Category: Behavior

  • Am I Becoming an iPhone Recluse?

    I started experiencing profound relief every night when I powered down my smartphone. Why is that? Overture: What follows is an atypical piece from me. It’s a lightly-edited journal entry that explores territory adjacent to “My Quest to be Whelmed” from a month ago.  Soundtrack: I’ve never suggested music to have playing when reading one…

  • My Quest to be Whelmed

    It’s hard to watch the news and harder to talk about it with people who might disagree. I’m overwhelmed. Are you? I’m a lucky guy. I have a happy marriage. I’m healthy. My wife is healthy. We live in a lovely suburb just remote enough that there’s not much crime, and we can still get…

  • The Paradox of No Choice

    An odd VENN diagram of tariffs and AI are narrowing our choices as customers. Will this change be permanent? What are the implications for products and retailers? Note: this piece takes its title from Barry Schwartz’s famous and terrific book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. In 1985, Wendy’s ran a memorable, minute-long spot,…

  • Escape the Digital Cocoon

    The only way to reduce polarization is to talk with people in real life. Here’s one way to do just that *and* find a seat at a coffee bar. A while back, I was thinking about how our behavior would change as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) became common. (This still hasn’t happened.)…

  • The Distraction Button

    What Sydney Sweeney and Jeffrey Epstein have in common, plus why it’s time to revive the word “Ridiculous.” For the Dispatch readers who aren’t compulsive media watchers, a summary: a scandal of the week involves the actress Sydney Sweeney in a new ad campaign for American Eagle jeans. The campaign’s tag line is “Sydney Sweeney has great…

  • Experience Stacks and the End of Quests

    My search for a 22-year-old comic book series led to a realization about where satisfaction comes from… or doesn’t. A quick word about Experience Stacks before we move on to our top story. Experience Stacks are the different contexts that a customer, user, or audience brings to a product or story. People improvisationally shift from context to…

  • Scammer Spotting: Little Tips and Big Worries

    Online scams are a $500B annual “industry.” Here are a few ways to protect yourself from being the next victim. There’s a thin line between paranoia and sensible precaution. When it comes to online scams, it’s hard to see the line because it’s squiggly, jagged, dotted, and looks like the EKG of somebody on a…

  • Adapt-amnesia, and Why it Matters

    We’re the most adaptable species on the planet, but then we forget that we adapted. That’s bad news for incumbent businesses today.  2025 Prolog: I’m still on the road, so this week I’m sharing a piece I wrote for the Center back in November of 2017. It’s where I first articulated one of my key ideas: Adapt-amnesia. What is adapt-amnesia?…

  • The Flip

    In today’s world of limitless information, stores, experts, and brands need to find new functions in order to avoid irrelevance. I’m traveling for business, so I hope you’ll indulge me and let me share a piece I wrote for The Center back in November of 2019 that I think holds up. I’ve updated links and fussily changed…

  • Will AIs Ever Laugh?

    On jokes, AI, and troubles with The Turing Test. It’s the second laugh that interests me because it tells us something about what happens under the hood when we read or hear a joke. Recently, I picked up a terrific joke from an unlikely source: “My mother is over 100 and fit as a fiddle because…