On Sunday morning I carted myself off to the local gym.

I’ve decided it’s about time to start ramping up my training for the Hackney Half Marathon in May.

As I cranked up the treadmill speed to a ferocious walking pace, I flicked to the podcast app on my phone and scrolled through my recent downloads.

My eye landed on a podcast interview with British advertising guru Rory Sutherland. The podcast blurb promised a fascinating discussion about human psychology and creativity with a sprinkling of insight and wit.

Perfect!

I fired up the podcast and broke into a gentle jog.

The podcast didn’t disappoint.

As I huffed & puffed through kilometer 2, Rory shared this zinger all about the psychology of technology:

***

The thing is, technology arrives as an option.

Think of parking apps when they first arrived. Parking apps mean I don't have to find 7 pound coins to park at the station. I also don't have to walk 300 yards to that stupid ticket machine and then walk all the way back to my car.

The only problem is, what starts as an option ends up as an obligation because someone spots that it's cheaper to make people pay on the app than it is to maintain pay and display machines.

The next thing you know, they've imposed parking apps in basement car parks where you can't get a mobile signal to save your life and the whole thing then becomes an absurd imposition when it started off as a really welcome alternative.

It basically ends up as a trap. It’s a cage.

***

This really hit home. 

There are countless times in my life when I turned options into obligations.

A couple of years ago, I went through a phase of tracking my daily step count. But what started as “I can track my steps if I want to” became “shit, I haven’t hit my 10k steps today”. And on New Year’s Eve 2023 I spent a couple of hours walking up & down the sea-front in a small coastal town in Devon just to get my average step count for December above 10k.

It’s not just tech where this idea shows up.

The workplace is another example.

I use to take the attitude that if I could work late, I would work late. If I could check my work emails before I went to bed, I would check them. And so on.

Same thing with overthinking.

If a stressful, scary or urgent thought bubbled up, I didn’t treat that thought as optional. Instead I gave it a front-row seat in my mind and let it shout instructions at me all day.

Anyway, I’m sure you get the idea.

Perhaps it's an idea which resonates with you too.

If so, I have a small experiment you might like to try.

It’s totally optional of course.

But if you’d like to find more freedom and less friction in your day-to-day life, spotting where you’re turning options into obligations is a good place to start.

The experiment?

Keep an eye on how often you tell yourself you “must” do something or you “should” do something in the next 24 hours.

“Musts” and “shoulds” are code for options which have quietly become obligations.

Or, as Rory puts it –  traps and cages.

So worth keeping an eye on.

Especially if your life is starting to feel like a treadmill set slightly too fast.

If you'd like to explore how to create a bit more breathing room — at work or outside — that’s exactly what I help people with.

Here’s your next step if so:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com