the Curator Joel. I just love conflict. I think it’s where potentially transformational (and memorable) moments happen. When my father used to interrupt family gatherings for a snapshot, my brother used to argue back, “Do we have to document this? Can’t we just experience it?”
Our brains are always making stuff up to reinvent memories and if we don’t curate our experiences, then we’re making stuff up from the scattering bits of memory in our brains. Filtering is an intentional decision to store external bits to manipulate our future thoughts about the past.
If you’re suggesting we only curate the best stuff, then maybe another filter for curation is this: What can I capture that will trigger the delight I felt?
I like that suggestion, David. I think writing/journaling is a lot about that. At least for me. I usually try to focus on one feeling or idea that I want to record/share.
Joel, that actually might be a cool topic for you to write about – starting a blog for the purpose of curating. Blogs keep things so organized with tags and categories and it’s so visual. And there’s even the ‘keep this blog private’ for those who aren’t into sharing everything publicly.
I have a private blog. It’s great. I feel like I curate my best ideas and thoughts there, more so than experiences. I also journal, but the best stuff goes on the blog so when I read it, I’m like “Damn, I’m smart.”
My friend Julie van de Zande is starting a website for the purpose of curating and about curating. Maybe I’ll pick her brain to share some thoughts about starting a website for curating’s sake. I have my own thoughts, of course, but the perspective of someone who’s been there, done that seems like the best one for writing/speaking about it. I think creating around the topic would be better for a podcast episode though, Denise. It seems like a really meaty one that requires some serious digging. Thanks for the suggestion!
The battle still rages, David. Minimalist Joel may still get the best of Curator Joel.
I love the story about your brother and your picture-taking dad. Perhaps that because it’s been replicated hundreds of times within my own family when my dad – who captures family experiences primarily through pictures – was rebuffed by my mom, grandma, brother, or other relatives to just enjoy the moment without disrupting it. But to my dad’s credit, he knows that someone needs to capture and share wonderful experiences, even if it’s not the preferred way.
I like the filter you proposed for a variation on Experience Curating. The “best” experiences is one way to frame it, although “most meaningful” (good, bad, or neutral) would be another way. If capturing delight is something you feel strongly about then curate those experiences that bring about the emotion. I like to curate the best of everything, even when it’s painful like the death of a family member or watching a public speaker absolutely bomb on stage.
I’m with David — Minimalist Joel vs. Curator Joel is excellent. I think I’d learn a lot if I were to poke at the points of contention with myself that I occasionally run up against as a conversation between two sides of me. Two roles, maybe, to bring in David’s model!
In this whole article, the line that jumped out at me like you’d surrounded it in cheesy 90s Internet blink effects, was this: “Is this as good as or better than other similar experiences?” “Oh,” said my brain. “Well…doesn’t that just make a ridiculous amount of sense.” Because yeah, if it’s good but not better than what you already have…why keep it? *lightbulb* *choir of angels*
Ha!
I was going to mention the contrary idea because I can’t help myself. If there’s anything good about getting older (there aren’t many), it’s knowing better what NOT to do. Maybe curating the worst things you’ve experienced actually leads more quickly to that thing we foist on fogies: wisdom.
I’m off to find some uber cheesy 1990s style .gif files, Erin. It’s the least I can do to pair it with your singing choir of angels. 🙂
As you probably know, I have a fraught relationship with the whole idea of curating. I recognize the power of it, but also, I’m the person like David’s brother who would rather experience than document. (I finally gave myself permission to stop taking photos about a year ago…) I also have a sick memory, so we’re at very opposite ends of the spectrum.
And yet, your articles on curating always intrigue me and make me reflect on whether there are ways I can bring it into my life that would be useful.
I’m excited to read about the AOCAS…
The filtering part really is quite tricky. I have to battle against keeping too much since it’s so stinking easy to capture information these days. It can be nice to search through and find something unexpected at times, but more often, I’m trudging through the useless to find what I really need. Your 99-1 idea is helpful in that regard.
I know how much you think about filtering, Michael. Actually, some of my recent thoughts about how to do it come from some of the articles you’ve written on your blog. For example, your write up and expansion upon Eli Pariser’s TEDTalk “Beware Online ‘Filter Bubbles'” was awesome in that regard.
If you’re wading through too much junk in your archive, you might have issues with not enough pruning or filters that are too loose. Although I’m not a big fan of answering the question, “is this better than 99% of other similar experiences?” I do think it can be useful as a simplified rule.
This is kind of a crazy idea, but what if you offered a service where you found things that people forgot/were unable to curate?
I run into so many people who are like “There’s this awesome book/movie/TV show I remember from my childhood, but no one knows what I’m talking about!” You should be the guy who researches and finds it for them!
Cool idea Saul, and I could totally do it. However, I think virtual assistants on ODesk or Elance would destroy me in the competition for price and turnaround time. It might be best for us all if I stick to other pursuits. 🙂