• by Jeff Einstein , January 4, 2005

First things first: Happy New Year to you and yours.

My last column introduced the idea of media as a separate ecosystem, and restraint as tool to help reduce the pollution that threatens the quality of our lives within it.

In a media ecosystem whose primary drivers are now obsession and addiction, restraint seems like a quaint notion at best, the wan equivalent of just saying no to drugs. Unless institutionalized otherwise, restraint represents a function of willpower. But willpower -- even among the mentally toughest of us -- ebbs and flows like the tides, and is typically insufficient as a standalone force to combat obsession and addiction. Our New Year's resolutions -- firm and resolute as of 12/31, and all but forgotten two weeks later -- remind us just how fickle and frail willpower alone can be.

Restraint, however, shouldn't be confused with abstention, and abstention is not a magic bullet for all obsessions and addictions. Individuals with eating disorders, for instance, cannot abstain entirely from food, no more than married sex addicts can abstain entirely from sex. Likewise, individuals who are obsessed with e-mail at work cannot abstain entirely from using e-mail for obvious reasons. But they probably can refrain from checking their in-box every 10 minutes, and can certainly turn off the audible alarm that accompanies incoming e-mail.

So that's my first suggestion: Turn off the audible alarm on your e-mail in-box, and check your e-mail only at designated times of the day: Wait an hour after you arrive at work in the morning to check your e-mail the first time, then wait at least another two hours before you check it again, and so on.

Likewise with all addiction recovery: You can't and don't need to exercise restraint every second of every day. Restraint is properly invoked only when we crave something that we know isn't good for us, and only then for the few short seconds (which can sometimes seem like hours) required to overcome the craving. Thus the process of changing the quality of your life both at work and at home in fact represents only an aggregate minute or two of your time each day. But that simple minute or two each day can have profound effects.

My second suggestion is to institute an online testing environment for all creative. One of the reasons why the media ecosystem is so polluted nowadays is because advertisers have determined that the pipeline itself is far more important than the creative messages that fill it. Where the message goes is far more significant than what the message says, witness the fact that most media is planned, bought, and sold irrespective of the final creative. How can we not pollute when we literally don't care what we dump into the stream? Or when the stream itself seems so wide that we can't even see the other side? Contrary to the old adage, content is only king when you own the pipeline or access to it. Without the pipeline or access to it, content doesn't even get invited to the party.

An online testing environment for all campaign creative -- with a standing mandate that no creative goes live unless and until it is tested -- will help institutionalize restraint, and return the emphasis to where it belongs: the creative. We can begin to clean up the media ecology only when we begin to care more about what gets said and less about where or how often we say it. But it all begins with the individual desire and ability to clean up our own private media ecosystems.

Your thoughts?

Many thanks, as always, and best to you and yours this New Year...

Please note: The Einstein's Corner discussion group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/einsteinscorner/ is dedicated to exploring the adverse effects of our addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives, both at work and at home. Please feel free to drop by and join the discussion.