Tag: news

Availability bias, news, and Google vs. Apple/Amazon

I think it is possible that the amount of news coverage an event receives today equals ten years of news coverage in the 18th century. This amount of chatter greatly affects perception. And, the amount of chatter is definitely not correlated to accuracy.

An example from this week is the news on the earnings from all the major technology companies. We had news from Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. A lot of the news in the past 4 years around Apple (since Steve Jobs left) has revolved around whether Apple has what it takes to continue making money without their visionary founder. And, until a year ago, I was in that camp.

And, this last quarter, Apple sold 74 billion dollars of products. To put that number in context, that is more than the revenue of a collection of the next few technology firms (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) put together. And, in that one quarter, Apple’s profits were larger than Google’s revenues. There are similar negative perceptions about Amazon’s stock. Google, on the other hand, has had a consistent stream of positive press for its ‘moon shots’.

But, here’s a dose of reality –
– Apple makes money by selling premium devices to the high end of the market. The high end of the market isn’t going away any time soon.
– Amazon is still less than 2% of North American retail and, once cloud computing takes off completely, Amazon Web Services could dwarf its e-commerce sales in 10 years.
– Google is searching for ways to compensate for its declining advertising revenue by investing in a whole host of businesses. Google’s stronghold was on the desktop/laptop. Mobile hasn’t worked nearly as well. That’s not to say it won’t figure out the next step. It is just that the news around Google in comparison to firms like Apple is often dis proportionally positive.

All this news and chatter affects our perception. Information that is easily available to us feels right because we can easily recall it when making decisions. But, just because we’ve heard something 10 times doesn’t necessarily mean it is right. Availability bias, however, is something we fall prey to repeatedly and is a big part of being human.

The <15 word summary of the post so far could very well be interpreted as – ‘Beware news. Dig deep to understand what is really going on.’

But, the point I’m hoping to make is a level deeper – it is to think intentionally about the content we consume. This means –
1. Audit your sources of content – news, feeds, facebook, twitter, linkedin friends, etc. – and understand where we develop points of view on what’s going on in the world
2. Develop a content consumption habit and plan in alignment with the sort of person you want to be. If you want to think deeply about the automotive industry, find the best automotive industry blog and shelve time spent on reading stuff that doesn’t add value

These small decisions inform the way we think about and approach the world and our lives. Let’s approach them with care.

FOMO

If ever a generation is in danger of it’s legacy being dictated by FOMO or the “Fear Of Missing Out,” it’s us. Drawing from personal example (so I don’t get on the “this post is not for me” high horse), FOMO is why I checked my email first thing this morning and also why I was tempted to look at my phone as I was staring into space while waiting for a haircut yesterday.

The haircut incident was illuminating – I had just read my feeds, locked my phone, and was staring into space. A minute into the space staring, I felt this itch to check my phone again – just to make sure there were no new feeds. I shut this impulse down and my mind whirred into why the impulse came through in the first place. “FOMO” – a voice shouted.

FOMO indeed. There’s always a new piece of news, a new interesting article, a new email, or a new something else. The only way I’ve found to effectively deal with FOMO is to have a thesis (big word, I know) or strong studied opinion on how you approach information consumption. In my case, my consumption thesis involves consuming headlines from a couple of news feeds (The NY Times, The Financial Times) with the occasional click through to the full article, interesting articles from Lifehacker, and a bunch of personal blogs of people I follow across different fields. Should I be subscribing to Techcrunch? Perhaps. But, it isn’t part of the current thesis.

The benefit of having this thesis is that you aren’t constantly trawling the web for new information. One good example of it’s application is that, one year ago, I decided that checking my Facebook feed would not be a part of my consumption habit (thanks to a combination of aversion to endless gossip and the lure of infinite scroll). So, I use Facebook for many things but I don’t get near the news feed. Similarly, I treat Twitter as a serendipitous source and feel no need to catch every tweet.

The thinking behind this approach is that the information we have available to us with relative ease is endless. What we need to know is not how to get the right information because Google has solved that problem. What we need to learn is how to turn off the information pipe and make the most of the water in the bucket and make sure we only get the kind of water we want  Unlike past generations, we DO have the option of an information pipe that is turned on for 24 hours. But, as you can understand, we only need so much water in a day and the wasted, uncontrolled water flooding where we live can be infuriating.

Form a consumption thesis. Stick to it. You’ll fail a lot in the process. But, that’s just part of the process of learning how to avoid FOMO. And no, you’ll never conquer FOMO. It’s a bit like illness and evil – our job is just to keep it at bay and recover quickly when we succumb.