DECISION MAKING & PARADOX OF CHOICE

In life we have more and more options these days, and these breed more and more choices. Making decisions is hard. How about outsourcing some of these to other people?

"The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz outlines how people are overwhelmed with choice and the costs that come with it. One solution he outlines is to use an "agent". When an insurance agent tells us what insurance to buy, we are freed from making that decision. And as long as we trust out agent, we get a good choice and yet are shielded from the tedious comparisons and the potential regret that comes from making the decision ourself. (You all know I'm a little obsessed with Trust, as that was the topic of my Masters Thesis which led to founding Lijit.)

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My idea is to have my friends be my life-agents. A crowd-sourced collective agent, if you will.

FUTURE OF TRANSPARENCY IS VULNERABILITY?

Before blogs, diaries were considered to be super-secret things. They came with locks on them. But with blogging (and twittering and all the other social network toys) people put more and more of themselves out there. We got used to it. Or at least our kids did. And the thing is, we learned that we are all pretty boring. We're not so special, and sometimes that's good. Why were we keeping all that stuff secret?

Well, I was wondering where this might go. And I was wondering what other things now considered private and sacrosanct now, might one day be opened? Hmmm.."What about *time*?!" That is, how we spend it. Calendars are so damn private right now. But there are many people I trust more than that. If a friend is having a birthday party, why not let simply them *put* it on my calendar, rather than have them send an invitation, and me copy the info into my calendar? (Or more likely, forget to, schedule something else that night, and then try to clean up the mess!)

ACTIVE SOCIAL NETWORKING

Similarly, I'm a little frustrated with how *passive* social networking is. It's all about reporting on stuff you've done, filling people in on the choices you've made and how you spend you time. But the *causal* impact you can have on the world or on your friends is very low. Send them a virtual gift. Throw virtual food at them. Or at the very best, send them an invitation to a real-world event. Bor-ing!

What would social networking mean if "friends" had real power? And hey, no snarky remarks about not wanting people messing with your life! There are times when you want friends to have power over you. I'd say that giving up a little power to someone, truly trusting them, is exactly what a relationship is about.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND LIFE COACHING

In college I was part of a men's group, and one of the best parts was the accountability. We all chose 3 goals, and every week we told the group how we'd done. This is incredibly effective. A similar effect is at work with the latest trend of "Life Coaching", where one hires a "coach" who to whom you are accountable and who will help you clarify and chart progress toward your goals.

A big part of this is the openness: Once you tell the world that you're going to do something, and someone has the power to check up on you, you feel compelled to do it. For example, my friend Jason Lange did a 12 week program to get himself into shape. By blogging about it ( http://www.dotheevolution.me/ ), he made it harder for himself to quit. And while (sorry Jason!) it wasn't the most exciting blog to read, he knew that it his posts would be at least glanced over by some friends, and that's enough to keep him accountable.

My thought is, could this work for other areas of life? If a good friend schedules me to go running, or to take a break, or to read a book; I'd feel pretty damned compelled to do it! Or put another way: it puts the onus on me to have damn good reason *not* to do it!

OPT-IN VS OPT-OUT

By allowing others to *put* items on calendars, events become opt-out rather than opt-in. Back to the birthday example: Instead of receiving a birthday invitation and deciding to "opt-in" to the party, the party would simply *be* on your calendar and you would have the ability to "opt-out". Effectively this is the same state of affairs, but researchers have found that even the small effort required to "opt-out" prevents most people from doing so.