From thought to commitment

Every action we do starts with a thought, whether a conscious one or not. If it’s going to the fridge to eat a pie or deciding to travel the world, it begins with neurons in our head firing in some pattern.

There are some ways that we can increase the likelihood of a thought turning into an action. One of them is to decide to act on the thought quickly. Our neurons are always firing and if we don’t act, our inspiration will quickly be overwritten by the next wave of thoughts, concerns, worries, etc.

I’ve been a critic of impulse buying. But let’s think about it for a moment. When you head to a checkout, you’re confronted with a choice of items. You’re prone to the sunk cost cognitive bias / escalation of commitment because you’ve already made the trip to the store, have collected the items you intended to buy, and have already waited in the queue. Now, being presented with items, you’re thinking “Do or will I need this?” and because you have a limited time to make the decision, you’re more likely to commit to a purchase of that item.

The same time limitation can be made to all thoughts and decisions.

And now the plug for voice…

One of the huge benefits of ambient voice interaction is the ability to turn these thoughts into actions more quickly. You desire music, ask for it right now. You ran out of detergent, order more now. You want a pizza, just ask. There’s a large reduction in cognitive load by being able to to get these thoughts out of the way. More room for big picture thinking.

Some might argue that this is going to make us more impulsive and less patient. Counterintuitively, this is probably going to make us less lazy. There will be fewer reasons for us not to get things done, not to start working on things, not to jot down ideas, not to fix things. We just need to ask right away.