Designing your dream life with the help of Bearly, Halos and Attention
More tools and frameworks to help you on your journey.
Another Excuse Newsletter
Welcome back to the Another Excuse Newsletter. It isn’t just another excuse, but a reason to start that thing you’ve been putting off.
What to expect this week:
👓Perspective — Attention
🔨 Tool — Bearly
🍿Consume — Design Your Dream Life
📖Concept — The Halo Effect
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Perspective
Attention
We live in an attention economy.
Companies and people are competing for a few seconds of your valuable time. Some of the biggest companies (Google, TikTok, Meta) in the world make their money off of attention.
Are our attention spans shrinking?
Yes. Our attention spans have shrunk. But is that necessarily a bad thing?
We’re bombarded with new information daily and it has become a necessity to discern what is worth our time and what isn’t. It’s a skill we’ve adopted to keep up with the exponential increase in content created.
We uploaded 500 hours of video every minute in 2022 compared to just 6 hours in 2007. Information is everywhere and we’ve developed this skill to keep up.
We don’t value our time as much as we should. We give our attention/time away easier than money; time is our only truly finite resource.
I’m not trying to make you feel bad about what you consume, but to get you to reflect on how you’re spending your time.
We need to use these attention spans to our advantage. Use them to exclude information that isn’t valuable to us.
Our time on this earth is finite, so make the most of it.
Tool
BearlyAI
The tagline above sums up what Bearly does. It’s an all-in-one tool that enables you to use AI to complete a variety of tasks.
It’s slightly different from other tools in the sense that you download the application onto your computer and it has a Chrome extension.
The Chrome extension allows you to create a summary of any webpage you’re on, ask questions about the content on that webpage and perform other typical AI tasks specifically for your chosen webpage.
As you can see above, the application can help you with writing, reading, marketing, chat and images. It’s extremely comprehensive and can act as your assistant in many verticals.
Whether you need some inspiration for a new blog post or to perfect the wording on your Amazon product description, it’s got you.
AI is becoming a part of our everyday workflow. If you aren’t using these tools, then you’re simply slower and less productive than the ones that are.
I know it’s strange for the masses to go out and incorporate new tools into their workflow, which is why I’m following Google’s AI advancements.
Maybe the only answer is for these big companies to add AI tools to their current suite of applications.
Only time will tell.
Which tools are you using to improve your workflow?
Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)
Design your Dream Life
This is a great Twitter thread by Matt Gray.
In it, he breaks down how to design your dream life in 4 steps.
- Build a habit of reflection
Pay more attention to what makes you tick. If you reflect frequently, you’re able to figure out what affects your mood. Do more of the things that make you happy and feel good.
2. Assume Control
I spoke about this last week. If you’re able to take full responsibility for how you feel, you can take control of your life.
3. Create your ideal future
He gets you to ask yourself many questions that help you become more intentional about your life. Questions like:
• What does waking up feel like on an ideal day?
• What does working out feel like?
• What does working at my job feel like?
If the answers aren’t positive, then what do you need to change?
4. Take Action
Create small steps towards your goals. Take action and you’ll make progress faster than you think. Taking action is the hardest part, but the most important.
Check out the thread above.
Concept
The Halo Effect
Also known as the “physical attractiveness stereotype”, the Halo Effect influences the assumptions we make about people.
It’s a cognitive bias that positively influences our opinion of others based on a small subset of information.
One trait, like being attractive or nice, can lead to the other person assuming you’re also smart or funny.
Our minds fill in the blanks and if our initial impression is positive, the rest is filled in positively, too.
This cognitive bias can be used to your advantage. It’s important to understand that if you make a good first impression, people will think of you more highly.
This site gives an example of attractive waiters earning a considerable amount more in tips than their less attractive counterparts.
It works in the opposite direction too.
We know this as the Horn Effect and obviously means that we associate many negative traits with a person or brand if they display one.
Like when we make negative assumptions about a homeless person and yet know absolutely nothing about their circumstances.
First impressions are important. Keep that in mind next time you’re meeting new people.
Thanks for Reading
Now start something!
P.S. Feedback is welcome and needed! If you’d prefer to send me an email, you can do so here: byron@anotherexcuse.xyz
