When I visited Seattle in August, I spent a day hanging out with two longtime friends Brent and Sheila Simmons. Brent and I worked together on UserLand's products in the late 90s that led to many cool things like blogging, RSS, Facebook, Twitter.

Anyway, this was the first trip I took as a contact lens wearer. Or I should say a would-be contact lens wearer. I was having a lot of trouble, and most days I gave up and just wore my glasses. I had a lot of trouble getting the lens to stay in my eye. I hadn't yet learned the Zen of Contacts, as explained in yesterday's piece.

Anyway, something Brent said stuck with me. He's been using contacts since he was a teenager. He said he just puts them in. He forgot how he does it. He just does it. I do so many things like that myself. Walking for example. Riding a bike. Typing! Even writing itself is a process I do without thinking too much. But none of these things were automatic when I started. Watch a toddler learning to walk. Do you remember when you learned to ride a bike? You'd struggle, living in your head until you relaxed and just did it. There's a process underneath, but you've incorporated it into your subconscious mind, it's not forgotten but it feels that way. In software I call these "base of the spine" operations. They have gone from intellectual puzzles to instinct. That's why emulating an existing product makes adoption easier, and breaking users can be so jarring. All of a sudden you have to think about things that used to be automatic.

That's why I wanted to write the piece explaining the 1-2-3 of contacts.

But JY Stervinou, another longtime friend, pointed out that I had already incorporated some of the Zen at the base-of-spine level. My story was really 1-3-4. I left out the second essential part. The mirror!

So this morning when I did the task I watched myself to see how integral the mirror is and if I could do without it. No way. It's all about the mirror. Proving that the process of incorporation has already begun. 

I'll link to this from the earlier piece as a postscript.

PS: The title of this piece is from the great Who song.