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Welcome to another day in the life of this experimental newsletter where we are actively discovering what it is as we build it.

Common themes that have emerged so far: creative perspectives on non-consensus, high-impact practices to live a meaningful life.

This week I’m experimenting with interweaving some interesting topics with tech and product management (my bread and butter).

I enabled the comments section so if you have questions or thoughts, leave them below! You’re an early adopter into this thing 🫡 so your comments can have a lot of influence.

Plus the internet is more fun when we play in the sandbox together.

Is there a world where tech builds us out of the attention economy?

I started writing about this topic because I was asking myself whether this could be true, and instead ended up writing a Twitter thread about it that was much more succinct.

Since I’m carving out this space to play, experiment, and try different things, I decided to keep it in thread-format.

Before we get into it - why does this topic matter?

As someone who has built all kinds of applications (personal finance, sports betting, real estate, B2B SaaS, mental health, etc.) I started to understand just how crafted our online experiences are to keep us coming back for more.

And as a person who has started to be more cognizant about where my attention and time goes, I know the conundrum of participating on Discord, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, Threads, Snapchat, Facebook (back in the day when it wasn’t lame, looking at you, Marky Mark) - you want to stay in touch with people, but it’s a black hole.

Classic opportunity cost stuff. Still, that doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up.

Each one of us ultimately has to decide how to let the tech shape our lives, and if you’re working in tech, you might want to develop an opinion (or at least an understanding) of where this all might lead.

Is it inevitable for tech to continue feeding into the attention economy where we spend more and more time online?

Or is there a future where the technology encourages you to live life outside the app, but aims to really give you a great experience while you’re using it?

With that intro, here’s the thread:

So basically, my prediction is that we would need to figure out a new incentive structure that rewards higher quality engagement rather than pure volume of engagement.

Once consumers get fed up with being spammed, I think we have a shot at re-creating these incentive structures.

Some are playing the game better than others

A nuanced point I’d like to add - I think some tech is allowing certain players to opt out of the attention game, but these players are playing in pro mode.

I’ve seen some content creators start to automate, optimize or hire other people to make social media posts for them and their business.

These clever people then proceed to ensure that they themselves don’t spend time on the social media platform.

Basically, they’re taking advantage of the system that exists to put their content out in front of their audience, but they’re very intentionally not engaging on those platforms themselves.

This takes discipline and knowing what game you are or aren’t playing.

Questions worth answering

As a continuation of the previous newsletter where we discussed high quality journal prompts, here are some questions that ChatGPT4 generated when I asked what kinds of questions Seth Godin asks himself to stay on track on the right things.

Photo of the day

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Until next time 🤘