Scott Adams's Blog, page 238

Is Meryl Streep Persuasive?

Yes, she is.

Will Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes make President Trump less popular or more popular?

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 9, 2017

OCD and Creativity

The other day I was wondering about the relationship between OCD and creativity. People with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) have thoughts that they can’t get out of their heads. But creativity is the opposite of obsessing over a single idea, at least the way I experience it. 

For me, creativity is a process by which I rapidly FORGET the thought that is currently in my head so a new one will fill the space. Your brain isn’t good at thinking of nothing, so when you eject your current thought, another rushes in to take its place. If you flush-and-replace enough thoughts in a row, you have experienced creativity. And if any of those new thoughts made your body respond with a laugh, a sigh, or chills, or anything else physical – you might have created art. I think of creativity as a system of cycling through ideas until one of them “moves” me, literally. If an idea doesn’t create some sort of physical change in my body, I rapidly reject it and move to the next thought.

The reason I am curious about OCD and it’s relationship to creativity is that I wonder if OCD sufferers could sometimes hack their brains by using creativity to crowd out the OCD. Your brain isn’t good at having more than one thought at the same time. And it also isn’t good at flushing your current thoughts when you have OCD. So instead of trying to actively lose an obsessive thought – which is nearly impossible for someone with OCD – perhaps it would be more helpful to try to solve a creative problem that automatically activates the imagination circuitry of your brain. If I’m right, trying to solve a creative problem would be more effective as a distraction for OCD sufferers than any other kind of mental distraction.

I Googled “OCD and creativity” to see what the science says. One study suggests that OCD sufferers are far more likely to “rely heavily on their imagination” compared to non-OCD people. The researchers concluded that this correlation might mean that having an extra-strong imagination is a necessary condition for OCD. And they might be right.

But consider another explanation for the correlation between imagination and OCD. Could it be that OCD sufferers use their imaginations more often than others because doing so is an escape from the OCD? And could it be that continued use of the imagination makes you better at it?

Humans can change the physical composition of their brains by choosing what they spend their time doing. Musicians strengthen one part of the brain and athletes strengthen another. I have to assume that continuous use of your visual imagination also changes the brain over time. And the more you practice something, the better you get. So if OCD sufferers have been self-hacking their brains by using their imaginations to avoid compulsive thoughts, you would expect them to have more vivid imaginations than the public because of all the practice.

For the first 30 years or so of my life I had obsessive thoughts about childhood traumas. Whenever my brain was under-occupied, it drifted to those horrors. When the bad thoughts came, my only defense was to crowd them out with stronger and better thoughts. So I used my imagination to create little movies in my head that were so engaging that my mind had no choice but to focus on them.

Is it a coincidence that my imagination is so strong now that I make my living using it? I don’t know. It feels as if I was born with a good imagination, but it also feels as if I exercised it more than other people. Lots and lots and lots more. And it also feels to me that my powers of imagination have gotten stronger every day of my life because of practice. 

You should never take health advice from cartoonists. This is no exception. But I would be interested to hear from any OCD sufferers as to whether they use imagination to escape obsessive thoughts. And if not, why not?

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My startup’s app, WhenHub, is solving an irritating problem for divorced parents that share custody of the kids. The last person in the world that a divorced person wants to communicate with is an ex. The WhenHub app eliminates all of the angry “Where are you???” texts and phone calls that inevitably happen when one is late dropping off or picking up the kids. And you know one of the parents is always late. The geostreaming automatically times-out whenever you want so exes can’t track each other after the kid exchange.

How To Know Your Product Will Succeed

People often ask me if it is possible to use the tools of persuasion to predict which types of products or businesses will succeed. I’ll tell you a trick for doing just that. But keep in mind that this is NOT backed by any studies or science as far as I know. This is based on my experience alone, and it is subject to all the usual biases. I recommend looking for the pattern I’m about to describe in your own life to see how often it predicts winners. You might be surprised how well it works.

I’ve started dozens of businesses if you count the ones that died before they even got named. And that experience has given me a fairly reliable pattern for predicting which types of products will succeed. At least I hope it is reliable. So far it has been spot-on. The pattern is this:

Look for  unexpected positive physical action from potential customers.

I’ll have to give you several examples before you can see what I mean. 

When Dilbert first appeared in newspapers in 1989 it was not a success. It appeared in fewer than a hundred newspapers and didn’t grow much for the first several years. With syndicated comic strips, that sort of slow uptake and modest demand almost always predicts a slow decline to failure. My syndication company at the time (United Media) moved their marketing focus to newer comics and left me to fend on my own.

And fend I did. I started running my email address between the panels of the comic. This was when email was still so new that most people didn’t even have it. My inbox exploded. The number of people sending me email was far beyond what made sense for a failing newspaper comic. The email response was unexpected, and it required physical action from the sender. As you probably know, Dilbert went on to be one of the biggest comic properties in history.

As Dilbert grew in popularity, people started emailing to say they were sorting my comics into themes and using photocopies and glue to create their own physical books with chapters for each topic. Literally dozens of people emailed to say they were doing this exact thing. They said they would love to buy a book of this type from me if I also added some text to go with the comics. This type of reaction was unexpected and it required physical action. I designed my first non-fiction book, The Dilbert Principle, exactly the way the fans asked me to do it. The book went on to become a number one New York Times best-seller.

After I got rich with Dilbert, I decided to create a business that would benefit the world so I could give something back and be a good citizen. I thought I could engineer a food product that was convenient and tasty and had all the nutrients one would need for the entire day. I invested millions and worked on the product for years. It was called the Dilberto, a frozen burrito brimming with vitamins, minerals, protein and complex carbs. Lots of people said it was a good idea. Some even said they loved the product. 

But no one ever did anything unexpected and physical. They just bought the product and ate it, as expected. And not often enough. It never took off. Eventually I closed the business.

I experienced a similar reaction to my earlier start-up, Calendartree.com. The product solved an important problem in scheduling, and thousands are using it today. But no one did anything unexpected and physical because of it. They just used it the way we expected. But not often enough for us to someday monetize it.

More recently I co-founded WhenHub.com. It does everything CalendarTree does but it is an order of magnitude larger in scope and features. WhenHub is a way to create and share interactive visualizations of any events over time. And the related WhenHub app is like the Uber app without the Uber car – a way to watch people approach a meeting on a map. WhenHub is already generating unexpected and physical action. Specifically, people I have never met have been contacting me via social media and asking if they can invest.

That doesn’t happen for most startups. It certainly didn’t happen with CalendarTree. This sort of reaction is unexpected and it requires physical action to contact me. We have also been contacted by companies that want us to add some feature so they can use it internally. That’s not normal either. Based on the initial public reactions that are both unexpected and physical, WhenHub should succeed.

I’ve also started a new book that will tell the story of how I used persuasion techniques to be the most accurate political pundit of the last election. At least a hundred people have asked me to write a book of that type. That type of reaction hasn’t happened since i wrote The Dilbert Principle. This too is a good sign. (My 2017 is looking great.)

The reason I call this a persuasion-related prediction is that it doesn’t involve facts or reason. Prediction-wise, I don’t care if someone thinks my product is both useful and a good value. I’m happy about that, but it doesn’t predict anything. I need to see people doing things that are so unexpected that it borders on irrational. That’s a good indicator. Facts and reason are not.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. If you are involved in some sort of new product or business, ask yourself how people are already reacting to it. If all they are doing is complimenting you on your idea, or perhaps sharing some links on social media, that doesn’t predict success. But if people are asking to bring a friend to see your product, or offering to invest, or using the product in some new and unexpected way, you might have something there. Look for the unexpected and physical reactions to predict your product’s fate.

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My book that talks about this topic in one chapter is here.

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WhenHub: Movies Coming in 2017

Here’s one of the billion of things you can do with WhenHub, the startup I co-founded. It’s available now. Free. Anyone can use it to make shareable visualizations for any kind of timeline, schedule, or series of events over time.

This visualization works well for movies. But for other types of data you might want to use one of these looks. (Or build your own with our API, coming soon.)

We also have the WhenHub app that is like the Uber app but without the Uber car. See your friends approach a meeting spot on a map. The app automatically times-out for privacy.

Is The Onion Advising Democrats Now?

Worst. Persuasion. Ever. Someone needs to do an intervention. This is officially embarrassing.

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Coincidentally, a good way show an audience the changes in healthcare coverage and expenses over time is my startup, WhenHub.com. It’s the best way to create and share visualizations of events over time. If someone builds one, let me know and I’ll publish it on this blog.

How About an American Expense-lowering Investment Fund?

I’ve been saying in this blog for some time that we can’t tax and budget our way to a better future. We need to work on dramatically lowering the average cost of a high-quality lifestyle. Technology can make that happen if the right startups are nurtured.

Take for example this project that figured out how to make entire  homes for $20K, using space-age methods. The big problem is that local building codes prevent new technologies from being implemented. I know that to be true because I had to forego some green design ideas for my current home for exactly that reason. The same government that insists I build with green methods prevents me from doing it in a number of cases. It’s a huge obstacle to progress.

But let’s say America decides to create an investment fund for startups such as this $20K home project, for the explicit purpose of lowering the future cost of living for low-income Americans. The fund would invest in only those companies that can make your ordinary life less expensive. But on top of investing, the government could work with the fund to remove burdensome regulations for their startups. Americans could be living in $20K homes by summer if Congress made it a priority. All Congress needs to do is make exceptions for certain companies and keep the initial trials small. If problems pop up, adjust as needed.

The investment fund could operate at a profit that gets put back into new investments, making it self-funding after a few years. And because the government can put a spotlight on companies, and it can remove red tape in some cases, the investment fund would create its own success. Its portfolio would have a huge natural advantage.

Imagine a small city built with these inexpensive homes. Imagine that since the city is designed from scratch, you optimize it for self-driving cars only. No stop lights or stop signs needed because all the cars would be in contact with each other. That takes about 80% off the cost of automobile ownership. You don’t even need car insurance in that world.

If I have a $20K home, inexpensive transportation, free WiFi, a smartphone, a laptop, reasonable healthcare, and good neighbors, I’ve got a good lifestyle. I think you could reduce the cost of living to the point where an annual income of $30K seems perfectly adequate. If you want to help veterans, the poor, and the elderly, this seems like a good way to go.

In the healthcare field we also see startups and technologies with potential to lower costs for consumers. Government red tape is slowing them down too. Consider this new technology that can detect cancer, Parkinsons Disease, and Crohn’s Disease from your breath. That could be a game-changer for costs because of early and inexpensive detection. I’ve seen several game-changing technologies just out of the UC Berkeley startup ecosystem alone.

I’ve blogged recently about the impact of optimism on economies. I could be wrong, but this sort of out-of-box approach seems more likely to happen under a Trump administration than any government that came before, in this country or any other. But we will see.

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Have I mentioned that I wrote a book that you might want to buy because it is available? I’m working on a new one for October.

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Have you seen my startup, WhenHub.com? If you create any interesting visualizations with the studio feature, let me know and I’ll publish it here on this blog. The visualizations are designed for easy sharing so your interactive visualization (easy to create) might go viral if you pick the right topic. You can even include a little commercial for your company in it, with links to your website. Have fun!

Creating Economic Assets out of Nothing

One of the magical things about economics is that you can create an economic asset out of nothing but persuasion. For example, if you persuade people to be more optimistic about the economy, people invest more money, buy more products, create more jobs, and generally manifest the better economy from their own expectations. This magic of creating wealth from nothing but persuasion is one of the reasons President-elect Trump will be different from other presidents. He knows how to do this particular brand of economic magic. He has been doing it for years with his own company. The more common names for this phenomenon are branding and licensing. Companies license the Trump name for their buildings and other products because they recognize the name as a psychological asset that Trump created by persuasion. 

Remember the loan that Trump got from his dad for his first major project? Trump persuaded his dad to give him a loan, then he persuaded people to work for him, and then he persuaded people to move into the building. You can see in that story that persuasion was used as a tool to create a physical economic asset in the form of a building. But a building is not a brand. Trump had to add more psychology to turn it into a brand that others would license. it’s the branding and licensing part that involves creating an invisible economic asset from persuasion alone. 

Now President-elect Trump is doing the same thing for America. That’s what his negotiations with Carrier and Ford and Boeing are all about. It is the start of rebranding America as a new and better version of itself, and one in which Americans take care of their own before taking care of the rest of the world. And apparently that brand and the optimism that comes with it is working. The stock market is up since the election, creating billions in new wealth from nothing but persuasion.

I find it easy to imagine a President Trump turbo-charging America’s economy with a ripple effect that benefits the rest of the world in lots of different ways. I don’t know how big this economic effect can get, but “billions” probably doesn’t cover it. I think we’re looking at a trillion-dollar wealth creation from persuasion alone.

Thank you to Ford for scrapping a new plant in Mexico and creating 700 new jobs in the U.S. This is just the beginning - much more to follow

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017

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Have you tried my startup’s app yet? It’s like the Uber app but without the Uber car. Use it to temporarily geostream your location on a map to the people you are meeting. No more texting back and forth to see where everyone is at. This could save lives. See WhenHub.com for the Studio and App.

What if Climate Change Causes more CO2?

Let me start this post by restating that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. I’m not a scientist and I have no tools to evaluate the credibility of those who are. As far as I can tell, the arguments on both sides are totally credible. I can’t tell them apart. So I default to agreeing with the experts, not so much because I believe experts are likely to be right in this case, but because there are extreme social and economic penalties for being a climate “denier.” So I’m not one. I’m just a non-scientist who would like to understand this situation better.

And one of my ignorant questions is whether we have the causation right. On one hand, basic science tells us that more CO2 in the atmosphere should cause warming. And according to the consensus view of climate scientists, it is. The graphs of CO2 seem to match the graphs of warming. Therefore, logically, CO2 causes warming.

A separate debate is whether the CO2 warming is enough to be a problem or it simply exists. Forget that for now. I’m just talking about the direction of causation.

As a non-scientist, I assume human beings have some sort of temperature range that is optimal for energy and economics. I also assume that there are natural cycles of warming or cooling independent from CO2, at least historically. So we’re probably always warming or cooling. We’re never staying the same. And that means sometimes we are heading toward optimal human temperatures and sometimes away.

Now suppose the Earth’s temperature was already in the good range for humans, but it was getting even better according to a natural cycle. That better temperature would – I assume – increase human activity in ways that (wait for it) contribute to CO2. If the economy is good, we build more industry and create more CO2. If the causation works in that direction, the heat of the world and the CO2 levels would be correlated. But the cause in this scenario is the warmth, not the CO2.

None of this means we shouldn’t be worried about rising CO2. The science says more CO2 means more warming. That’s just physics. And at some point we have to assume the planet gets TOO warm, and economic activity will suffer.

And when the economy suffers, CO2 could drop, assuming the economy goes into decline. At the very least I think you have to agree that the causation is two-way.

When people tell me to “do my own research” on climate change and reach my own conclusions, I think those people have no understanding of how the human mind works. No matter how much research I do on my own, a real climate scientist will still know things that I don’t know I don’t know. If I do my own research on climate science, all I will know in the end is what I do know. And that’s not enough for any kind of credible evaluation. The stuff I don’t know could easily be more important than the things I do know. One would need to live in a particular industry, the way a climate scientist does, to have any confidence that all the important variables are being considered.

Consider how basic my question is today. As a non-scientist, I can’t even tell if scientists have the causation right. My layperson’s brain says correlation is not causation, and humans have a long history of confusing the two. And while climate scientists might have perfectly good explanations for why the causation is primarily one-directional, it isn’t obvious to me. (You can explain it to me in the comments.)

I realize that people want to know which “side” I’m on. But apparently I’m on my own side. My view is that climate scientists are more likely right than not, but the quality of their persuasion is worse than that of the skeptics on this topic. I don’t know the underlying facts. But persuasion-wise, the skeptics have a big advantage.

Remember how I taught you that Trump’s linguistic kill shots had a special quality that allowed them to strengthen over time thanks to confirmation bias? Every time Ted Cruz said something that didn’t pass the fact-checking you remembered his Lyin’ Ted nickname. And every time someone accused Clinton of crooked dealings you were reminded of her Crooked Hillary nickname. Climate change has the same dynamic. Every time it snows the non-scientists of the world look out the window and experience confirmation bias that global “warming” isn’t happening. Sure, it’s usually called climate “change” now, and most people know that. But to the under-informed that change in preferred wording just looks suspicious.

Climate scientists might be right that CO2 will cause catastrophic warming. And fear is a great persuader. But this particular fear is a bit abstract. It isn’t like a nuclear bomb that can kill us all instantly. Climate worries are in the unpredictable future and won’t affect everyone the same way. Persuasion-wise, the climate scientists only have facts and prediction models to make their case. And what are the weakest forms of persuasion known to humankind?

Facts and prediction models.

And how are climate scientists trying to solve this problem? Mostly by providing more facts and more prediction models. And by demonizing the critics. The net effect of all that is to systematically reduce their own credibility over time, even if they are right about everything.

I think you see the problem.

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California passed a new law that says you can’t use your mobile phone in your hand while driving. It was already illegal to text, but now it is also illegal to use other apps with your phone in hand. I recommend getting a dashboard mount, as shown, and using my startup’s free app, WhenHub, to reduce the need to text on the way to meeting people.

In the picture below you can see me about to leave the garage. Several friends already “joined the approach” as we say, so we can watch each other approach our meeting spot on a common map. All approaches time-out after the trip so you aren’t accidentally tracking anyone. No need to text on the way to the meeting because you already know where everyone is at.

By the way, I told you in other blogs that one of my motivation tricks involves working on projects that have huge potential. This one will literally save lives by reducing texting-and-driving. That’s the sort of thing that makes it a joy for me to wake up every day. Look for something like that in your life. It will have a huge impact on your thoughts and energy.

Your Body is Your Brain Too

We humans like to organize our perceptions into categories. It makes it easier for us to communicate and to keep track of things. But sometimes the impulse to organize our thoughts into buckets is a problem. I’ll give you the best example of that today.

Most of us believe that our brains are special because they are the center of our consciousness. Some people also believe brains are where your free will and your soul lives. We also believe brains are somewhat of a closed system when it comes to our thoughts. It feels as if your brain produces some random thoughts, wrestles with those thoughts, and turns them into bodily actions. That makes the brain a special little organ that is doing its own thing in isolation and letting the rest of the body know about it later. In other words, we put our brains in the “brain” bucket. All by itself. Doing its thing.

That’s a huge mistake.

Today I’ll tell you how the brains-is-special framework for looking at life is one of our biggest sources of unhappiness. In my worldview, also known as the Moist Robot Hypothesis (from my book on that topic), humans are wet robots that respond to programming. If you aren’t intentionally programming yourself, the environment and other people are doing it for you. Luckily you have a user interface to your brain. And that interface is your body. Your body is collecting inputs from all over and feeding them to your brain to reprogram it.

What kind of results would you get from your laptop computer if the user interface responded only to random inputs from the environment, such as wind, temperature, and other unplanned events? Your computer would be useless. The inputs would be virtually random and the outputs would be garbage. That’s why we consider the user interface to be part of the computer.

Your brain is a computer too. But we mistakenly believe it is also its own user interface. In other words, we see the brain as some sort of closed system that is stimulating its own thoughts, wrestling with those thoughts, and producing an output that it sends to your body. This way of viewing yourself works fine in the sense that humans have done a good job of staying alive and reproducing. And that’s all evolution asks of us. If we reproduce, we have done all we needed. Evolution doesn’t feel the need to improve our awareness of reality beyond that point. 

But allow me to suggest another framework for viewing your brain. My claim is that this new framework will give you the means to program your brain with intention instead of letting the environment do it randomly. All you need to do is reframe your body to be part of your brain. Let me give you some examples to see how powerful this reframing is.

In your old worldview, where the brain is its own user interface, you often found yourself feeling sad, grumpy, tired, angry, and other negative emotions. And you probably felt a bit helpless to stop it. Your brain was determining your mood – seemingly on its own – and the rest of your body simply responded to it like a puppet on a string. That’s the most common worldview, and I watch how debilitating it is to people. They go through life in continuous mental anguish, feeling helpless to do anything about it.

Contrast that worldview with what I call the Moist Robot Hypothesis that says your body is the user interface of your brain system. Give your body the right inputs and you can reprogram your brain.

For example, you know from experience that being hungry can make you cranky. But unless you are conscious of that body-mind connection – and often we are not – it is easy to assume the brain is operating on its own to make you cranky. 

The Moist Robot Hypothesis says that all you needed was some food to reprogram your brain to more positive thoughts. In this case your digestive system was the user interface to your brain.

I am sure you have noticed that your mental state is deeply influenced by diet, exercise, sleep, sex, stress, and lots more. And I’m sure you make some effort to do those things the right way when you can. But if you think those actions are influencing only how you feel, and not your actual thoughts, you don’t understand the basic nature of human beings. And this is the key takeaway:

The source of your thoughts is your body , not your brain .

When I am not feeling good, I don’t ask my brain to fix things on its own. I manipulate my environment until my thoughts change. That’s because I see my body as the user interface to my brain. I don’t let my brain think whatever it randomly wants to think. I constrain it to productive thoughts by manipulating my environment.

For example, any time I feel tense, I go exercise as soon as I can. It’s good for my health in general, but I do it specifically to program my thoughts from negative to positive. I do the same with sleep, diet, sex, stress, and even my choices of entertainment. I don’t let negative inputs into my brain via my body (the user interface) and my brain responds by not producing negative thoughts.

I take this concept so far that I will leave a room when the topic goes negative and I don’t want my user interface to send those impulses to my brain. I never apologize for doing this. I just say I don’t want this conversation in my brain and leave.

The old me believed that my brain was special, and that it was going to think whatever it was going to think. Unfortunately, what it usually thought all through my twenties and thirties was severely traumatic memories that put me in a state of continuous suicidal urges. Today my thoughts are almost entirely positive and optimistic. The difference is that I learned to crowd out the negative thoughts by manipulating my environment. I tune my body with a healthy lifestyle so it feels good, and that encourages positive thoughts. And I flood my mind with fascinating mental puzzles and challenges – usually work-related – so there is no space for negative thoughts. The brain likes to focus on one thing at a time. So I make sure it is focusing where I want it. I never let my mind wander to bad territory. When I feel it happening I either change what I am doing or I flood my brain with stronger thoughts that have more emotional firepower.

My old traumatic memories are still in my brain, but I atrophied them to the point of being inert. They hold no power over me now.

I realize that the concept I’m explaining is both obvious and radical at the same time. On one hand, you know from experience that your thoughts are directly influenced by what your body is experiencing. But because you also believe your brain is the special vessel of your free will, consciousness, and soul, you might believe the brain can also make its own independent decisions. It can’t. It is a computer that responds to inputs. Give it the right inputs and you’ll get the right outputs. And your body is the user interface.

To convince yourself that my framework is valid, take an inventory of the people in your life who are unhappy. Ask some questions about what they are doing about their unhappiness. Rarely will the person say they are working on their body to fix their minds. 

Now take an inventory of your more well-adjusted friends. Watch the degree to which they manipulate their bodies to manage their minds. Once you see the pattern, you will start to see it everywhere.

I just changed your life. You won’t know how much until later.

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California passed a new law that says you can’t use your mobile phone in your hand while driving. It was already illegal to text, but now it is also illegal to use other apps with your phone in hand. I recommend getting a dashboard mount, as shown, and using my startup’s free app, WhenHub, to reduce the need to text on the way to meeting people.

In the picture below you can see me about to leave the garage. Several friends already “joined the approach” as we say, so we can watch each other approach our meeting spot on a common map. All approaches time-out after the trip so you aren’t accidentally tracking anyone. No need to text on the way to the meeting because you already know where everyone is at.

By the way, I told you in other blogs that one of my motivation tricks involves working on projects that have huge potential. This one will literally save lives by reducing texting-and-driving. That’s the sort of thing that makes it a joy for me to wake up every day. Look for something like that in your life. It will have a huge impact on your thoughts and energy.

The Master Persuader Filter and Bernie’s Ad

Back in January of 2016 I said this about Bernie Sanders’ new campaign ad:

Posted January 21st, 2016 @ 12:01pm in #Trump #bernie2016

As I have taught you, persuasion can be ranked like this:

1. Identity (best)

2. Analogy (okay)

3. Reason (useless)

Bernie Sanders had been operating in the lower two categories along with Hillary Clinton. But his new ad, set to a Simon and Garfunkel tune, is pure identity (America!) and pure gold.

Today an article in The Hill discusses a Vanderbilt University study that says this ad ranked at the top of all campaign ads for making people “happy and hopeful” according to the New York Times.

There were a lot of campaign ads in that election. The Persuasion Filter spotted this one as special. Apparently it was.

When you learn to recognize the tools of persuasion it is like acquiring a superpower. I’ll be blogging and live-streaming on this topic in 2017. We’re going to have a lot of fun. 

Welcome to a new year. This one won’t be like any before. 

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A new law in California says you can’t hold your phone in your hand while driving, even if you are not texting. It doesn’t matter which app you are using. 

I recommend getting a phone holder for your dashboard and installing the WhenHub app so you can see the people you are meeting on a map as you approach. (It’s like the Uber app but without the Uber car. Anyone can show their location temporarily on the way to a get-together.) That way you skip all of the texting back and forth that happens as you try to find each other in the last mile.

WhenHub app for Apple: http://apple.co/2eLL3Oh

WhenHub app for Android: http://bit.ly/2fIb6L7