Reddit Favorite Quotes

We are experiencing an explosion of new products and services vying to help us make effort pacts with our digital devices. Whenever I write on my laptop, for instance, I click on the SelfControl app, which blocks my access to a host of distracting websites like Facebook and Reddit, as well as my email account. I can set it to block these sites for as much time as I need, typically in forty-five-minute to one-hour increments. Another app called Freedom is a bit more sophisticated and blocks potential distractions not only on my computer but also on mobile devices. Forest, perhaps my favorite distraction-proofing app, is one I find myself using nearly every day. Every time I want to make an effort pact with myself to avoid getting distracted on my phone, I open the Forest app and set my desired length of phone-free time. As soon as I hit a button marked Plant, a tiny seedling appears on the screen and a timer starts counting down. If I attempt to switch tasks on my phone before the timer runs out, my virtual tree dies. The thought of killing the little virtual tree adds just enough extra effort to discourage me from tapping out of the app—a visible reminder of the pact I’ve made with myself.

Markets can govern behavior through the use of mechanism design and various incentives—not money alone, but the trifecta of human motivations that may be summarized as fun, fame, and fortune. In fact, on many platforms, money is far less important than the more intangible, subjective form of value known as social currency. The idea behind social currency is to give something in order to get something. If you give fun in a photo, you can get people to share it. Social currency, measured as the economic value of a relationship, includes favorites and shares.39 It also includes the reputation a person builds up for good interactions on eBay, good news posts on Reddit, or good answers on Stack Overflow. It includes the number of followers a user attracts on Twitter and the number of skill endorsements she garners on LinkedIn.