Practicing Moderation

This morning, I turned on my computer and saw an email on gtalk. Reflexively, I clicked on it. As Gmail was loading, a thought crossed my mind: Is this email so important that it has to be checked during this prime time at 9 AM? It seems I don’t have such important emails yet…

When Gmail opened, sure enough, it was a visual design submission email from a design site, listing many good works. I picked one I liked the most and clicked in. Again, out of habit, I scrolled from top to bottom. There were a few visual effects that were quite striking, so I paused briefly. All in all, I finished reading this piece in under two minutes.

Another thought floated by: Is appreciating work like this meaningful? Or, does it have any significance?

Yet, every day, I browse so many web pages, so many design pieces, and read so many words, that I can’t keep track; I don’t even clearly remember what I saw yesterday. I’ve purely become a dumping ground for receiving information.

In the internet age, information is abundant to the point of overflow.

Information is like gourmet food. In my childhood era, there wasn’t much good food. After a few years, there was plenty of good food, and the body needed it too, so we ate voraciously; but gradually, eating voraciously and without moderation became a habit. The consequence was “eating without tasting.” Without moderation, our taste buds lose their ability to distinguish what’s tasty, what’s not, what’s needed, and what’s unnecessary.

Acquiring information requires moderation.

So, I’ve decided to appreciate just one work carefully every day, watch closely, think deeply, and add some personal practice.

Coincidentally, Delicious’s Firefox plugin can help me with this. When I encounter a good article, I tag it with the month and year like 0912, and mark the date with a keyword like 091216, creating a dedicated catalog on Delicious. This way, good things collected don’t need to be read immediately, but can be read slowly, or later at home.

In design, too, moderation is needed. I plan to write more about this later.