Inundated by shiny objects
Without you even realizing it
Hi and welcome back!
It has been four months since my last letter.
Day-to-day life got a bit overwhelming and I simply ran out of energy. But after this hiatus, I have a healthy list of topics, lots of thoughts, and more structure to my days and weeks.
I don't know if this will go back to weekly yet, but that is what I am targeting.
Technology has been progressing at an alarming rate in recent months. It seems to be compounding daily. New advances in AI, new applications, and new services. As someone that works in the tech space, specifically Digital Ops, I am hyper-aware of them, if I want to be or not.
They are thrown in my face daily on Twitter, either directly or by power users and early adopters. They boast and claim that X service or Y tool is changing their personal and work lives. When seeing this day by day, you start to get intrigued, even if you try to ignore them. Finally, the interest compounds enough for you to click through to the launch page or affiliate link.
Suddenly, an hour or more has passed, you are signed up for a free trial and you have linked various accounts to this new thing because it claims to be the thing you have always wanted. You may or may not keep this thing, which makes it even more troubling. Because, if you don't keep it, you would have entirely wasted your most precious resources – time and attention. These culprits, these tools and services, are called shiny objects.
While this term is probably not totally new for you, you might not realize what is or what is not a shiny object anymore. They are everywhere and you need to do less and less to have them presented to you. Between ads, algorithms, and affiliates, you are inundated by them. I miss the days of magazines and tv commercials. At least those were obvious and semi-intentional.
I have found myself in this trap a lot over the past 6 or so months. It has consumed more time than I'd like to admit. For me, these shiny objects usually come in the form of an app or service, but these might be slightly different for you. Your shiny objects might be clothes, physical tech, or real estate.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about how we can be more aware of them, how we can decide if they are worth our attention, what is the trade-off of our attention – when going down the rabbit hole, and how we can ignore them if we choose.
Awareness
In a world where we are force-fed content, it might be hard to realize what our choice is and what we are programmed to do. Ads, algorithms, and influencers try to impact our choice by slowly feeding us bits of something new or novel. We have to be aware of this.
Look for the clues
How do you do that though? Look for the clues.
When on a social network, like Twitter, there is usually an indicator of what is an ad. This one is usually obvious. But not all of them are.
You can also become intrigued because the people you are following start to talk about that new thing. You probably have felt this a lot with ChatGPT and the general conversation around AI.
I have personally not gone down the AI rabbit hole much – thank goodness. I have spent way too much time with Arc(The Browser Company's web browser), Readwise(+ all read it later tools), Tana(the new PKM on the block), and a small foray into read.cv(another professional network).
Wait for the hype cycle to settle down
This one is hard, but wait for the hype cycle to settle down. We all want to be the first in line, to grab our handle(username), and to lock in that discounted price. If we wait, we can see if it is truly attention-worthy.
To wait out the hype cycle, you can simply ignore the sensory overload or intentionally mute the keywords – which seems more efficient. This will programmatically limit the chatter in your social feeds.
Alternatively, you could even use a social network that doesn't rely on algorithms – such as Mastodon. If you pair Mastodon, with muted words, your attention is in your control.
Attention Worthy
Will this thing give me more than it takes?
What if that new thing is actually worth your attention? How do we even determine this? I boil it down to a simple concept – will this thing give me more than it takes?
Going back to my shiny objects over the past months – most of them were not worth it. Tana, Read.cv, and even Readwise took more than they gave. All of these things required learning and setup. They were not brand new concepts or tools. They were iterations on similar things. I have Obsidian as my PKM, plus Notion for work. LinkedIn is not going anywhere anytime soon. I even have Matter for most of my read later needs. These took a lot of time and attention away. It is hard to admit, but it is important that we do, even retroactively.
The shiny object that was worth my time is Arc. It has helped with my freelance, agency, and personal life balances. Specifically, the way it handles something they call Spaces. This allowed me to carve dedicated areas to work within. When I pair this with time blocking, I can focus on specific things, while blocking out the others.
I could have known that Arc was worth my time because that was a key issue in my workflow and a key feature in Arc.
So when that initial barrage of content starts, before muting the keyword or switching social networks, do a quick scan. Are the hyped features solving a key problem for you or are they an iteration or substitution for something you already have? You'll likely know the answer without even thinking.
Trade-offs
Shiny objects consume one thing more than anything else – time. When giving your attention to shopping for that new jacket or in my case, new reading system, the thing that is always lost is time.
Most services and apps give you a free trial and most clothing can be returned, so money is usually not the cost. Time is something you can never get back.
When I went down the rabbit hole of Arc, I used hours of time on setup and learning. But now, I save time bouncing between fewer tools. I don't need to switch my default browser at the end of the day. I don't even need to worry about compatibility issues. These were all issues when using Chrome + Safari + Firefox. Now I work 90% in Arc, in my Space, and during a certain time chunk of my day.
As for that time spent testing Tana and Readwise – let's not talk about that.
Wrap up
As the world becomes more digital, and we spend more time in front of our screens, we become less in control of our actions. We need to try to be more intentional with our attention and time. I have mentioned this in the past, but I am a minimalist and an essentialist. I use these ways of living as a set of checks and balances. Physical objects do not really entice me, but I was clearly not accounting for the digital, in the way I should have been. There have always been shiny objects, but now they take the form of digital things. My intentionality is now tuned to account for the digital, is yours?