You're being led to behaviors you don't actually want to do

The Daily Drip

"Buy now with one click."

"Try our new menu."

"Now with 30% more fruit filling."

Everyone wants your attention.

Even I want your attention.

It used to be easy to react to these sorts of prompts because there weren't many and you could go right back to living your life.

But we now live in the age of interruption marketing.

We get ads when we didn't ask for them.

We get asked for things when we didn't tell anyone we were interested in helping.

It's actually challenging for both sides.

Your job, as a brain-owner, is to learn to block out what's not important.

Your job is to develop those quick short-cut "heuristics" that allow you to detect what's useful and what's not.

Your job is also to know that you'll be wrong sometimes.

There are a lot of very smart people at Instagram whose entire jobs are to figure out how to make sure you never leave your phone.

In fact, Instagram uses behaviorism and the reward circuit in your brain to make this happen. They found out that if they held back your "likes" for a bit and then gave them to you all at once, you'd be more likely to check Instagram later.

This is real behavioral science and it's not new.

Even casinos have been doing this for ages.

So, it's up to you to decide how you're going to engage with those folks who want your attention.

You are the owner of your life and your brain. You know what works and doesn't work for you.

I don't play video games and I delete social media apps from my phone when I begin to use them too much.

I do this because I know I have a more addictive personality than others. It's my job to protect my attention.

Today is Sunday. It's one of those days that is easy to slip into lazy behaviors.

Engage with today the way you want to--not the way you're led to.