Mind Control (Day 104)

The whole "attention economy" business model is trying to get us distracted at all times. The "product manager bible" Hooked has applied the habit-forming brain science to help build addictive apps.

As Epictetus's quote suggests, we are so protective of our physical body (and possessions) but so casually giving away the one true limited resource in our life--TIME!

"If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you'd be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled--have you no shame in that?" --Epictetus

How can we guard our time and attention? Why not use the same brain science to assist and protect us instead?

Outsmart Yourself

I have read the "Hooked" when learning product management, and I'm glad to be learning how to use brain science based knowledge to NOT make products better, but make ourselves better.

Here's a couple of key take-aways from the course Outsmart Yourself: Brain-Based Strategies to a Better You:

Beat procrastination by doing nothing: we often procrastinate by doing other things, and we will get tired afterwards and lack of energy to do the task we need to perform. Best strategy is to sit quietly for 10-20 minutes. Then you would likely to start working on the task needs to be done.
Avoid choking under pressure: we tend to "commit" ourselves by telling others what we intend to do. To the contrary, we have a better chance of success by not announcing that.

The course covers many other cases and provide the evidence based strategies sometimes may seem counter-intuitive at first.

Another interesting note is that Nir Eyal, the author of the "Hooked", has published another book to allow you to "counter" the strategies offered in "Hooked". The book is called Indistractable--maybe an attempt to "undo his evil"? 😜