Our plans for the Crypto 90s NFT collection, community, and brand

Over the past few months, I created and launched an NFT collection and brand called Crypto 90s. The collection focuses on the intersection between crypto culture and 90s era nostalgia — two quirky worlds that never intersected in real life but we’re celebrating them both now.

If you’re not familiar with NFTs, I don’t have time to indoctrinate you now. In summary, though, we’re using 90s style artwork and blockchain technology to create a brand, a community, and products that contribute to the value of both.

This post explains our plans for Crypto 90s moving forward, and how you can participate and benefit as an NFT holder and member of the community.

If you haven’t minted an Crypto 90s NFT, you can buy one here:

Entrepot - Marketplace for NFTs on the Internet Computer

Some of you might be on the fence about whether you want to back Crypto 90s. It’s a new project, still a bit unproven, and the minting price might be a tad high for your liking. This post is to help you see what we’re building, and why you might want to join us for the ride!

Roadmap for the Next few Months

To accompany the NFT collection, Crypto 90s is building a full web application! We are right in the middle of building our first product, the NFT Display Case. You can see more about the NFT Display Case here:

So what does building a product consist of?

We have a product manager, a full-stack engineer, and a UX designer. So far, we’ve:

• Written a full set up product requirements for the NFT Display Case.
• Created wireframes, then multiple sets of high-fidelity UX designs. We’re working with a very talented UX designer that we hired as a contractor.
• Hired multiple artists to create the first set of NFT Display templates — these are the “rooms” where you can display your NFTs.
• Built the front-end of the web application. This includes the login page, the NFT Display settings/creation page, and the public pages that are published for display.
• Connected the backend so we can authenticate IC wallets and view NFTs in the wallets
• Deployed the web app to a server. For now, we will be using a centralized web services so that we can accommodate vanity URLs with the web app. We would like to deploy to an IC canister in the future so we are considering options that will allow us to use vanity URLs on the Internet Computer in the future.
• All of this is currently in testing and our product launch is imminent!

There are many, many NFT collections that exist solely as collectible art, so we are intent on releasing this product not only to demonstrate our commitment to Crypto 90s, but to showcase real utility for Crypto 90s NFT holders.

What about the Future?

If you watch our demo video (above) closely, you can begin to think of many future features or applications that the product could have. We are very excited about the future of the product, and about involving the community in shaping what the product roadmap will look like.

Here are some of the ideas we’re excited about:

1. The first version of the NFT Display Case will only support IC NFTS via Plug and Stoic wallets. But there’s no reason we can’t support NFTs from other chains, too. How about a Metamask integration so you can show all your NFTs in one display case?
2. Our initial product is limited to about a dozen “templates” — the background displays you can use to showcase your NFTs. But there are millions of settings or backgrounds that you might want to use to truly personalize the display. Should we build in the ability to add your own custom background, then add the NFTs to the background however you like?
3. Crypto 90s has always thought of itself as more than just a “collection.” It’s also a brand, and a community. What better way to emphasize this than with custom merch? We’d like to build in custom merchandise ordering options, that are only accessible to NFT holders. So you can buy exclusive merch that is unavailable to people who aren’t part of the Crypto 90s community, at heavily discounted prices.

Come Join Us!

If you love crypto, and you’re also a fan of the 90s, come join us! We’re building a fun, inclusive community and we’d love to have you along for the ride. And if you have ideas, suggestions, or feedback, let us know on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/crypto_90s

How to Motivate People: 23 Insights You Might Not Expect

In the last six years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about motivation. At one startup, we built a platform for personal behavior change. At another, we used interactive chatbots to help people achieve their goals. As you might guess, the underlying question at both companies was “How can we use technology to motivate people?”

I believe behavior can be designed — we can create pathways in real life or in online products that lead people to take action. But I don’t mean “behavior design” in a manipulative, coercive way. I mean that we can design experiences that help people choose, by themselves, to take action. And that’s where motivation comes in.

So here’s a motivation manifesto. It’s a list of my observations about motivation — some based on real academic research, others based on personal experience. You might not agree with everything; I’d be happy to have you comment and tell me why.

Behold, 23 simple insights about motivation:

1. Motivation comes in waves. Sometimes we effortlessly achieve amazing things, other times we watch 7 hours of Netflix during work hours of a week day. One way to help people stay motivated during the lows is to understand the principle of dynamic inconsistency. Dynamic inconsistency is the idea that my desires and preferences now may not be the same at a different point in time. I might sign up for Weight Watchers today, then change my mind about weight loss when I walk into Ruth’s Chris on Thursday. We can counteract these waves of motivation by helping people make commitments during the highs that will force them to stay active during the lows.

2. Motivation builds with momentum. If you rinse off one dinner plate, sometimes that’s enough to trigger a full-on cleaning spree and before you know it you’ve washed all of the dishes, swept the floor, taken out the trash, and started thinking about tackling the garage. That’s why small steps are key. If you can get someone to take a small step, they’re likely to build momentum to take the next step.

3. Motivation is contagious. High energy, enthusiasm, and motivation can be passed on from one person to another. One person can change the tenor of an entire room full of people, for good or bad. The simplest example of this, relatable to most people, is how mom or dad can come home from work with a negative attitude and entirely change the mood at home. If mom had a bad day at work, everybody at home knows it within just a few minutes. The good news is that an inspiring person can give us motivation to work hard. Celebrated athletes give motivation to the next generation of stars. Just watch this kid mimic Steph Curry’s warm-up routine to see what I mean.

4. Music can create AND kill motivation. I’ve listened to the Hamilton soundtrack dozens of times, and every time I finish I’m like, “LET’S START A REVOLUTION.” There’s a reason we so often see professional athletes decked out in Beats headphones before their events begin. As world-class runner Christopher Bergland writes, “The music we listen to engages a wide range of neurobiological systems that affect our psychology.” Even in online experiences music has a place, beyond the tacky auto-play blogs of the past. Strategic cues can be helpful to create emotions that help users along their paths, like we see in the audio onboarding experience of personal radio app, Anchor.

5. Urgency motivates people to act quickly. You might spend twenty minutes deciding which restaurant you want to go to, then make the decision 30 seconds after your realize you have to pee. Urgency sells online products, even if the urgency is manufactured. ConvertKit founder Nathan Barry used urgency as part of his product launches to build a mini blogging empire. Find a way to make tasks urgent and people will be more likely to take action.

6. Anticipation is an incredible motivator. This is why we love checking our phones — we want to see what’s new. Anticipation is the backbone of Upworthy’s infamous “Wait Till You See What Happens Next” headlines. A particularly poignant aphorism in a Dove chocolate wrapper once told me, “It’s the anticipation that creates the pleasure,” and I fully endorse this dark chocolate wisdom. When you need to motivate people, don’t give them all the good stuff up front. Lead them along, give them something to look forward to.

7. Money is a mediocre motivator. It motivates people to do things, but those things don’t always contribute to their overall wellbeing. When kids are paid to do well in school, they lose their excitement for learning. What is it that we really want — good grades, or kids who love to learn? Companies use money as a primary motivator, and it certainly changes performance, but we have to be careful about the unintended side effects. I suspect that many of Uber’s recent problems are related to these side effects.

8. Competition is a strong motivator but isn’t universal. Some people have strong negative reactions to competition, other people thrive with competition. Forcing a group of people to compete often yields a few high performers and many other people who are uncomfortable with the new dynamic. Sometimes even people who perform well in competitive circumstances feel uncomfortable or uneasy about the way competition makes people act. Depending on the circumstances, the negative consequences of competition might outweigh the positive.

9. Optimism breeds motivation, pessimism kills motivation. Tim Sanders, an author and former executive at Yahoo, writes about the power of positive thinking. He argues that over the long term, our optimism builds sustained success and satisfaction. If you want some of his optimistic motivation to rub off on you, I’d suggest reading his book, Today We Are Rich. Pessimism is also contagious; don’t be someone who demotivates the people around you.

10. Social motivation is one of the most powerful forms of motivation. We will do crazy, dangerous, illogical, embarrassing, regrettable things — motivated by social influence. We will also do amazing, benevolent, selfless, meaningful things — motivated by social influence. Is it good or bad? We need to be aware of the different types of people in our lives, how they make us feel, and our personal reasons for making decisions. Very subtle instances of social influence (for example, the number of followers someone has on Twitter) can affect how people behave. When we use social motivation to influence others, it’s a powerful tool that we need to use responsibly.

11. We can learn to motivate ourselves. We know ourselves better than anyone, and over time we can learn what motivates us to action and replicate that process at times when we don’t feel motivated. Many people have adopted an attitude of helplessness when it comes to their emotions; they believe they are victims of their environments and the actions that other people take against them. Famed author, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl proved that isn’t true when he wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Learning to motivate yourself is a powerful advantage.

12. Every person’s motivation is unique. If you have children, you can observe this on a daily basis. Some kids are motivated by structure, rewards, and praise; other kids are motivated by attention, physical touch, and games. And (surprise!) adults are just as variable. Every person in the world has a unique set of personal factors that motivate him/her in different ways. To complicate things further, our circumstances affect our motivation as well, so one motivational strategy won’t necessarily work in other scenarios.

13. Motivation is incredibly complex and delicate. No easy answers, no blanket solutions. And if you’re trying to motivate other people, they must trust you or your efforts will be futile. Motivating others takes patience and creativity because you are working with sophisticated emotional human beings, not if-then statements.

14. High motivation doesn’t equal high happiness. The Wall Street and Hollywood stereotypes tell us that talented high performers are often very motivated but also very unhappy. There are far too many examples of this — -in pop culture, but also in my personal interactions with others — to disregard this as a baseless. We’re highly motivated by the pursuit of happiness, but we often pursue in the wrong direction.

15. The environment around us can stimulate motivation. Sunlight, a clean workspace, and peaceful sounds can help us be motivated. Noise, messy chaos, and gray skies can kill our motivation. As a research study at Princeton tells us, “Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity.” Normal human translation: “I can’t focus with this huge mess on my desk.” Not only that, but changes to our environment can help or hurt our motivation more than we might expect.

16. Motivation is affected by physical wellness. No research to cite here, but I’m sure a Google search can satisfy your demand for evidence if you don’t believe this claim. If we’re sick, exhausted, hurt, or find ourselves in any other sub-par state of physical condition, it’s very difficult to be motivated. A simple acronym, BLAST, is often used in addiction treatment to identify times when an addict may be susceptible to relapse. BLAST stands for: Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed, and Tired. While all five describe emotional states, “tired” can also describe our physical state. Being tired, or physically run-down in other ways, makes us more susceptible to poor decision-making. We’re less motivated. Contrast that with how you feel right after a good workout and you’ll see just how motivated we are by physical wellbeing.

17. Activity can stimulate motivation. This is, more or less, the essence of Nike’s billion-dollar marketing motto. The idea can be true of physical activity and mental activity, as both stimulate our senses and make us more engaged. If you’re trying to motivate others, sometimes simply asking them to do something can spark positive energy that will motivate them to do other things.

18. One of the best ways to motivate people is help them uncover their intrinsic motivation. It’s much easier to help people be motivated when you know what they really want, then help them achieve that thing. This is why Google (Alphabet) is the most valuable software company in the world — people literally show up to Google.com, type out their desires (mundane or otherwise), and Google serves up ads that are relevant to those desires. When you can help others identify what they truly want, it’s much easier to motivate them to achieve that.

19. We’re more motivated by the fear of “losing” than the prospect of “gaining.” The principle of loss aversion is well-documented in behavioral economics. For example, when teachers receive bonuses at the beginning of the year that they will lose if they perform poorly, they are more motivated than teachers who start without the reward and earn it based on good performance. Loss aversion helps people stay motivated because they fear the “pain” — of losing money, opportunities, privileges, etc. It can be incredibly effective in many circumstances when other forms of motivation are not.

20. Altruism is a real form of motivation. The economic argument is that this type of behavior (altruism) is irrational. But I’m too much of an optimist to believe that every human action is driven by self interest. And millions of amazing people around the world make irrational sacrifices for the good of others. The desire to help other people can drive us to take action when we might not otherwise; we can be motivated by altruism. Want a real example of this? A research study with blood donors showed that when they didn’t expect to be paid for their donations but then received compensation afterwards, they were less likely to donate in the future. In other words, when they were unexpectedly paid for their donations, that devalued the experience for them. They wanted to do good — not be paid.

21. We can be motivated in positive and negative ways. Anger, hatred, and particularly vengeance sometimes drive people more than concern for their own success. Revenge is another all-too-common motivational motif found in the sports world; plentiful are the examples of disrespected athletes who save old newspaper clippings until the day they exact revenge on a rival. I suppose it works, especially in the sports context, but I’m generally wary of motivating one person at the expense of another.

22. People can resist your attempts to motivate them. They can choose not to be motivated. You literally cannot force someone to be motivated, if they don’t want to be. Any person intent on motivating others has to acknowledge and accept that the basic human right is choice, as mentioned in the Viktor Frankl quote above. That means that whole premise of motivating others hinges on the people being motivated; if they’re don’t want to be motivated, there’s nothing you can do.

23. Manipulation and coercion are not motivation. I started with this point, but I want to end with it as well. You can argue with me about semantics — you can say that people who are blackmailed are highly motivated — but I care about desire. What do people really want? If you’re trying to motivate someone, first try to empathize with what that person really wants. After you understand what they want, you can use different motivational strategies to align their behavior with their desires. But forcing people to do things against their will or manipulating them to achieve certain behaviors is just wrong. Don’t do it.

How to Motivate People: 23 Simple Insights was originally published in Better Humans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Small changes to Facebook’s design that might help us have more empathy.

I made just one innocent political comment and it practically started a war. The conversation quickly escalated until my conservative aunt Karen was yelling at Chris, a left-leaning friend from high school. Once Karen stopped yelling, Chris responded with a thoughtful, tempered response — except for the thinly-veiled Hitler reference at the end of it.

In truth, Karen and Chris have never met in person, and they live thousands of miles apart; this encounter happened on Facebook (names changed for this essay). I have seen dozens of similar conflicts in the past few months and admit to shamelessly engaging in some myself. Yet, if Karen and Chris had met face-to-face, I think their conversation would have gone differently.

The social norms of in-person communication clearly don’t exist online, and Facebook is limited by constraints of design, structure, and algorithms — constraints that don’t exist in person. So, can Facebook make politics less painful? Let’s take a look at four behavioral design strategies Facebook could use to help create empathy and make us kinder toward each other.

1. Relationship Context

In the middle of a heated conversation, we sometimes forget we’re talking to a person, not a target. What’s worse is that most of the people we encounter on Facebook are connected to us within two or three degrees. Karen and Chris are just two degrees apart, with me as their mutual connection. Before emotions lead them to start verbally assaulting each other, they need subtle reminders: “Max likes and trusts this person…maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt.” Facebook can do more than just indicate that I am a mutual friend; it can contextualize the relationship and make that information visible as the conversation occurs.

I’ve encountered this situation myself: As I angrily began crafting an argument in response to some woman I thought was “clearly irrational,” I realized I was going head-to-head with my good friend’s mom! This realization instantly diffused my emotions. I edited the “snide” out of my remarks and, while I still disagreed with her stance, we had a pleasant, productive conversation.

What it could look like:

2. Increase Visual Empathy

In a 2008 research study, radiologists were presented with photos of their patients as they analyzed x-rays for those respective patients. This tweak helped humanize the radiologists’ work, and, as a result, they felt more empathy toward their patients. To the benefit of the patients, the radiologists were also more meticulous in their analyses when presented with the photos.

While photos abound on Facebook, they seem to have found second-tier status in comments, as they’ve been reduced to a few hardly-visible pixels. Applying the principles from the radiology study, Facebook could make photos (specifically faces) much more noticeable. If the psychological effect from the radiology study holds here, larger profile images would encourage users to have empathy and be more deliberate and “meticulous” with their comments.

3. Emphasize friendship “triggers”

The last time you met someone new, you probably followed a familiar pattern of questioning: What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do?

When we meet new people, we assimilate who they are within the context of our own personalities. We quickly filter through questions to determine how they are like us. The rote conversation veers off course as soon as we find a shared connection. “Oh, you live in Ohio? I grew up in Ohio…” In this sense, introductions are a methodical checklist to uncover shared interests, and research studies have proven that shared interests are the basis for friendship in online networks.

Unfortunately, Facebook interactions don’t often lead with introductions. Your first exposure to someone might be a comment that hotly contradicts your own beliefs, while the reality may be that you have much more in common with that person than you realize. When you hover over a name or photo in Facebook’s Newsfeed, a small profile box appears so you can see a mini-introduction to that person. However, information such as “9 recent posts,” which Facebook currently displays in the profile box, doesn’t seem very useful. Instead, Facebook should mention mutual friends (as it currently does) and introduce mutual interests. Isn’t that more friendly? Even something as simple as the heart icon in this example could have a positive psychological influence on users as they formulate opinions about strangers.

4. Give Users More Control

A few months ago, I observed a particularly awkward Facebook conversation that escalated way too quickly — something we’ve all seen before. My friend John (name changed) shared a political opinion in a post, then a friend of a friend reacted with personal attacks, logical fallacies, and the whole arsenal of troll techniques. Rather than feeding the flames, John simply deferred, saying “It looks like we have different opinions, but more importantly I respect you as a person and your right to express your beliefs.” And that was the end of the conversation…or so I thought. Instead, the troll doubled down! More personal attacks, more flawed logic, and John was left wondering whether he should remove the post altogether.

A simple Facebook feature could empower users to more easily moderate their posts: disabling comments. This way, when Karen and Chris start arguing, and I begin to feel uncomfortable with how they’re talking to each other, I don’t have to remove the post completely. After all, it’s my post, why should I allow Karen and Chris to commandeer it? At the same time, I don’t want to delete their comments because I’m afraid they might feel like I singled them out. Instead, I could just disable comments. Facebook already allows you to turn off notifications for a particular post, so disabling comments is a natural step to empower the owner of the post.

Other platforms, including YouTube and Instagram allow you to disable comments, so it’s not clear why Facebook avoids it, and I certainly think it would be a useful feature in this context.

What Else?

These are just a few ideas to apply behavioral design in a way that might help Facebook humanize online interactions. Do you think they would work? What ideas have I missed? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

—

Max Ogles is a behavior designer, product manager, and entrepreneur. Read more about behavior design, psychology, and technology, by subscribing to his newsletter at MaxOgles.com/newsletter.

Thanks to Tookie Graham, Sagar Doshi, and Dustin Skinner for reading versions of this article.

This article was originally published on TechCrunch.

Can Behavioral Design Make Us Kinder? was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When technology comes up in a casual conversation with a friend — whether you’re discussing Snapchat, Samsung, or Salesforce— we often joke about just how bad the addiction has gotten. Lately, I haven’t even been sure if addiction is the right word. Sure, there are people with serious technology addictions, on the level of chemical dependence, but the majority of us have little more than a nagging habit, understated by the fact that we love our technology so much.

Most of us don’t want to give up our phones. Why would we? Our phones right now have about 250,000 times the capacity of the computers that landed astronauts on the moon; the power and convenience of our smartphones is breathtaking.

Instead, most of us just want a bit more clarity in life. We want fewer disruptions, fewer wasted minutes. I’ve found many ways to achieve this, most of which are simple and you’ve probably already tried them. Today I’d like to focus on a handful that you may not have considered.

1. Distractions reach as far as your arms

In a 2006 research study with senior citizens, a handful of healthcare PhDs wanted to see what could increase participation in fitness programs. The researchers suspected that one variable in particular would affect the results: distance.

If an older woman lives further from a fitness facility, would she be less likely to attend a program there? Of course. In a summary for the research, the authors dryly conclude:

“Health systems providing fitness-program benefits…should consider location of program facilities in relation to membersʼ home addresses to maximize use of the benefit.”

Changing physical distance is one of the easiest ways to increase or decrease our likelihood of taking action.

The principle reinforces itself every day while I’m working. If I set my phone on the desk just a few feet from my computer, I check it. If I leave the phone in my jacket pocket, which hangs on the coatrack, I don’t check it. Avoid distractions by changing the physical distance between you and technology, whether that’s your phone, your computer, or the TV remote.

2. Live a Life Without Color

Someone recently suggested that a simple method of decreasing phone distractions is to set your phone to grayscale. That’s right — good ol’ fashioned black and white. But does it work? I couldn’t find a definitive answer, aside from my own non-scientific test.

To gather data, I used the Moment app, which tells me how many minutes I use my phone each day. Then I turned on grayscale and went about using my phone like I normally would. Or so I thought. Although I checked my phone just as many times as usual, the total time spent on my phone for the day was less than HALF.

Of course, I don’t have enough data to proclaim that grayscale will reduce your phone usage in half. But based on my experience, it definitely helps. The phone works just like normal, it has all the functionality I want, except it’s duller. There aren’t as many colors shouting for my attention, and I give up on app distractions much sooner than otherwise.

3. Protect the Special times

Most of us accept that distractions will occur throughout the day. Heck, often we WANT distractions to occur. It would be futile to attempt a life without distractions. BUT — if there are special times of the day, when focus and attention matter more than anything else, we should protect those times.

Productivity gurus across the Internet proclaim early mornings as the best time to work. I don’t disagree, but ultimately the most important time of day depends on your preferences. What if, for two hours a day, you turned your technology off? What could you accomplish during those times?

For me, the most important time is somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 in the evening. Not because I’m most productive then, but because that’s really the first chance I have to see my family. When I come home to my family, the last thing I need is a technology distraction. Instead of trying to eliminate all distractions all day long, optimize for the most important times of day, the ones that matter most.

4. Create Rules

For the past several months, my wife has taught a room full of rowdy seven-year-olds in Sunday School at church. They do kid stuff, like poking each other and running around the room, and saying whatever comes to their mind, regardless of the situation. Only after a month or so did my wife realize: the kids never had any expectations; there were no classroom rules. She sat the kids down, explained when it was okay to talk and when they should raised their hands to be called on. Voila. The kids started waiting for their turn to talk.

Sometimes we plow through life expecting things to work themselves out — without ever taking the time to set expectations about how things should work.

I’m guessing that, when you got your first cell phone, you didn’t sit down and write a treatise about how, when, and where, you were going to use it. But I’m suggesting that those questions are at least worth considering.

When is it okay use your phone? In what locations? At what time of day? In what social situations? Society has gradually settled on some basic rules of phone etiquette, but it’s up to you to define your own rules. For example, if I’m spending time with friends, I don’t like to use my phone, or even check it. It seems that even checking my phone, as simple as that may be, distracts from the people I’m with, who are the top priority. I don’t succeed 100% of the time, but the rule exists in my head and I diligently try to keep it.

I’m on the lookout for other great strategies to minimize distractions — what works for you?

4 Ways to Be Less Distracted by Technology was originally published in Better Humans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to Break a Phone Addiction

Constantly checking your phone is a habit that impairs your ability to be present in the real world. Here’s how to break the addiction.

On December 16, 2013, a Taiwanese tourist was walking along St. Kilda pier in Melbourne, Australia. The pier offers a beautiful scenic view of the ocean, so I’d imagine many tourists have their cell phones out to take pictures. As expected, this tourist had her phone out too, except she wasn’t saving precious memories — she was checking her Facebook newsfeed. She walked along the pier staring at her phone, and it was the distraction that did her in. KERPLOP. She fell right into the ocean.

Unfortunately for this poor tourist, she didn’t know how to swim. The good news is that she managed to float in the water for about twenty minutes until someone called the authorities and a boat arrived to save her. Official reports of the event suggest that, after nearly a half an hour in the water, the woman was still holding her cell phone when help arrived. Although there’s no mention of this in the reports, I like to think that the rescuers arrived and yelled down to her, “We’re here to save you” and she yelled back, “I am definitely posting this on Instagram!”

The Problem with Smartphones

It’s not likely that you’ve walked off of a pier while staring at your cell phone, but it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ve been distracted by your phone in a moment when your attention should have been elsewhere. We like to think that we’re experts in how and when to use our smartphones, but the truth is that they’ve really only been around for a few years. Usage and adoption of new technology nearly always outpaces our understanding of how that technology will ultimately affect us.

Usage and adoption of new technology nearly always outpaces our understanding of how that technology will ultimately affect us.

Take cars, for example. The first car was built in 1886 by a German engineer name Karl Benz. It took another thirty years for cars to be widely available in the U.S., when Henry Ford perfected the assembly line and other methods of manufacturing. Even then, drivers were well aware of the fatal risks of operating a massive machine at high speeds. And yet, seat belts did not become mandatory in cars until 1968! Usage and adoption of cars far outpaced our management of the risks.

The first iPhone was released in 2007, so we’re barely eight years into the era of smartphone technology. Do we even know what the risks are yet? Let’s take a look at some of the research that’s been done, as well as some of the basic precautions we should take to ensure that we harness the power of smartphones, rather than letting them pull us along for the ride.

The Research

I don’t need to tell you that there are new research studies released daily about smartphones, technology, and the internet. Technology is a hot topic for research and these articles in particular play well with the media. The gist of my argument is that technology has real psychological and physical effects that can be very detrimental. Here’s my supporting evidence:

Exhibit A: Technoference

A study produced last year at BYU suggests that even brief technology interruptions–a quick glance at a text message, a swipe during a conversation–can create conflict and “negative outcomes” in a relationship. There were correlations between “technoference” and lower life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, and technology-related conflict. In other words, real psychological effects.

Exhibit B: Techneck

We’re all-too-familiar with repetitive stress injuries (RSI) as a result of keyboard use–how about a new injury related to technology? Researchers deemed the injury “techneck,” defined as a “specific crease just above the collar bone that is caused by repeated bending of the neck to look at the screen of a portable device.” As you bend your neck further, the amount of force you’re supporting increases. Do this hundreds of times a day and the result is a problem that “deteriorate the back and neck muscles to the point of needing surgery.” And remember, we’ve only been really engrossed in smartphones for just a few years.

Exhibit C: The PUMP scale

A real scale has been devised to measure how much of a negative impact mobile phones can have on our beheavior. The acronym “PUMP” stands for “Problematic Usage of Mobile Phones.” The PUMP research points to real similarities between substance abuse addictions and technology overuse–to the point that “though problematic mobile phone use has not, to date, been recognized as a diagnosable condition, experts in the field are debating its inclusion as one.”

The Solutions

An interesting observation about technology is that sometimes the most productive people we know are actually the most guilty of “technoference” and other smartphone sins. Occasionally people confuse productivity with checking their phones, when that couldn’t be further from reality. Since phones form powerful habits, the best solutions are actions we can take to weaken the strength of the habit loops. Here are the two that have worked best for me:

1) Weaken the habit loop

Phones have a variety of different triggers and they’re nearly inescapable. You might have alert sounds for multiple different apps, vibrations, and notifications onscreen. Even when the sound is off, you can see your phone light up from several feet away and instinctively reach for it. To weaken the habit loop, just turn off the triggers.

On my phone, I’ve disabled every notification except for text messages and phone calls, which are the primary means of communicating with others. I’ve even disabled email notifications, though I did leave the little badge to see how many emails I have. Life is great with no notifications — the external triggers are gone. However, there are still internal triggers that cause me to reach for my phone, like when I’m bored. That’s what solution #2 is for.

2) Put cell phones in their place

Since the beginning, the mobile phone’s greatest asset has always been in the name itself: mobile. Our phones can go anywhere with us. If triggers are the primary reason smartphones are addictive, mobility is a close second. The old land lines stayed in one place; to make a call, you had to plant yourself in one location and stay there for the duration of the call.

One of the best ways to reduce your phone’s negative impact is to assign it a place. When you’re at home, set it on a table or shelf out of reach. At work, leave it in your bag or purse out of reach. When you don’t give your phone a place, that’s when things get out of control. On the sofa? You check your phone. On the toilet? You check your phone? In bed? You check your phone. If you find a place for your phone, and always leave it there, you can minimize the damage. Keeping your phone out of reach will help you wean yourself from the instinctive habit of reaching for it when you’re bored.

👉The Better Humans publication is a part of a network of personal development tools. For daily inspiration and insight, subscribe to our newsletter, and for your most important goals, find a personal coach.👈

How to Stop Checking Your Phone Like an Addict was originally published in Better Humans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the longstanding political debates in the United States concerns public education; no matter what changes we make to the system, there always seem to be plenty of problems to fix. Hiring high quality teachers and regularly evaluating them is a major issue in particular. In 2010, a group of economists set out to tweak the educational system using financial incentives. They designed a research study with the goal of improving teacher performance, and thereby student performance, by motivating the teachers with big cash bonuses.

Of course, cash bonuses as a job incentive are nothing new. But the interesting part of the study was the unconventional method that the economists used to administer the bonuses. Of the 150 teachers that participated in the study, half received their bonuses at the end of the school year based on the testing results of their students. The other half of the teachers received their bonuses at the beginning of the school year, with the understanding that they would have to pay back part of their bonuses if their students didn’t perform well at the end of the year. All other factors were the same, including the size of the bonuses and the criteria for grading performance.

Whether the bonus came at the beginning or at the end of the year, you would think it would offer significant motivation for teachers. After all, money is one of the easiest levers to pull if you’re trying to manipulate behavior. But when the school year had ended and the performance results were in, the second group–the teachers who received bonuses at the BEGINNING of the year–had significantly better results. The research team determined that loss aversion, or the fear of losing what we already have, was the primary factor that motivated teachers to perform better.

Economics for Babies

The key to the teacher performance study was a principle that economists and psychologists call “loss aversion.” It’s easy enough to understand: the pain of losing something outweighs the joy of gaining something, even if those two things have equal value. One group of teachers was motivated by the fear of losing the bonuses they had already received; the other group of teachers was motivated by the potential to earn a bonus. And the fear of losing a bonus was more motivating than the prospect of earning a bonus.

A simple, real-life situation might help to illustrate loss aversion as well. I have a one-year-old daughter that loves to play with balls and she often wobbles around the house clutching them close to her chest. If I hand her a ball, she’ll take it from me, then hold it up and smile to show me she’s pleased. But if she’s holding the ball and I take it from her, she throws her head back and drops on the floor screaming hysterically. She expresses mild amusement when she receives a ball, yet writhes in agony when she loses a ball. She’s just adhering to economic principles: the pain of losing a ball far outweighs the pleasure of receiving one.

Loss Aversion in the Wild

Now that we understand loss aversion, how can we use it to our advantage? Let’s take a look at two different creative uses of loss aversion that motivate people to behave differently than they would otherwise.

1. Lose if you snooze

There are plenty of apps to choose from that “threaten” to take your money if you don’t keep up with your goals. My favorite of these is Stickk.com, which helps you set up a goal, then creates a consequence, like donating your money to charity, if you don’t achieve your goal. But since Stickk is already relatively well-known, I thought I would introduce you to a devious (and technically illegal) alarm clock that made the news last year.

If you REALLY want to wake up early, and you’re fully invested in a loss aversion strategy for motivation, build yourself a money-shredding alarm clock. The alarm goes off, along with a timer. If you don’t get up and stop the alarm soon enough, it will slowly feed your cash into a small paper shredder. This seems to be a very literal implementation of loss aversion: take action now, or your money will be destroyed. I haven’t personally tried an alarm clock like this, but I imagine it would be very effective. If you decide to rig something like this for yourself, however, you may want to be, umm, discreet about your new wake up strategy, since destroying money is a felony in the United States.

2. Saving Energy

You might find that loss aversion already exists in some areas of your life, but you don’t find it motivating because you aren’t even aware of it. This was the case with a simple study conducted about the amount of energy used in homes. Most of us receive a utility bill each month for the energy that we’ve used, but as long as the bill stays relatively the same, we hardly think about how much money we’re spending.

In the energy conservation study, homeowners were given an “in home display” that showed them exactly how much energy they were using throughout the month. This direct feedback motivated homeowners to change their behavior, reducing their consumption of energy by an average of 7%. Without knowing how fast we’re consuming energy, we blindly pay the bill that comes each month. But when we can see the amount of energy being used (and feel the pain of how much we’re spending) it’s a lot more motivating to change our behavior.

Change Your Perspective

Whether you’re trying to change your own behavior or trying to influence others, loss aversion can be a powerful form of motivation. If you take a look at the different motivating factors in your life, you may find that you can replace traditional incentives with loss aversion strategies. It’s a subtle shift in perspective, but it takes advantage of our psychological tendencies and ultimately may help you achieve the results you’re looking for.

A Psychological Principle that Can Instantly Increase Your Motivation was originally published in Better Humans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This essay is an excerpt from the new book, Boost: Create Good Habits Using Psychology and Technology, which is FREE on Amazon for a limited time.

Although musical preference is generally open to debate, the world seems to have come to a consensus about who deserves to be crowned the greatest band in history: The Beatles. Of course, you can disagree with this all you want, but The Beatles lead the pack in sales (nearly one billion albums sold, based on some estimates), number one hits (20!), and public opinion (if you Google “greatest band of all time,” The Beatles are the first search result). The Beatles are so beloved that Abbey Road, the road in London that served as the setting for their Abbey Road album cover, may employ a full-time crossing guard due to the dozens of adoring fans that stop in the road to take pictures.

With all of this success, it’s natural for us to wonder who the band members were, where they came from, and how they reached this level of musical genius. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell uses The Beatles as an example of how ten thousand hours of deliberate practice elevated the band to an elite level of performance. That may be the case, but one of their songs in particular originated in a single moment of pure inspiration, and it went on to become one of their greatest hits.

The song was called “Scrambled Eggs.” At least, that’s what Paul McCartney says they called it originally. He tells the story of how the melody came about:

I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, ‘That’s great, I wonder what that is?’ There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th — and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot but because I’d dreamed it I couldn’t believe I’d written it. I thought, ‘No, I’ve never written like this before.’ But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing.

McCartney explained that the tune was so familiar to him that he went around asking other people in the music industry, “Who wrote this song?” Eventually he accepted that he had written the song himself–inspiration struck and the melody was born. At the outset, McCartney just sang along with silly lyrics, “Scrambled eggs…oh, my baby, how I love your legs…” because he only had the melody. The song eventually became “Yesterday.” It has dozens of accolades, including number one on the US Billboard charts, and may be the most “covered” song of all time. (I highly recommend the song, you can listen to it here.)

The Origins of Inspiration

If only it were that easy—you wake up in the morning next to a piano and sound out one of the greatest melodies of the last century. You may be surprised to learn that while this type of inspiration is clearly an outlier, finding inspiration is something that you can actually DO; you don’t need to wait for it to occur. Allow me to introduce you to the study of inspiration within the field of psychology.

In 2003, two psychologists at the University of Rochester, Todd Thrash and Andrew Elliot, set out to conduct the definitive study of inspiration using psychology. This was not your average academic study—it was a seven-part study that tested dozens of hypotheses about inspiration and created a framework for studying it in the future. The entire research study was an impressive undertaking, and by the end the researchers had two very important results: 1) a psychological scale that could be used to measure inspiration, and 2) a list of over thirty personality traits with data to show whether these traits cause inspiration to occur. In essence, Thrash and Elliot turned inspiration into a science: if you exhibit particular personality traits, you’re more likely to be inspired.

That brings us to the burning question: What were the inspiring personality traits? Like I said, they tested over thirty different traits; some were directly related to inspiration, others not at all. Here are the top three traits, in order of how strongly they related to inspiration: openness to experience, self-esteem, and creativity.

Now obviously you can’t just pick-up some extra creativity in the checkout aisle at Walmart–it’s a personality trait; it’s part of who you are. But you can change your personality over time, and if you strengthen these traits in particular you can optimize yourself to receive McCartney-esque inspiration.

The Top Traits

Each personality trait has volumes of literature on its own, so I trust that you’ll dive into the ocean of research and find what works best for you. However, here are a few suggestions to get you started. And, since technology can be a powerful force in personal change, I’ll include a few apps that might help you along the way.

1. Openness to Experience

In their conclusions about this trait, Thrash and Elliot wrote, “These findings suggest that inspiration is facilitated by receptiveness.” Openness is certainly not an easy trait to develop. We like habits and customs because they give us comfort and security. For example, do you drive the same route to work every day? So do I. It’s the fastest route, that’s why I take it, but the repetition of the same sights every day doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of inspiration.

Here’s a simple suggestion to start being more open: Give up one thing you’re accustomed to. Try a new food, drive a new route to work, listen to a radio station that you’ve never heard before–anything to break an old routine. For years, I’ve ordered the same exact burrito from the menu at one of my favorite restaurants, Cafe Rio. I never order anything else, and honestly I don’t even know what else is on the menu. But if you’ll try a small experiment, I will too: the next time I visit Cafe Rio, I’ll order something different.

If you want to think bigger than just a new lunch entree or route to work, you might try out Everest, an app that’s meant to help you achieve goals. Everest seems to place an emphasis on trying new things, so the social community within the app might help nudge you in the direction of developing openness.

2. Self-esteem

Inspiration comes more frequently to people with high self-esteem, and that makes sense: with high self-esteem, you’re less likely to set artificial limitations on your own abilities or be inhibited by what other people might think. Low self-esteem can have deep psychological roots and I’m certainly not qualified to offer advice for such a complex issue. Instead, I’ll offer a simplistic suggestion that is applicable to self-esteem: avoid comparing yourself to others.

I’ve written before that comparing yourself to other people is a worthless exercise because there will always be someone smarter, richer, and more beautiful than you are. And that’s based on statistics: you virtually have no chance of ever being the BEST in the world at anything. (If it makes you feel better, I’m right there with you!) So rather than focusing on everything you don’t have, make an inventory of what you DO have.

I’m sure there are hundreds of tools you can use to list what you have and what you’re grateful for; I’ve found one app that I especially like, called Grateful. Every day it asks for one thing you are grateful for, with a simple and effective interface.

3. Creativity

Creativity is similar to openness in that we need to let go of conventional or routine ways of doing things to find new ways of expressing ourselves. Unfortunately we often have default habits that we rely on in situations that might otherwise yield creativity. For example, when we stand in line at a fast food restaurant, we don’t exhibit any creativity in attempting to preoccupy ourselves–we just scroll away on our smartphones. In fact, not long ago some psychologists found that most people would rather be electrocuted than sit alone by themselves.

If you’d like to be more creative, my app suggestion is a bit counterintuitive. Choose to use an app that limits your smartphone functionality so that it becomes less of a distraction. Stop opening apps, checking notifications, and taking phone calls to devote more time to clear thinking. An app for this on iPhone is called Mobile Flow. It works in conjunction with Airplane mode on your phone, so it eliminates all unnecessary distractions. Deliberate focus can allow you to think and be creative without distractions, so I highly recommend the app.

3 Ways to Receive Inspiration, Backed by Science was originally published in Better Humans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A commonly quoted (and incredibly scary) stat reveals that 9 out of 10 people who undergo heart bypass surgeries as a result of poor health are unable to change their habits, even with their lives on the line.

We’ve all failed at something, though luckily most of us don’t face death as a consequence. Here’s a short list of some of the habits I started, only to eventually fail:

• For two months, I went running 3 to 4 times each week. (I even ran a half marathon!) Then I quit running and didn’t run again for over a year.
• I decided to improve my reading speed and comprehension. I read every day, practicing with a course called Breakthrough Rapid Reading. I quit after the first month.
• I finally created a habit of waking up early. For three months, I woke up at 5:30 AM every day. Sleep debt and laziness caught up with me–now it’s hard to get up before 7:30.

Thankfully, these failures didn’t have any significant consequences attached to them for me. My life would be slightly better if I had kept them up, but even without them I can be pretty happy and content.

But the thing that bothers me is that each of these habits was firmly in place; I had done them consistently for at least a month before I failed. I had mastered self control, exercised willpower, and shaped my life with these new productive routines, but each time the final outcome was a miserable regression back to the status quo.

The #1 Reason

So what the heck happened?! The reason these habits failed for me, and the number one reason people give up on good habits generally is that they just aren’t enjoyable.

It’s a simple truth: you are less likely to continue doing something that you do not enjoy. Here’s some proof.

Earlier this year, researchers completed a simple study about work “burnout.” First, they asked 154 undergrads to complete a series of word puzzles. Depending on your personality, “word puzzles” might sound like the 10th circle of hell, or maybe it works you up into a giddy, border-line embarrassing excitement. The researchers accounted for this by asking students, “How enjoyable do you think this task will be?” then they set them to work on the puzzles.

The results were impressive: the students who enjoyed working on the puzzles performed the best when solving them. To make things even more interesting, researchers asked students to complete a simple task after working on the puzzles. The students had to squeeze a “grip exerciser,” the spring-loaded contraption used to strengthen your hand. Using the results, researchers proved that the students who enjoyed completing the puzzles were also less fatigued, and were able to squeeze the grip for a longer period of time.

Regarding the experiment, researcher Paul O’Keefe said, “Engaging in personally interesting activities not only improves performance, but also creates an energized experience that allows people to persist when persisting would otherwise cause them to burn out.”

(This research has some limitations, namely that it was for a short term assignment rather than habit formation over time. Two other research studies confirm a direct correlation between enjoyment and adherence to a habit. Find them here and here.)

That Makes Sense, But So What?

If you enjoy doing something, naturally you’ll be more likely to do it. This is practically common sense. But let’s say I’m trying to create a new habit, like running daily, and it’s really not something that I innately enjoy. How will I get myself to run every morning? I’ll convince myself that it doesn’t matter if I enjoy it, because I have the willpower to achieve anything (cue superhero music). I’ll gut it out, forcing myself to run with the “no pain, no gain” mantra, enduring agony as I run each day. And that’s a mistake.

In a another study, this one at Northwestern University, researchers administered a “willpower test” to a group of heavy smokers. In reality, it wasn’t a willpower test at all, just mindless word associations in a quiz, but at the end the participants received a score indicating that they had either high or low “impulse control.” In other words, after taking this meaningless test, some of the smokers were told that they had high willpower and others were told that they had low willpower.

In the second part of the experiment, all of the smokers watched the movie Coffee and Cigarettes, and they were offered rewards to refrain from smoking. In this scenario, researchers found that the group that believed they had “high impulse control” was actually more likely to give in to the temptation of smoking!

Remember, neither group actually had higher willpower–random assignment made it so that the groups were relatively the same. But one group thought that they had higher willpower, and that led to them overestimating their abilities. As soon as we begin to rely too much on willpower and overestimate our self control, that’s when we’re most vulnerable to fail.

Convert to Enjoyable

The same pattern held true for each of my failed behaviors. For example, I worked for months to adjust to waking up early, always forcing myself out of bed even though I hated it. I reached the point where I thought I had mastered it, and that’s the point when I failed.

Eventually I read an article from accomplished personal development blogger Steve Pavlina, entitled, “How to Wake Up Feeling Totally Alert.” Steve’s premise is that if you feel terrible when you wake up and have to work extra hard to get out of bed in the morning, you’re doing it wrong. Waking up early should be something that you enjoy and look forward to. If you teach yourself to enjoy the habit, you won’t even need to rely on willpower because you’ll be excited to do it.

The more I thought about my failed habits, the more I realized that I really didn’t enjoy any of them; I did them to be productive and often felt good afterwards, but initiating the process was always painful. As I diagnosed my failed habits, I came up with this matrix:

During the months that I woke up early, I had the habit of waking up, but didn’t enjoy it; every day was painful. I was stuck in the top left quadrant of the Habit Success Matrix, which made the habit “difficult to maintain.” If I had found a way to make the habit enjoyable, I could have moved to the sweet spot, the top right quadrant, and the habit would have been easy to maintain.

Instead, my willpower and desire slowly drained until I eventually gave up on the habit.

The moral of this story? Focus on making habits enjoyable. If you’re trying to start a new habit and you find the habit enjoyable, it will be easy to change and easy to maintain that habit.

How Do You Make Habits Enjoyable?

Full length books can be devoted to answering this question, “How do you make habits enjoyable,” so I won’t promise a solution here. Instead, I’ll stick with one simple idea that I’ve seen over and over in different forms, a tried and true principle of behavior change: when you start a new habit, stick to the absolute simplest action possible.

In the words of habit blogger Leo Babauta, “Make it so simple you can’t say no.” Much of the pain and agony we experience as we try to engage new habits comes from self imposed expectations. We tell ourselves, “I have to go to the gym every day or I’m a failure,” or “If I eat one dessert, my entire fitness plan is ruined.”

By focusing on the simplest possible action, we guarantee our success and make it much easier to progress over time. Trying to eat healthy? Start by eating one piece of lettuce. Just one. Do that every day for a week, until you feel ready to work yourself up to another piece of lettuce. Your body and mind have time to adjust, and it will be much easier to learn to enjoy your new habits instead of forcing yourself into something you simply can’t enjoy.

The #1 Reason Good Habits Don’t Last was originally published in Better Humans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the beginning of 2010, when daily deals site Groupon was really hitting its stride and copycat businesses were popping up left and right, a small startup called Yipit was just getting off the ground. Yipit was involved in daily deals, too, but rather than creating the deals itself, Yipit simply aggregated the deals offered by the other companies to offer a nice tidy list in a daily email.

Like any startup, the Yipit team planned PR and marketing around their launch and hoped that the buzz would yield a nice base of users, who in turn would share with friends and create steady word-of-mouth growth. They managed to secure the spotlight from a major tech publication and then rode the wave. “After months of toiling away in obscurity, you feel like you’ve finally made it,” wrote Vinicius Vacanti, Yipit’s CEO, on his blog. “People know what you’re working on now. People all over the world are now using your product.”

But all of that attention was, in reality, for naught. The end result was an unimpressive 200 active users, much lower than Vacanti expected given the size of the audience that read about the launch. For one exciting day, it seemed like the whole world knew about Yipit—until the following morning, when Vacanti and his team discovered the unfortunate truth about the spotlight: That is, it’s always brighter when you’re in it.

The Psychology of the App Spotlight

Many companies have had experiences like Yipit’s. In fact, it’s easy to dismiss this story altogether, chalking it up to the woes of a fledgling, unproven startup without any traction. But Yipit’s lofty expectations and subsequent disappointment weren’t just a coincidence; they were the result of the powerful and potentially detrimental psychological effect of valuing media feedback and artificial “buzz” over the only kind of feedback that actually matters: The kind that comes from users. If a startup isn’t aware of it, the spotlight effect can occur repeatedly over time—every feature release, every redesign, ever hire—until it gradually drains the company’s employees of their optimism. Time and again, artificial buzz will belie the cricket sounds coming from the user base, making everyone feel like they’re a little too drunk on their own Kool-Aid. The only option at that point is to back off your devotion to the product to avoid utter disappointment—a process we colloquially know as giving up.

But positive press is supposed to buttress entrepreneurs and spread the word, right? So what is behind this effect, exactly?

How Our Brains Short-Circuit When We Get Attention

In the late 1990s, Dr. Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues recruited a large group of Cornell University undergrads for a simplepsychological experiment. In one room, five students sat patiently at a table. In another room, one student met with researchers and was asked to put on a new T-shirt. The student could choose between three T-shirts, each with the face of a different iconic figure: Bob Marley, Jerry Seinfeld, or Martin Luther King Jr. With the new T-shirt on, the student was taken to join the rest of the group.

However, after just a few moments of being in the room—before the student could even sit down—a researcher quickly mumbled an excuse about being “too far behind to join this group…” and took the shirt-choice student back to the other room. Then the remaining students at the table completed a brief questionnaire while the student with the T-shirt answered a few questions separately. What Gilovich wanted to know: Would the student, pleased to wear a new, trendy T-shirt in front of the group, overestimate how many people noticed it?

The definitive answer: Yes. In reality, Gilovich and his team found that an average of only two of the five students in the group noticed the T-shirt that the subject had chosen. On the other hand, the students who had been segregated from the group and asked to choose a T-shirt estimated on average that at least four people remembered it. In other words, they overestimated their peers’ attention levels by double.

In conclusion of the study, Gilovich and his colleagues wrote:

People tend to believe that more people take note of their actions and appearance than is actually the case. We dub this putative phenomenon the spotlight effect: People tend to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on them than it really does.

The Underlying Enemy Of Your Launch Is Self-Consciousness

The problem with over-estimating the attention others pay you—what can be called the “spotlight effect”—is that it causes us to behave in ways that are not consistent with the reality of our circumstances. Simply put, our self-consciousness derails our decision-making.

We’ve all experienced this: You spill food on your shirt at lunch. Assuming that everyone will notice the stain, you spend the rest of the day avoiding social encounters to save yourself the embarrassment. In truth, it’s unlikely that anyone would notice the stain at all. Instead, they just notice you behaving awkwardly.

A startup that is affected by the spotlight effect might overthink their marketing goals, underestimate the cost of acquiring customers, unintentionally craft an inauthentic brand, or set unrealistic expectations—all things that result in an emotionally frustrated team. Of course, it’s possible for a company to overcome these or other missteps, as Yipit did, but that’s missing the point: Time, money, and optimism are at a premium for a startup, so each small miscalculation is a step toward an undesirable fate. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts, as a company repeatedly behaves in a way that is not consistent with the reality of their situation.

As Venture Capitalist Brad Feld wrote in his book Burning Entrepreneur:

The great entrepreneurs just keep building their companies. They focus relentlessly on their products, their customers, and their people. […] They just keep at it and the very best ones shut out and ignore all the noise.

How To Keep the Spotlight in Check

Is there any way to mitigate the spotlight effect? Even when we’re aware that it’s occurring, it’s incredibly difficult to prevent ourselves from overestimating the amount of attention we’re receiving. To find out whether it’s possible to mitigate the effect of the spotlight, I spoke with Dr. Gilovich himself. He offered three suggestions, specific to companies, that he thought would help startups maintain appropriate focus:

1. Consider the opposite: Gilovich explained that when we anticipate more attention than usual (in the form of PR or a big marketing event) we expect that the audience will be massive. We concentrate on the best possible scenario. To bring ourselves back down to earth, we should consider the opposite outcome. If your startup had a large amount of negative press, how bad would it really hurt you? In most cases, it would wear off after a week or so and you’d continue business as usual. And when you receive positive attention, you can expect a similar effect.
2. Whittle down to the truth: Dr. Gilovich described a strategy in which you envision a big circle that represents everyone in the target audience for your product. Then imagine a smaller concentric circle, which represents everyone that will read the publication your company appeared in. Then a smaller circle for the people that will actually read the whole article. And a smaller circle for the number of people that will click through to your site. And smaller. And smaller. Eventually you’ve narrowed down to a tiny circle that represents the microcosm that might try your product and like it. A nice, humbling way to take on the spotlight effect.
3. Seek a variety of perspectives: Rather than focusing on one data point, such as the total number of people that will hear about your product at its press launch, focus on other variables like whether or not these people are even in your target audience. Dr. Gilovich acknowledged that one of the best ways to take in different perspectives is to receive constant feedback from a variety of people who are outsiders to your company and your industry.

For a startup, capturing the spotlight from the press can be a huge advantage—it always feels good to have free publicity and third-party validation. But if all the hype inhibits your judgment and leads to poor, unfounded decisions, the spotlight will be the slow death of your company. In the words of Brad Feld, work to “shut out and ignore the noise” and you’ll find it easier to avoid the negative effects of the spotlight.

Thanks to Nir Eyal, Ammon Cunningham, and Ben Ogles for their feedback on earlier versions of this article.

This essay was first published on FastCompany.com.

Max Ogles is a writer and entrepreneur based in Utah. You can read more from him at MaxOgles.com and connect with him on Twitter @maxogles.

On Chess

By the time I reached kindergarten, my dad had taught me how to play chess. We sat at the kitchen table and he showed me where to place the pieces on the board. Everything made sense in my six-year-old mind; there were castles and horseys and bishops, like at church—and there were ponds. Dad explained that in chess, castles are called rooks, horseys are called knights, and yes, they’re bishops like at church. But he didn’t explain that the ponds were actually pawns, because he didn’t know I was confused and neither did I. Only later, around the age of ten, did I realize that ponds were actually pawns, and the childhood discrepancy was settled.

My dad taught me chess tactics, too. He advised: Always get your knights and bishops out early, control the center of the board, and castle as soon as you can. He showed me how to win a game with only two pieces, a king and a rook. He showed me how to win a game with only four moves, start to finish.

He taught me to love chess, like he does, like his father did.

Now, so many checkmates later, chess isn’t so much a game that I play as it is a memory linking together the family generations. My grandpa died three years ago, my dad only plays chess occasionally, and I’m married with a life that yields little mention of chess at all. But I still love it. I love a game I rarely play, because the places and people connected to the game last longer than the pieces and moves and games themselves.

When I first learned to play, Dad was a chess fanatic. He played at home, across the table from me, or one of his close friends, or anyone who had the slightest interest in chess. Dad played at picnics, church socials, and official chess tournaments. He played chess online (three or four nights a week) against people from all over the world. For a while, he even played chess by mail. Books of chess strategy lined a shelf on the bookcase in his office. A new edition of Chess Life magazine arrived each month, and we were members of the U.S. Chess Federation.

At one point, Dad built his own chessboards. He made two of them, one to keep and the other to give to Grandpa. He cut each block separately, and then glued the alternating dark and light wooden pieces together. He sanded the checkered boards to a sliding smooth finish and stained them so they shined. Some of the squares were uneven, and I think one side of the board might have been longer than the others, but my dad’s not a carpenter—he just loves chess.

Whenever I played chess against Dad, he’d give up one of his pieces before the game even started. “Choose any one of my pieces,” he’d say, “and I’ll play without it.” I picked the queen every time—the tall, elegant, merciless queen, invaluable for her versatility—but even with this handicap, my dad always won.

I can easily see why my dad loves chess, because bishops and rooks crisscross through the memories I have of my grandpa. I grew up in Ohio, and Grandpa lived in Utah, so I only saw him for a week or so every other year. My dad says Grandpa played a lot of chess as a twenty-year-old merchant marine, especially when he was stuck in the hospital with tuberculosis. Move after move, the games piled up because the hospital staff wouldn’t let Grandpa out of bed to do anything else. Fifty years, nine kids, and thirty grandkids later, he was still playing. When the aunts, uncles and grandkids filled his house during the holidays or summer break, Grandpa played with anyone who could sit at the table and reach the pieces. “Anyone up for a game of chess?” he’d ask the crowd.

Grandpa used a favorite set of small wooden pieces and the shiny smooth board that my dad had given him. Whenever I played with Grandpa, he would go easy on me; he’d say, “Now are you sure about that move? I’ll let you take it back if you want.” But even with the help, I still never beat him.

Grandpa had taught my dad to play chess, and Dad told me his own chess life story—he learned from Grandpa, then joined the chess club in high school, and played and played, and read and studied all those strategy books, until finally he beat Grandpa. And Grandpa used to tell me the same story, except slower and with a bigger smile. He explained how Dad joined the chess club in high school, and played and played, and read and studied all those strategy books, until my dad finally beat my grandpa. The way Grandpa told me the story, I could tell he was proud of my dad.

I love chess because my dad loves chess, and because my Grandpa loved chess.

Now just a few years after Grandpa’s death, I’ve learned more about him. I know that his favorite nighttime snack was bread with milk. I know that when he had an old car, he usually didn’t sell it—he just gave it away. I know that my grandma and my aunts asked for a dented coffin when Grandpa died, because Grandpa was as thrifty as they come.

My grandma cried when she gave me the favorite set of chess pieces and the solid smooth board that belonged to Grandpa. And that seems right, because most of what I know about Grandpa, passed on by my dad, is chess—moves and schemes shifting and twisting into beautiful synchronous sense.