Thought That Came Unbidden

I started 2021 with six habit tracker programs installed on my phone. Not from any obsessiveness, because I discovered something interesting about myself last year: I’m one of those people who is motivated by continuity.

Like a stereotypical urbanite creative, I started meditating recently. To my credit, I actually started before “these trying times” way back in August 2019. And while I was inconsistent in my practice, I did it enough to get a taste. What I didn’t realize is that for me, someone prone to anxiety, it actually does what all those patchouli doused hippies claim meditation does.

It calms me down.

On days when I don’t get my morning routine – which consists of morning pages (thank you, Julia Cameron) and 10 minutes of meditation – I’m like an over wound toy. Jangling nerves and snappish replies, followed by the inevitable guilt and shame which just winds me up even more. In a year when nothing worked right, this actually did.

And the app I’m using, the orange dot one, taps brilliantly into two aspects of human psychology: streak theory (or the theory of sunk costs) and nudge theory.

Streak theory powers every frequent buyer reward program in existence. For continued action – such as buying a certain number of sandwiches – someone gets a small reward. In sophisticated programs, or in certain educational settings, longer streaks earn rarer rewards. Keeping a streak going taps into our desire to make our sunk costs, the money or effort we’ve already put into something, be worthwhile.

Nudge theory, for which Richard Thaler won a Nobel prize in economics in 2017, is a concept that says that subtle shifts in policy are more effective at getting people to make decisions that are broadly beneficial for their lives. Digital apps leverage nudge theory by pinging you several times a day with light touch, often humorous reminders to buy that sandwich or do that meditation session.

In the digital realm, apps use these pings, or nudges, to leverage your working memory. Miller’s Law tells us that the human working memory can hold 7 plus or minus 2 things on average, unless something comes along to push it out of your mind, you’re probably going to do that session, or get that sandwich from that place when it comes time for lunch.

Streak theory and using nudge theory in this way both have a dark side, though. Keeping a streak going can be a form of addiction. It can also lead to paying for things you don’t really need.

There is also a school of thought that says streaks alone, which are neutral, aren’t effective at forming habits. To form habits, we need behaviors to become ingrained. They need to be things we do without thinking about them.

This is where the habit trackers come in. It isn’t simply a matter of getting that badge or seeing that graph add one more point for my completed activity. I also need the reminders. I need to use the addictive, distracting nature of cell phones to my advantage.

If I’m going to look at the thing, it needs to serve me in developing better habits.

The other thing I’m doing is off-loading responsibility to the application for making the decision to spend time on something.

If I’ve got the app nudging me to do morning pages, do my meditation, drink enough water, and take my vitamins then hey, I’m just responding to this thing. It’s not really me making the decision to spend the time on those tasks instead of having back-to-back meetings and working an average of 4 extra hours a week.

There is too much noise in the world. Too many news stories, sales, random email lists we can’t remember subscribing to, and apps demand our attention constantly. And I’m just talking about grabs that come from engaging with your computer, be it desktop or laptop.

As recently as 6 years ago, people were doing research to discover just how your cell phone can distract you. The answer is: just by being in the room (2014, 2017, 2018). The mere presence of the device, even if it is out of sight, draws part of your mental attention creating Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

I’m betting you can feel that itch along your palm as you unconsciously reach for your own phone right now, if you aren’t already holding it as you read this.

Attention is something I have very little to spare right now, and I haven’t quite figured out why. I’m fairly certain it’s due to some fucked up internal coping mechanism that tells me as long as I’m busy I’m controlling my environment, and if I’m controlling my environment I can’t get hurt. My anxiety is a tad transparent these days.

But because I’m working hours ridiculous enough that I’m rolling into the last two weeks I will work this year with almost four full days of uncompensated overtime, dealing with personal administrative crap when I’m not working hasn’t been a high priority.

The shift to e-bills at the beginning of the pandemic fed my anxiety something fierce. My blue collar roots take pride in always being able to pay something and to do it on time. The prospect of missing a bill led me to activate the Updates tab in Gmail.

Huge mistake. Massive.

It went okay for the first couple of weeks as Gmail learned based on what ever algorithym the bro who programmed it determined. And then shit went off the rails.

Bill notifications started going to promotions. Stuff from my mother started going to updates. Nothing was where I expected it to be. I told myself for months it was manageable. It manifestly wasn’t.

About a month ago I killed the Updates tab by moving everything into my inbox. Now everything that’s 90% relevant is in one place.

Every.thing.

Today I’m declaring digital bankruptcy. I’ve done a cursory pass through the 1,500+ emails in my inbox to try to find things I might actually need. And now that I have, everything is going into archives on the theory that if I handle things as they come in I can reduce the amount of noise.

Let’s hope this works.

There is this saying in tech that there are three major factors governing quality, cost, and time.

Sometimes you can mitigate a compressed timeline by adding more resources – aka: people – to a project. There is a tipping point in any project, though, where more hands isn’t going to matter if you have an immovable deadline.

Or, as a friend of mine is fond of saying: 9 women can’t make a baby in a month.

We have raced toward a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 for at least 11 months, ever since the virus’ full genetic sequence was published in January 2020.

Current vaccine research builds on research done on SARS and MERS, two respiratory illnesses with outbreaks in East Asia and the Middle East. Building an previous research helped, I’m sure.

This week three companies have announced successfull clinical trials bringing a bit of breathing room and relief to the world even as millions of Americans ignore what they should be doing – staying home and having yet another excruciating dinner via video call – and flock to airports to travel for our Thanksgiving.

Can anyone say ICU Christmas?

Pfizer, first to market with their announcement, says their vaccine is safe and 95% effective.

Moderna, behind Pfizer by only a few days with their announcement, says their vaccine is also safe and around 95% effective.

Not to be left behind, AztraZeneca and Oxford University announced their vaccine is safe and about 70% effective if given in an experimental dosing regimen of 1/2 dose followed by a full dose 30 days later.

Three possible vaccines for a virus that has we have confirmed has infected over 59M people and confirmed to have killed almost 1.4M people. The efficacy numbers look great. And here is where we start making trade-offs.

Pfizer’s vaccine requires a storage temperature of -70degC while Moderna’s requires only about -20degC. For those of us functioning in Farenheit world that’s -94 (colder than Antarctica) and -4 (about your average high quality home freezer) respectively.

AstraZeneca’s, meanwhile, can be transported and stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius/36-46 degrees Fahrenheit. The company also says it will be able to ramp up production faster because their vaccine is based on a slightly different scientific method than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Without going to far into the whys, the TL;DR on this is: We have three vaccines with varying levels of effectiveness and varying complexities to produce, distribute, and store. The least effective one can be produced quickly and stored and distributed with no expensive refrigeration equipment needed.

Good, fast, or cheap.

It will be interesting to watch this play out. A vaccine that doesn’t require special equipment to store means its better adapted to delivery in rural places with unstable infrastructures. Who lives in these places?

I’ll give you a hint: mostly people who aren’t white.

Which vaccine gets approved, produced, and delivered is going to be what card players call a tell. Is the world moving toward justice where everyone gets the same protection regardless of their skin color or wealth? Or are we going to end up with rich, white folks getting the highly effective, but expensive vaccine while the rest of us get 70% effectiveness and fucking hope for the best?

When we throw around good, fast, or cheap in the tech world the follow-up is always: Pick two.