Salience
The concept of salience, and the alignment of action to salience, is at the very heart of SALTT. Salience Alignment is what differentiates focus management from other types of task or project management. It relates to Hertzberg’s two-factor theory, and the Beatles line “… money can’t buy me love”. What is salient is entirely personal; it could be love; it might actually be money itself; but often it is a cluster of self-actualising values. For many, money is not the salient factor; rather, it is just an instrument: it is absalient. Such cases illustrate the distinction between salient and absalient factors, which here, is termed the salience vector. An absalient factor may be important or desirable, and may support salience. On the other hand, it may be a digression conferring little, or even negative salience.
The salience vector can be seen as being on a graph of cartesian axes with an arrow with an angle and a length. This arrow, projected onto the axes, gives the salient and absalient component. [diag]. It indicates how something seemingly important could actually be a distraction from what is actually important. The salience graph is like a compass rose, and the salience vector, a heading. It offers a means by which to navigate towards what is personally and deeply important, and away from the Sirens of distraction.
Oil rig work might pay well, but to the family man, although the money is important, family time is more so. A lesser paid job closer to home would be more suitable. The two vectors demonstrate the difference in salience. Of course, a high paid job close to home would be the ideal.
The principles are embedded in folk-wisdom, “Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby”(George Bernard Shaw) vs “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” and “The richest man in the graveyard”. The main quadrants of the graph are telling, but is it the projection onto the axis of salience that is the key here. SALTT enables the psychological strategy of allowing you to model [basic currently] salience, spot where it is going wrong, and then do something about it.
[TBA] in the salience inspector, when a visual graph component is selected, will show a graph. The salience vector is set by clicking on that graph area. This can [TBA] be used to set appearances of the graph from the search inspector item.
In Practice
Underneath SALTT lies a very versatile object oriented graph database engine premised on the mathematics of graph theory. Although it is equally capable of modelling traffic-flow in a transport network, it has been tweaked specifically for salience alignment and focus management. Its interactive features make SALTT well suited to supporting the methods of focus management, but the real strength lies in the methods it supports: the practice and strategies for personal change, the life-hacks, the therapeutic protocols. These strategies are more like algorithms independent of their implementation, and an understanding of such patterns is important to the use of SALTT. Strategies for change are quite flexible and the user is likely to find their own style in working them out, but some guidelines to how to apply them within SALTT, and how to discover others, would be beneficial here.
Deconstruction
In computer programming top-down stepwise refinement aka hierarchical decomposition means that a large process is broken down into smaller sub-routines; these sub-routines are further chunked down into yet smaller sub-routines and so on. The result is a tree-like structure. Although SALTT is concerned with things like values and aims, rather than just tasks, this decomposition, or rather, deconstruction approach is adopted. Larger topics are deconstructed into smaller supporting ones and so on, thereby also forming a tree-like structure (although it looks like a spider diagram or mind map).
The root node (the one with a golden halo) represents all areas of a user’s life – a rather large topic to apprehend in one bite. To begin to make sense of this, the major topics are pulled out and depicted. As the user progresses, these big topics are deconstructed into ever smaller ones as more nodes get added to the graph. The actual positioning of topics represented by nodes is only important insofar as they are meaningful to the user, and readability is assisted if the graph is tidy eg. edges don’t cross over each other. It is good practice to cluster similar or related items together: SALTT tends to encourage this clustering anyway.
Topography
Although there [will be] auto-arranged features, the user’s “feel” of the graph is essential. It is a representation of what is in the user’s mind (a mind-map) and therefore has some analogue structure: visually, the topics are a topograph. It is quite common to sense that it doesn’t feel quite right and after some tinkering around, perhaps moving chunks of the graph a little bit this way and that, or relinking the parent of a node, the whole thing feels better. This process of ongoing tweaking of the arrangement is a feature and strategy of SALTT. A mind-map is a two way street as it were. Not only does it reflect the objects and relationships of mind, it also, when the representation is adjusted, makes analogue adjustments in the mind: it is a bit like working something out on paper to get some understanding or answer.
Iconography
If a picture paints a thousand words, then perhaps an icon indexes a kilobite. Circles and lines, nodes and edges are the essentials of graph theory. Yet SALTT aspires to convey meaning on sight. The multi-media capabilities of images, animations, and adornments, accelerate that conveyance. The topics (nodes) and their interdependencies (edges) are customisable in their appearance. On a graph, the choice of an appropriate icon, an image (and short label), makes it easily recognisable. For example, the photo of a person that the user needs to speak to would be more intuitive than their name alone.
Strategies
Shifting focus and behavioural activation
In this context of personal change, the term strategy is used to say how the graph indicates the method of change. For example “Patient-Zero” recovery involved a kind of behavioural activation. This was a case of depression and long-term illness whereby incapacity restricted available active time, and that time was being eaten by tedious and unfulfilling chores. A lack of fulfillment was fueling a vicious spiral of depression.
The point of intervention was to create a better life-style balance: to remember that finding a sense of pleasure and accomplishment were essential to mental wellbeing, and to schedule activities that brought that sense about. With assistance, these topics were explored, then mapped onto SALTT. Using Shermer’s terms, the topics of World Class Work (WCW) and Lower Value Work (LVW) were identified, along with the topic labelled Personal (and a Root node signifying life in general). Suitable icons were assigned to the nodes, and the three major topics were linked to the root node. LVW is not Low Value Work: it is still important. But LVW is lower than WCW – the demarcation being that LVW was less rewarding, a bit of a chore, and could be delegated to some other (were money not an issue); WCW is the kind of activity that could not, or would not want to be, delegated as it conferred that sense of accomplishment or self-actualisation. Personal was, well – kind of personal, but not thought of as “work” per se.
The graph built up over time and it became clear that Patient-Zero did have strong aspirations, but symptoms and lack of wellness time was perpetually dragging them down into the LVW; the more aspirational WCW was being neglected and a sense of fulfillment had become habitually sacrificed – all work; no play. Of course this is only a part of the clinical picture, but offered an entree for disrupting the persistent dynamic. The recovery strategy then was to “recover the dream”: to remember what was salient, to flesh out what WCW meant personally and professionally, to shift some focus, and to work out a healthier balance of time devoted between the topics. Although anecdotal, a more enthusiastic disposition emerged from rediscovering aspiration, and it was reported that depressive episodes were reduced in frequency, duration and intensity. It is considered that this focus management intervention gave some clearance for other professional assistance to work.
The strategy here is that on which behavioural activation type approaches are based but with a little modification.
Start by exploring and mapping out life topics; this is an ongoing process and the picture will build up over time.
What you are actually doing and how that is affecting you. This may constitute a big ugly cluster of pressing sounding but utterly unfulfilling chores. If they had their way, they would all be marked with the “Urgent” status and would all be flashing up a red alert.
What you would rather be doing (fun activities) and how that would affect you
Drop some of what you are doing, however urgent it seems
The seemingly “Urgent” tasks might be important, but they are often squeaky wheels. If they were all flashing red, then that is a recipe for panic and anxiety. It seems often the case that the more time you put into them, the more they crawl out of the woodwork. More often than not, they don’t all have to be done immediately. They can be put on hold (by setting their status), or better still prioritised and scheduled for some future time.
use that time to do something more rewarding.
On the flip side, the fun activities can have their statuses or schedules set. Again, they don’t have to be done all at once and anything that isn’t allocated will be presented in the “review” search.
The “current” search should now be less alarming. Do something fun and see
Reducing over-emphasis
Patient-Zero had rediscovered a passion for tech start-up. It did interrupt the depressive cycle rather better than expected. The focus had shifted, however perhaps became a bit too wrapped-up in WCW as this was providing behavioural reinforcement – a sense of purpose. The LVW, on the other hand was less pressing; those topics were still getting some attention, but maybe not as much as they needed. The Personal topic was visible, but was being overlooked.
The occurrence of a minor “disappointment” on the WCW side (involving pitching for start-up funding) had a disproportionate effect. Actually, the outcome of the pitch was fully anticipated and welcomed, so the affective response is worth examining. It was hardly a disappointment, nevertheless later on, felt like a blow and rumination over imagined implications lead to a miserable night of catastrophizing. Insomnia did not help, but at least afforded a time of reflection over what was happening.
The shift of focus had provided an emotional high. However, it seemed that that high was fragile and far too dependent on WCW progress. All the eggs were in one basket; albeit a different one, and sensitivity to perceived non-fullfilment presented an alternative source of depression: a fear of loosing the dream and returning to the previous situation. Patient-Zero was well familiar with depression’s playbook, which is usually cold comfort while in the midst of such an episode, and toyed with some submodalities (drawn from NLP), adjusting the pictures of SALTT graph in the minds eye.
This raised the thought of making adjustments to the graph in the actual SALTT application. The WCW subtree was reduced in size and the Personal subtree increased, and this seemed to provide a more satisfactory representation. This is not to say that SALTT does anything profound. Rather, it served to firm-up the awareness of a counter-productive dynamic and unintended consequence of shifting focus too far – and what to do about it. Changing the emphasis, through changing the size of the topics in SALTT, has modified the user’s impressions of their importance: the Personal has become relatively more salient and compelling.
The takeaways here are the strategy of viewing things in perspective whereby a balance is created leading to a more well rounded life-style. Secondly, is that of regular iteration in steering towards balance.
Size matters
Along with selecting appropriate icons for topics, another piece of best practice in SALTT is to make the size of the topics (size of the visual nodes) relative to the degree of salience. The size of an image, in terms of UX (and cognitive submodalities) has the effect on the attention for biological evolutionary reasons – large things are easier to see. So, in order to draw your attention to them, the more “important” a topic, the bigger the nodes of the subtree. This could be what you are working on, or want to work on.
Wants and needs
A philosophically liberating practice is to eliminate the concepts and words of “should”, “must”, “need”, “ought” and similar ideas; “could”, “want” and “like” are more useful (feel the fear and do it anyway). This is not easy and there are many who would automatically reject the whole thing. Holding onto a sense of obligation is often habitual or cultural. Here, the recommendation is not to neglect “obligations” but to understand that there is agency here; that any “should” really is about the consequences of not doing that action, and that those consequences might not be acceptable. When one says they “must” do something, they are really saying that they must do something in order to get an intended outcome. Actually, they don’t have to do that thing – there is always a choice, but would rue the results. On the other hand “must” in order to get a desired result is to say one does “want” the result. Using the linguistic trickery of shifting a “must” to a “want” puts things into perspective and also open up the range of possibilities for action.
SALTT is documented in this sense and can be used to cultivate the habit, should the user want that benefit.
Tutorial
Mapping out your life, your ambitions, and your blockages is neither immediate, nor easy – it is a journey in itself. As tutorials go this will necessarily have to be highly generic.