Don’t Make Them Think

Usability – how easy something is to use and how quickly we learn to do so – is an important element of any design, but we often put it off until the end of the project, tripping ourselves up by thinking about usability as being incompatible with design – almost as though our best designs are five-star amuse bouche, and bending to “usability” renders them Bagel Bites.

We sometimes feel that making things more intuitive and straightforward breaks down the poetry of the design, but I do not think that this is true.

Usability does not have to combat beauty.

In fact, I think a good design inherently encompasses both aesthetics and ease. And that striking the right balance is just a matter of asking the right questions during the development process. And unless we are building for other designers (or cooking to impress other chefs), our designs, if so confusing to be deemed inaccessible, will never appeal to the market at large.

We often become so immersed in our designs, investing so much of our time and attention to the product, that we forget to check back in with our end user to ask: “does this work? Do they get it?”

Is your product being used as intended? Is it easily understood?

If not, your users may not use it.

I recently finished Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make Me Think,” which details the fundamentals of usability and outlines the process of testing users to elicit feedback. Krug points out that usability is, by its very nature, not a privilege or a choice, but rather a common courtesy. To make something usable is simply to be conscientious of your user; to build something that is truly as much for them as it is for you as the designer.

To offer perhaps the most cliched example, let’s consider the iPad. Apple has done a great job of positioning their products as being very “sexy” and setting the curve for aesthetic expectations. But here is another beautiful thing about Apple: their products are insanely intuitive. (Children in Third World countries, for example, have used iPads to teach themselves to read.)

And while it may be cliche, here is a personal example: John’s dad – who is in his 60′s – was recently looking to buy a new laptop and took a trip to Best Buy. Because he is not a “tech whiz kid,” he spent over an hour considering his options and asking associates all kinds of questions about the products. (“But can I still get the internet?”… “What about email?”) He was beginning to feel overwhelmed with all of the sparkle and pizzaz and was just about to walk out of the store when he happened to pick up the iPad. Thirty seconds into testing it, he had found everything he was looking for. Ten minutes after that, he had bought it.

If we are striving toward a standard in “beauty,” we should also strive toward one in simplicity – and celebrate the merits of making something easy to understand. And I think many, many products can similarly strike a balance – without causing either party too much heartache.

After all, this is a plate from local restaurant Alinea, which won “Chef’s Choice” as the best restaurant in the world this year. But this is a plate from one of the country’s most beloved – the place to which we return time and again.

What is good design? Fork vs. Garlic Press

Why a fork is a better design than a garlic press:

A Designer (actually, a Director of a very good design firm) recently asked me what my favorite kitchen utensil was.

“Probably a fork.” I said.

Apparently that answer didn’t satisfy him, though, because he rephrased the question to illicit a “gadget.”
So I told him my blender, “because I use it almost every day.”
He asked if it was a cool blender.
“No,” I said. “Just a standard one.”

And he was obviously not impressed with that answer, either. (Nor was he impressed when I originally answered “hair dryer” before he limited my response to the kitchen.)

I think he wanted my answer to be far more cool – like a coffee pot that also functioned as a dishwasher and could tell me next month’s weather forecast – in Dutch. In other words, something “interesting” or “unusual.”

He would have settled even for something like “garlic press.” (I know this because he suggested it as an amendment to the answer “fork.”)

I didn’t take him up on this. Mostly because I don’t agree.

Frankly, I think “garlic press” is a horrible answer. In fact, it may be one of worst (e.g., least-loved) kitchen utensils, a realization that dawns on anyone who has ever a.) used one or b.) endeavored in serious cooking. (Note: I did not say this to him, because he was actually a pretty nice guy and the context did not call for this.)

Here is the thing:

The garlic press does not actually do its job.

And if it does, it certainly does not do it quite as well as we envision.

Many the most novice user, trying the garlic press for the first time, will watch in dismay as the garlic just becomes mashed into the utensil rather than chopped and deposited on the other side, as we want to imagine. (I personally bought a garlic press and used it a whole two times before I grew frustrated of having to wipe all the garlic mush off – and out of – the utensil.)

Chefs and cooking aficionados don’t use garlic presses at all, evidenced by their absence in any Food Network show. In fact, the garlic press is somewhat abhorred within the culinary world, for a number of viable reasons: the press taints the garlic in much the same way silver spoons taint caviar. It is also a “one trick pony,” taking up more space than its limited utility warrants. And some of the garlic – the part too small to be pressed entirely through – is inadvertently wasted.

If you check out “garlic press” on Wikipedia, you will see that chef Anthony Bourdain calls them “abominations” and British cookery writer Elizabeth David once wrote an essay titled “Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless.”

(Interestingly, the utensil most beloved by many chefs? Their knives. Which, in addition to innumerable other uses, enable them to prep garlic far more efficiently than they could with a press… Fancy that!)

So if most people detest using garlic presses, the design is fundamentally not good… instead validated only by the imagination of a.) its inventor(s) and b.) the consumers who are seduced into buying them.

It is not at all warranted by reality.

And yet here I come across a designer who suggests to me that the garlic press is somehow a “better” answer to his question of favorite utensil – one more “deserving” of my adoration - than the fork.

And I think that this is the wrong approach to design. That the merit of “good” design and our esteem of it is largely based not on how “unusual” it is, but how well it functions in our life.

Good design is not about being “cool.”

It is about improving the quality of our lives.

Beloved products are those that help us do something. And when we are talking kitchen utensils, those that actually help us get by in our day to day lives and accomplish our everyday needs are obviously far more influential on our happiness. We cherish things that work for us. And a fork is a great example.

A fork always does its job.

You will never hear people complaining about a fork. It gets food into our mouths – e.g., it works - and it does it efficiently, without ruining or wasting the food in the process. It is intuitive – it doesn’t make us think. Even the most “uncouth” user, holding the fork all wrong, can effectively muddle through.

This, to me, is the mark of a great product – one deserving of our adoration.

(For a deeper testament to its appeal, consider this: the fork became ubiquitous despite being considered “vulgar” in the 11th Century.)

Consider your “favorite” of anything – pair of shoes; website; shirt; show. Cost aside, is it not the one you wear, visit or watch most? (If not, you may have a skewed sense of priorities.)

We love the things we use most. And we use the things we love most.

To suggest that anyone should (or would) feel otherwise is a bit unrealistic.

And this is really not so much an exercise in trash-talking a designer – or design in general – so much as it is an illustration of the troubling disconnect between what designers think is “good” and what users actually favor. Designers think nuclear mousetrap. Users prefer a baited empty bucket. This is, in fact, one of the primary reasons I am drawn to design and product – and building beautiful solutions that elegantly, painlessly solve problems and make us happier – happy to the point that we promote them to ubiquity, making them “real” rather than shelving them somewhere.

I think there is so much to be said for the elegance of simplicity; the quiet and subtle sheer joy that a user experiences – but may never vocalize – when something works just exactly as he wanted it to and, in doing so, resolves a want or need. And I think there is great work to be done in building solutions that strive to quietly create long-term satisfaction (that is, under-promise and over-deliver) rather than disappoint us with the opposite.

The death and life of great life work

Question: is art a product of life or a part of it?

Jane Jacobs, urbanist and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, argues that “art” is a product of life – merely something “to help explain life to us, to show us meanings, to illuminate the relationship between the life that each of us embodies and the life outside of us. We need art most, perhaps, to reassure us of our own humanity. However, although art and life are interwoven, they are not the same things. Confusion between them is, in part, why efforts at design are so disappointing.”

Jane Jacobs

As such, art is not embedded back into life; does not redefine it or become a part of a new whole, but rather stands outside of it as a mere representation; a token of what was taken from life to create it.

Jacobs argues then that “the artist,” by extension, is someone who “makes selections from the abounding materials of life, and organizes these selections into works that are also under control” - “total, absolute, and unchallenged control” – of the artist.

Given this definition, then, the artist is more of a consumer than a creator with regard to life and his or her relationship with it. And the final product of his or her work is somewhat artificial in the scheme of reality, disconnected from what actually makes up the real world.

Is this fair?

I don’t think so.

Jacobs goes on to discuss the way we all pull from life, making selections as we move through our environments; that to be human and have a human experience is to be constantly sifting through our surroundings, adding new things to our existing understandings in order to make sense of the world around us.

“Suggestion – the part standing for the whole – is a principle means by which art communicates; this is why art often tells us so much with such economy. One reason we understand this communication of suggestion and symbol is that, to a certain extent, it is the way all of us see life and the world. We constantly make organized selections of what we consider relevant and consistent from among all the things that cross our senses. We discard, or tuck into some secondary awareness, the impressions that do not make sense for our purposes of the moment.”

“To this extent,” Jacobs offers, “we are all artists.”

And, although Jacobs kind of leaves us hanging here by failing to bring it full circle, I will point that if art is the process of making selections and if all humans do this naturally and if we are all artists by way of exercising our innate ability to sort and make sense of everyday surroundings and stimuli - then all work done in this fashion must then be art.

So if we are all artists, where does real “life” come in, then? Who is doing that work?

Because while Jacobs is willing to give us that much – that we are all artists and are all creating art – she still argues that art is only an artificial symbol of real life. And that all things created by way of a single mindset – either one individual or a group of people all believing the exact same thing – are only art; mere representations of life.

“Life,” on the other hand, comes from work done organically. It is built over time, with complexity and intensity; by varying mindsets and beliefs. But is, apparently, not the work of “artists” – whom we all are – but rather some other, unnamed, more innovative creatives.

(Jacobs argues: if something is created by many people, conformity and tradition across the group yields art… while innovation, adventurousness, and inquisitiveness yields life. And the two can never be one in the same. So, “artists” are, apparently, always harnessed by tradition and driven to control. If they operate outside of this, they are no longer “artists” or creating “art.”)

This is obviously where I think Jacobs strangled her definitions of “art” and “life.” She esteemed every individual as an artist by way of his basic human instinct to make sense of his surroundings. And yet she regarded his work done in this capacity as being either a “product of life” (“art”) or a “part of life” (not art) – never both – all depending on whether or not he exercised innovation and collaborated with others (the result of which would yield “life,” but not “art.”)

I think you can agree that these definitions don’t work. And I encourage us to redefine how we see both “art” and “life,” separate as well as in relation to one another.

I am not advocating the assembly of all work together – am not campaigning to “convert” all of “real life” into art (which Jacobs advised would result in a sort of “taxidermy” product which would be neither art nor life) – but rather recognize and appreciate the movement and fluidity between them; that art and life are often found in the same thing, through different lenses or in different contexts, at different times; that very often, a piece of art is very much a part of life and that life, in turn, can be viewed quite richly as art in and of itself – that many things in life are already art, fundamentally and in their own right, without being stuffed, mounted, or framed.

A brick wall can be painted over with graffiti, and that is art. A brick wall can also be beautiful enough to serve as a focal point in a home, and that is art, too. A beloved city street does not magically “become” art the minute someone snaps a photo or paints a picture. It already is. It is innately both real and beautiful.

Jacobs offers:

“Instead of attempting to substitute art for life, designers should return to a strategy ennobling both to art and to life: a strategy of illuminating and clarifying life and helping to explain to us its meaning and order.”

I will add: it is not about picking a side or declaring your work as belonging to either art or life; pulling from one to add to the other. It is recognizing that in doing good work, we are artists. And that when we do this, we are contributing to (rather than detracting from) life as we – a collective whole – experience it. That good work yields both art and life, rather than shifting, as Jacobs fears, life to art.

The successful accomplishment of this feat means the difference between the death and life of great life work – our greatest passions; our projects; our products; our designs.

Design is not about design. It’s about people.

What we build and what we engineer has very little to do with engineering itself… and building a “good” solution in the real world – that is, outside of an academic or theoretic context – is largely measured on how well it is received and used by its intended audience.

Books are a wonderful example here, actually – there are two predominant directions a serious author may take his or her writing: either a.) literary acclaim within the field, or b.) popularity on the market. These two types of literature are almost never seen in one book, as one is exquisitely written and unfolds like a piece of art, while the other? Simply amuses; delights; entertains. And typically reads quickly, straightforwardly, with little left to interpretation. People love that.

Most things are this way. We know of particular buildings which are celebrated and revered in the architecture world and yet stand mostly vacant, abandoned or avoided by potential tenants. There are pieces of fashion never meant to be worn beyond the runway; never meant for consumption by “real” people. And yes, in technology, there is a way to build to showcase engineering capabilities or, conversely, a way to design to please the person on the other end.

“Cooler” does not necessarily mean “good” – not beyond those in the industry, anyway, who are the majority of people who can appreciate and understand the “coolness.”

“Good,” in my mind, is measured by how much your product is used by its intended user. (In fact, not just used, but cherished.) 

And, in my mind, the value and meaning of a rich emotional response holds true regardless of product, whether book, building, garment, or app. This is the real depth of design: to delight the user; to give them something that makes their lives just that much better.

How to be an artist

Everyone is capable of being an artist.
If you do not see this yet, you only need to alter your way of defining “art.”

To “do art” requires nothing more than putting something “good” into the world.
More simply, to “do art” is to create joy.
For yourself. And for others.

To be an artist, then, pursue roles in which you feel inspired to give more than is required; in which you are impassioned to go above and beyond the status quo, or to work outside of it. And then do so.

An artist is someone who pursues his or her work – no matter what it is -with exceptional passion; who creates “good” above the expectations set by the role; who adds emotional surplus to the transactions.

To be an artist, you do not need more genius – or genius of a different kind.
You only need to inject enthusiasm and emotion.

Seth Godin, in his new book Linchpin, writes:

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.

He elaborates:

What makes someone an artist? I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

“Childhood (Self Portrait)” by my good friend and artist David Sarallo

So.

To be an artist? Color outside the lines.
Paint without numbers.
Don’t work within the guidelines set in front of you.

To be an artist? Do great work.
Create good.
Find your flow.
Do what makes you lose track of time.
Feel joy.
Bring joy to others.
Do it with enthusiasm.

That is all it takes.

Note: for more work like the piece here (“Childhood (Self Portrait)” by artist David Sarallo) check out his blog or etsy shop

A risk of creating without understanding your user’s values? They may hijack the finished product.

Here’s a history fact:

The man credited with the invention of the shopping mall ultimately refused to be associated with them, instead calling them “bastard developments.”

Victor Gruen was an Austrian architect who immigrated to the United States in his mid-thirties in 1938. He arrived with one goal in mind: to bring the European city center and street scenery to the American suburbs; to integrate shopping and centers into everyday life.

Graben Square, Vienna, 1900

He brought a new vision for retail areas and began planning some of the first “regional shopping centers” – areas that were to serve a social purpose; to act as centers in places that did not have them. He had no idea how this concept would ultimately evolve to shape american suburbia while gutting urban city centers.

As the concept was perpetuated and duplicated, with first one development and then many more following, across the country, merchandisers soon realized that they could make more money by eliminating the social spaces and focusing solely on the commercial. Over time, the designs lost their social focus and took on a specifically consumerist one, emphasizing leasable space while reducing the common areas.

But this shift was not entirely the fault of the developers; they were not building these beasts in a vacuum, after all.

The evolution was also spurred by shoppers, who were clamoring for more consumer space, and shopping centers expanded in direct response to our expansive consumer aspirations. In this sense, suburb shopping malls were a distinct sign of the times – a product of an era when our culture was consumer-centric and prosperous Americans, having just spent the war years cutting back, swept through stores on a rampant spending spree.

Fresh from our victory overseas, the American consumer was praised as a patriotic citizen in the 1950s. And in a time when many were eager to defend their social status, consumerism was an easy way to show it off. The shopping mall readily served this new, fast-growing need.

Vienna Cafe Zion Square

As he watched city centers replaced by the shopping mall, Gruen grew distressed and then disheartened over time. By the end of his career, once he realized what he had done, he was “heart broken.”

Ultimately, Gruen responded:

“I am often called the father of the shopping mall. I would like to take this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all. I refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed our cities.”

Gruen’s story is one of how easily passion and purpose can end poorly if directed at the wrong project, or in the wrong way, with inadequate understanding of its context.

Context is everything – understanding what we now know about the 1950′s American as a shopper, it is perhaps inevitable that the shopping mall was fated to become what it did. (I wrote about this previously, here.)

In any case, though, Gruen’s own professional story is reflective of the heartbreak that can happen if we misalign our objectives with only one perspective; if we build something that represents our own values without consideration for those of our users, leaving the idea at risk of being “bastardized” so that it does.

For more info on Gruen and his influence on the shopping mall, check out this video:

Why it may not be fair for us to hate on the mall

Shopping malls get a lot of flack for the way they look and feel. Cynics cite malls as little more than “tributes to consumerism,” and even the most diehard shoppers occasionally find themselves drained coming home from the stores.

But, while they receive a lot of criticism, are malls a “failure?” I don’t think so. (And even I avoid them at all costs.)

Because whether we love them or love to hate them, malls exist for a reason: they serve a high-priority need, that being our desire to buy.

Not only that, but they do it precisely in the way that we need. (They have to – and this must be true – otherwise we would not go. And, as we know, we do.)

So, while we may quibble and criticize, the reality is: the mall has earned its stripes. And it developed like it did only because we wanted it to.

And while this development is often blamed on “greed,” it is not primarily the greed of developers, architects or politicians, as some want to think.

It was also our own.

Our consumerism grew ever-insatiable. The mall exploded in direct proportion.

The evolution of the mall as we know it began with the nation’s first: Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota. It was originally two stories with 800,000 sq. ft. of retail space.

Southdale Center, the nation’s first indoor shopping mall, 1950′s (photo credit: playle)

It still stands today, now expanded to a modest 1,300,000 sq. ft.

Southdale Center today (photo: Simon)

In contrast, check out “Berjaya Times Square” in Malaysia, finished in 2003. With 7,500,000 sq ft of space, it is currently one of the largest malls in the world.

Berjaya Times Square mall, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Berjaya Times Square mall, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

How far we have come.

We did not simply go along with these designs, though. And we were not truly entirely passive. On the contrary, we perpetuated the mall; we pushed for it and it was our demand that drove these developments. We always have the ability to make decisions, and we, collectively, made the mall what it is, for ourselves.

In a documentary on the American shopping mall, one critic asked, with regard to the typical shopper: “do they want to be consumers or citizens?!”

And to him I must say: “well… frankly, when it comes to the mall, we want to be consumers! So… let them eat cake!”

We want what we want. And in the case of the mall, it means a consumer destination and little else.

A mall is not architecturally “good” because it does not have to be.

It is the same reason that Twilight films are not really that great. They don’t need to be, because the fans don’t really care – they would see them either way.

Historically, the mall does not serve an “aesthetic” need because it serves a “consumerism” one. It is a direct reflection of our values and priorities – nothing more and nothing less.

Malls are changing “for the better,” over time. Most developments in the last five years or so have returned to an open-air concept. (In turn, interestingly enough, the largest mall in the world has been vacant since it opened it 2005.) But this only happens in response to our values. We have to clamor for these things.

When we are ready for something else, then something else – like the open-air concepts of recent years, like The Streets of Southglenn, in Colorado – will become the new norm.

“The Streets at Southglenn,” an open-air mixed-use development in Centennial, CO

For more on the mall, check this out:

The “right” values for someone in UX or urbanism? For one, Inclusion.

When we talk about personal values, we typically do not talk in terms of “right” or “wrong;” ”better” or “worse,” but when it comes to certain fields of work, it becomes apparent that some values are more valuable than others. And when it comes to developing and designing for large groups of people, having an intuition for inclusion can make a product more impactful.

Inclusion is founded on the core belief that every individual is equally important, and that we all deserve to not be ignored.

In “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” authors Buckingham and Clifton describe the personal strength of “Inclusiveness” as the desire to “include people and make them feel like part of the group… to expand the group so that as many people as possible can benefit.”

It directly contrasts the values of prestige and social standing, which are rooted in exclusion and prioritize superiority. A person that places too much emphasis on status over other social merits may be poorly suited to a role in user experience or urbanism; fields in which serving the individual often also means serving the masses. And although there are many other values that make a great UX professional or urbanist, the priority of inclusiveness is an important one.

The power of inclusion in various examples is illustrated below…

For example, in the case of streetscapes:

The 16th Street Mall in Denver, CO is highly accessible to all people, from skyrise employees on lunch break to the homeless on benches. (credit: ericrichardson/Flickr.)

In contrast, despite being aesthetically pleasing, this street emphasizes exclusion

As does most of downtown Houston

Or, on a smaller scale:

When it comes to drinking fountains, this represents a more inclusive design, accessible even to dogs

… on the other end of the spectrum (lest we forget): the basic drinking water was once an enforcer of class status; a powerful symbol of inequality.

And lastly, In website design:

Google is inclusive – a classic example of clean, intuitive design. The initial interface offers only one option; the search results are automatically filtered by location.

When you demand a user’s contact info before they even enter the site, however, you create a barrier and inhibit inclusiveness

Though the success of a design has many, many factors, the developer’s ability to create solutions that are accessible and intuitive to a large range of people very often influences their value within the market.

When architecture fails: River City, Chicago

The River City development was designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg, whose most famous work was Marina City (“the corn cobs.”) Despite a similar design and methodology, River City, completed over two decades after Marina (1986 and 1964, respectively) never saw the success of its predecessor. On the contrary, it represents quite a failed project.

River City was originally intended to be a series of four towers 85-stories tall; the building as it stands was designed to support towers that were never finished. In addition, there are thousands of square feet of empty retail space on the first floor; slabs of cement that have stood waiting since 1986.

River City, Chicago

I recently went inside the property to meet with a tailor. I was shocked at how haphazard the design was. Within moments of entering the building, I was overcome with how “wrong” it felt. Below are the photos I took during this visit. (Apologies on quality; all I had was my phone.) 

“marina level” foyer…

A common area designed to accommodate hundreds, apparently, fitted with an escalator that would not efficiently move them from one floor to another, were they ever here

proportional nightmare… neither hallway actually reflects a realistic flow

interior hallways

craftsmanship and execution of the actual curved design used as the primary features throughout the building

thousands of square footage of retail space on the first floor. River City was finished in 1986; this space was never finished.

Another shot of the retail space never finished

main foyer… who was this space meant to accommodate? It looks like the foyer of a convention center, yet will never see that many people

…and yet, off the massive foyer, we have a mailroom suffering from the “wrong” proportions at the other end of the spectrum. While the foyer could manage more people than it will ever see, the aisles of the mail room cannot support traffic of more than one person at a time…

main entrance

picnic table.. for who? Does anybody eat here?

main entrance, from street

To really enjoy it, give it up

I give it up.
In fact, I like to give it up on a regular basis.

What I am really talking about, though, is this: there is nothing that builds an appreciation for something quite like doing without it.

We all want to enjoy life more in the long run, don’t we? To do so, just simplify it for a while. And if you want to enjoy something specific like you used to, do without instead.

Okay, example: I went vegan in September. But then my French sister in law served a cheese course at Christmas, and given that I am often not a very good vegan and given that it was a holiday and given that she had painstakingly gone through the effort of selecting and preparing the cheese plates, I had some.

And I don’t think cheese has ever tasted so good.

Obviously you do not have to go vegan, if you do not need or want to appreciate cheese. And you do not even have to go vegetarian to appreciate meat or give up sweets to appreciate cupcakes. (Though you could certainly do any of those and gain the respective effect.) This isn’t really about veganism or vegetarianism, though, so much as it is about life in general:

“sausage girl”

The point is that if your life feels dull or foggy or fuzzy or a little bit inconsequential, the issue may not be that there is too little in it, but rather that there is too much. 

We over-indulge in things that we enjoy and, in doing so, desensitize ourselves to it. When we instead do without it, we break down the sensory “callouses” that have developed over time.

If you want to taste a food like it is your first time eating it, for instance, avoid it for a few months. Miss the days when you could get a buzz off of just a drink or two? Don’t drink for a while. And only those of us who travel every week for business know that nothing keeps a spark alive quite like finally seeing your partner after a 3-day hiatus come Thursday or Friday night.

Because yes, absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

And taking something away from ourselves gives us more, rather than less, in the long run.