Life Update

Beck Tench here, 👋, I'm going to be writing more often.

Jan 19, 2024

Why you’re getting this: You subscribed to an email list on my website. I migrated those emails to Substack, and this is the first time I've emailed the list. I have no plans to charge for it. You can unsubscribe at any time, and I won't be upset. I won't even know!
In this issue: After a brief life update, I introduce an upcoming Listening Tour and share my plans to write about it every week or so. I end the issue by sharing a moment of delight – a glimpse into my own thriving.
Hat tip to Nick Gray: Thanks to my friend Nick for this intro idea, which I copied from his Friends Newsletter (I recommend subscribing if you like kind, enthusiastic, and geeky folks). I’ll start every issue this way so you can quickly skim and decide if you want to read it.

LIFE UPDATE

If we haven't connected in a while, you might not know that I defended my dissertation and joined a research center at Harvard Graduate School of Education called the Center for Digital Thriving. I'm a senior researcher and designer, and along with an awesome team, we're aiming to understand "digital thriving" and how to support it as a society, especially for young people.

A group photo of seven individuals at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Two hand-drawn arrows point to people in the photo with handwritten notes saying 'DR. VIVEK MURTHY' and 'ME!' indicating the person who is likely Beck Tench. Below the group is a caption saying 'OUR TEAM (+ a few folks)' indicating that this is a team photo with some members absent. They are standing in front of a Harvard backdrop with a repeating pattern of the university's shield emblem. Everyone is smiling and dressed in professional attire.

We’re just getting started, but some of the things we did last year include creating four amazing classroom resources 📓 with Common Sense Education that help teachers and students have better conversations about technology, working with KQED’s show Above the Noise to produce videos 📽️ about design tricks and thinking traps, and publishing a report called Teaching for Digital Well-being where we share the 🔬 clinical practices (like cognitive behavioral therapy) that inform the work we do.

And since Harvard changed some of its HR policies during the pandemic, I didn’t have to move! Our team works from Cambridge, but also Atlanta, LA, Seattle (🙋), and exotic locales such as Connecticut. This was especially important to me because one of the hardest parts of moving away from NC was leaving my friends and family. In fact, I vividly remember the first time someone in Seattle saw me biking down the street and yelled out my name. I hadn’t realized until that moment how important it is to live in a place where people know your name. It’s taken years, but I am starting to feel that way here, too, and I am so grateful that I didn’t have to leave. Plus, we’ve reached near-maximum levels of coziness 👇.

A peaceful dog lying on a rug, sound asleep in front of a wood-burning stove with a visible fire behind glass doors. The cozy scene suggests maximum comfort and tranquility. — Our dog Lewis snoozing by the fire. Note the sandy floor. You’ll see why later.

I travel to Cambridge several times a year, but mostly, I have a remote work experience. The time I used to spend commuting ⛴️ — nearly four hours a day (!) — is now filled with work. I typically start my workday shortly after our rooster, Hagrid, wakes me up (and undoubtedly many others), and I find it hard to stop working, too. I love my work, but after a year, I started to feel as if my life had shrunk to the small desk that my laptop sits upon.

A well-organized workspace featuring a laptop open on a desk with a document on the screen, flanked by a tablet mounted on the left and a larger monitor on the right, both on standby mode. The desk has a notepad, a mug, and other personal items, and is illuminated by a desk lamp, creating a productive and personalized work environment. — My laptop and impressive collection of other Apple devices.

THE “BECK SUSTAINABILITY PROJECT”

It’d gotten bad enough that my colleagues developed an acronym, BSP, which stood for “Beck Sustainability Project,” a collective effort to help me avoid burning out.

Aside: You may notice an irony in the fact that I moved immediately from writing an entire dissertation about “restorative practices” to working in such a depleting way that my colleagues invented a shorthand to keep me from exhausting myself. To this, I simply say, show me a dissertation that isn’t about some deep-seated personal issue that the dissertater faces.

Feedback on my performance was glowing, but my colleagues gently nudged me to stop trying to save the day. For a while, they even deployed the following gif from The Incredibles as a reminder.

THEN EM HAD AN IDEA

My work trips to Boston reminded me how much I missed being out in the world and especially connecting with strangers. I mentioned this to our director (and the originator of BSP), Emily, and later that day, she Slacked me with an idea.

Slack screenshot: 4:05 PM Emily I have an idea for you re substack and reading and scholarship

Her idea was for the Center to conduct a “Listening Tour” — a six-month effort to talk to as many people as possible about “digital thriving,” and at the end of that time, to come up with a robust and evidence-based definition for it. Em saw an opportunity to inform our future resources and research, and she saw an opportunity to contribute to my own thriving in the process.

BUT WHAT EVEN IS A LISTENING TOUR?

Where will we go? Who will we talk to? What questions will we ask? If I chat with a stranger on a train about their best tech habits, do I need to get their consent?

We are actively figuring all of this out. In fact, just this week, we’ve started our IRB application, which is so complex that it requires a visual flowchart to navigate our data collection protocols (more on this in a future issue). I plan to reflect on everything I’m learning here, and I hope this Substack becomes a safe place for me to find my voice as a scholar and a safe place for all of us to reflect on this provocative idea — that we can thrive in a tech-filled world.

Until next week, when I’ll share why I named the Substack “Making Thriving Visible.”

p.s. As promised, here’s a glimpse into making my own thriving visible. Despite the bustle of a long working day, I try to take an hour to spend time with Lewis at a nearby beach. Watching him splash in the waves and play with other dogs brings me uncomplicated joy.