AI is powerful, it’s fast, and it’s efficient, but left on its own, it creates content that sounds smart but feels empty. The brands winning in 2026 aren’t the ones going “full AI”, they’re the ones building systems where AI handles the heavy lifting and humans handle the meaning.

The future of marketing isn’t AI vs. human, it’s AI + human, and that’s the only combination that really works.

Where AI Actually Improves Marketing in 2026

Let’s give AI the credit it deserves. It has fundamentally changed how quickly and effectively marketing can operate when used correctly. AI accelerates workflows. What used to take days, brainstorming, drafting, revising, and formatting, can now happen in minutes. Campaigns move from idea to execution dramatically faster, which is crucial when platforms shift weekly and creative fatigue sets in faster than ever.

AI improves iteration. Instead of testing two creatives, you can test twenty. Instead of guessing which headline will perform best, AI helps predict and analyze patterns in real time. Data aggregation, reporting, segmentation, and optimization are exponentially more efficient with AI’s assistance.

AI removes friction, reduces bottlenecks, helps overloaded teams scale, and keeps campaigns moving instead of stalling. That speed is no longer a luxury; it’s a competitive advantage. But speed is only valuable if what you’re scaling actually deserves to exist.

Where AI Fails and Humans Excel

Here’s where things break: AI has no feelings. It doesn’t know why something resonates. It doesn’t know when messaging crosses the line from persuasive to cringy. It doesn’t know when a joke hits or when a story emotionally lands. AI writes based on patterns, and people respond based on emotion. That gap is where campaigns die.

We’re already seeing backlash against AI-sounding marketing, the generic tone, the predictable structure, and “SEO-perfect” content. Consumers recognize when something feels automated, and the reaction is never positive. Authenticity, originality, humor, cultural awareness, and storytelling are all things that make people care, and they’re all human skills. AI can support them, but it cannot replace them. And when companies try, their brands sound like everyone else’s.

Balancing AI Output with Human Creative Direction

Winning in 2026 isn’t about how much AI you use. It’s about where and why you use it.

AI should:

• Generate drafts, not final creative.
• Produce variations, not core messaging.
• Analyze data, not interpret emotional context.
• Scale execution, not shape brand identity.

Humans should:

• Define strategy.
• Establish tone, voice, and emotional purpose.
• Decide what is on-brand and what isn’t.
• Make the final creative call.

This is the balance most brands miss. They either rely on AI so heavily that everything feels generic, or they ignore AI completely and burn time, budget, and energy doing everything the hard way. The best results come when AI amplifies human thinking rather than replacing it.

Keep Humans in the Loop

The smartest marketing teams in 2026 are keeping humans in the loop. AI is the assistant, humans are the decision makers.

A strategist defines the campaign direction, audience psychology, and intent. AI accelerates research, drafts multiple creative concepts, and helps structure variations. Humans refine, challenge, and elevate the work. AI supports execution and performance optimization. The work is faster, sharper, and more emotionally intelligent.

Hybrid Workflows That Actually Improve Performance

The brands doing this well are seeing real benefits:

• AI helps generate more testable creative, and humans choose the ideas worth working with.
• AI highlights performance trends, and humans understand why those trends matter.
• AI builds momentum, and humans build meaning.

We’ve seen campaigns go live faster, performance improve sooner, and creative fatigue set in slower simply because teams finally have the bandwidth to think again, instead of being buried in execution. That’s the real win: AI gives marketers more brain capacity back.

Why AI + Humans is the Only Sustainable Path Forward

AI isn’t going anywhere. Neither is human creativity. The brands pretending it’s one or the other are already losing. In 2026, the brands that win will be the ones who treat AI like leverage, not leadership. AI handles the how, humans own the why.

Marketing that works will still feel human. It will still require instinct, empathy, and creativity. It will still reward originality over automation. The difference is that now, we finally have tools that let us execute it at the speed modern marketing demands.

Where Brillity Digital Fits Into This

At Brillity Digital, we don’t use AI to replace thinking; we use it to make thinking more powerful. We build strategies where AI accelerates performance while human creativity ensures your brand actually stands out, connects emotionally, and drives results.

If your marketing is efficient but forgettable, or creative but slow, you don’t need more tools. You need better balance. Let’s build it! Book a strategy call with Brillity Digital and let’s create marketing that uses AI the right way, to make your brand more human, not less.

In 2026, the biggest threat to your marketing success isn’t CPM increases, platform shifts, or AI taking over. It’s something much simpler, yet far more dangerous: creative fatigue. The kind of fatigue that settles in when everything looks the same, sounds the same, and feels like it was spat out of a template.

Creative Fatigue is the Silent Performance Killer

Scroll any social feed today, and you’ll see endless clones of the same UGC testimonial, the same “day in the life” product demo, the same hook, the same voiceover, the same aesthetic, the same soundtrack. If your ads feel like wallpaper, don’t be surprised when people treat them as such. Platforms reward novelty, audiences reward relevance, and creative fatigue destroys both.

Here’s the kicker: creative isn’t decaying over months anymore, it’s decaying in weeks, in some cases even days! Meta cycles creative out faster than ever. TikTok burns through trends like kindling. Google’s shift to performance automation means creative is now the variable, not the lever. If you’re still running one hero campaign and calling it a quarterly strategy, you’re in a losing battle against brands that produce, test, and rotate concepts weekly.

The Six Seconds Rule

You’ve probably heard the “new golden rule”: “Ads need to hook in three seconds, ideally six.” But shortening the timeline isn’t the skill. Earning those six seconds is! Attention hasn’t shrunk, but tolerance for irrelevant creative certainly has. Instead of the standard, give your audience something:

• Surprising
• Funny
• Emotionally resonant
• Visually different
• Unmistakably YOU

When you do this, you’ll start to see your audience watching longer than you expect. You’ll earn the right to have individuals continue. A hook isn’t text on a screen; it’s a reason to stay. So start optimizing toward something worth watching.

Blame it on AI?

Hot take: AI is not the villain, but it is the accelerant. Right now, thousands of businesses are flooding platforms with the same AI-generated visuals, robotic scripts, and cliché brand voices. The standard AI slop: cheap, fast, forgettable. The result? A rising tide of sameness that’s numbing audiences and driving creative decay.

The winners in 2026 are not the brands using AI to replace creativity. They’re the ones using AI to amplify creative thinking!

• Draft 20 variations of a hook
• Storyboard ideas faster
• Synthesize audience insights
• Remove bottlenecks

At the root of it all, the spark and the personality are all human. Creativity isn’t optional; it’s your only moat.

But Everyone Has the Same Tools!

You can’t outbid competitors who scale. You can’t outrun platforms automating backend optimization. You can’t copy your way into attention. But what you can do is be the brand people actually notice! This means:

• Humor that feels original, not a copy-paste from TikTok trends
• Product demos that entertain
• Storytelling that raises eyebrows, not bounce rates
• Visuals that disrupt, not decorate

When every marketer has the same AI models, the same targeting tools, and the same data insights, differentiation becomes a critical strategy.

How to Beat Creative Fatigue in 2026

So that brings us to our main point: How do you beat creative fatigue? Here’s the operating system for brands that refuse to disappear into the ether:

1. Weekly Creative Iterations

One ad with a few variations isn’t enough anymore. The market moves too fast. Instead, test offers, hooks, frames, and formats nonstop!

2. Cut Your Underperformers Early

If your ad isn’t performing in the first 72 hours, cut it. It’s not warming up, it’s dying.

3. Use AI to Scale Output, Not Predictability

AI should widen your imagination, not narrow it.

4. Protect Your Brand Voice Like a Trademark

Identity is currency. Consistency creates recall. Recall creates revenue.

5. Chase Emotion Over Explanation

Logic convinces, emotion converts. Every scroll-stopping brand will understand this.

Where Does That Leave Marketers?

If 2025 was the year the market embraces AI, 2026 is the year it starts punishing those who use it without imagination. There is no algorithm problem; there is only an originality problem. And brands that continue to treat creative as a once-a-quarter deliverable rather than a living organism will lose, quietly at their own expense. Attention didn’t evaporate; it just evolved. Creativity is how you meet it. Not by making more ads, but by making ads worth looking at.

Are you ready to stop blending in and start breaking through? Brillity Digital builds performance-driven creative systems that don’t just capture attention, they convert it. If your ads are getting tired and your results are slowing down, it’s not the market, it’s your creative strategy! We’re here to fix that. Book a strategy call with our team and make 2026 the year your marketing actually works!

And as we go into 2026, it’s important to note that the idea that our attention span is that short is completely wrong, completely unsupported by credible science.

There is no large-scale, longitudinal, peer-reviewed study that proves people’s attention spans are shrinking across the population. The famous “8-second attention span” number didn’t originate from neuroscience; it emerged from vague marketing studies and surveys with unclear methodologies. Despite this, the myth persists because it gives marketers a convenient excuse. “If people don’t pay attention, our content can’t be blamed.” People do, in fact, pay attention for hours on end.

• We binge on a six-hour Netflix series.
• We spend entire evenings gaming.
• We watch 20-minute breakdowns on YouTube.
• We read long-form deep dives when the topic interests us.

So the issue isn’t attention span; the issue is selective attention. This is a shift from “short attention” to “pickier attention”, and this shift is actually a huge opportunity for marketers who understand it!

Attention Isn’t Gone. It’s Just Fragmented.

What’s changed isn’t human biology, it’s the environment. We live in a world with infinite content, infinite notifications, and infinite temptations. That means attention isn’t shorter; it’s constant decision-making:

• Does this matter to me?
• Is this worth my time?
• Do I care enough to stay?

In psychological terms, what’s happening is more about attention allocation than attention capacity. Research shows we can still sustain focus for long periods when we’re motivated and engaged. But we switch tasks more often because there’s more to switch to. This is what marketers keep missing. People aren’t unwilling to pay attention; they’re unwilling to pay attention to content that feels irrelevant, predictable, or low-value.

The Real Problem: Boring, Low-Relevance Marketing

Marketers love blaming “short attention spans” for underperforming campaigns. But the real reason people scroll past your ad is simpler: it didn’t earn their attention. Attention isn’t something you’re owed; it’s something you win. In 2026, people will reward:

• Content that solves a real problem.
• Stories that feel human and honest.
• Messaging that respects their intelligence.
• Creativity that doesn’t look like every other ad in their feed.

On the other hand, people don’t reward:

• Generic hooks written by a committee.
• Over-edited videos that say nothing.
• “Our product is great!” with no insight.
• Ads optimized for length instead of impact.

All of that to say: we don’t need shorter content, we need sharper content.

“Attention Span” Isn’t One Metric. Stop Treating It Like It Is.

One of the biggest misunderstandings in marketing is the idea that attention span is a universal number. It’s not. Attention is context dependent:

• TikTok attention is not the same as YouTube attention.
• Email attention is not the same as ad attention.
• Search attention is not the same as scrolling attention.

Your audience brings different intent, expectations, and behavior to every platform. This is why a six-second ad can flop and a six-minute review can convert. Different platforms require different strategies, not shorter ones. So instead of asking “How short should our content be?” ask “What kind of attention are we trying to earn?” Clicks? Watch time? Conversions? Brand recall? Define your version of attention, then build for that, platform by platform.

The Takeaway: People Pay Attention When You Give Them a Reason

The most successful marketers in 2026 aren’t shrinking their content. They’re increasing its value. More insight, more relevance, more real human connection in every second. Because what people actually lack isn’t attention, it’s patience for content that doesn’t respect their time. Here’s what modern attention really looks like:

• People skim until something interests them.
• They switch tasks if the content misses the mark.
• They go deep if it hits them emotionally or intellectually.

This isn’t an attention problem; it’s an expectation problem. Your audience expects more, and the brands that deliver more will gain significantly more attention!

Gain a Competitive Advantage in 2026

This is the real contrarian insight: If everyone else believes attention spans are shrinking, they’ll keep producing shallow, low-effort content. That creates a massive gap, an opportunity, for brands that create content with more depth, more clarity, and more relevance. You don’t win by being shorter. You win by being unignorable.

At Brillity Digital, we help brands break out of the “short attention span” trap and build marketing strategies that earn real engagement, because they actually matter to the customer. If you’re ready to stop fighting the myth and start winning the modern attention game, we can help you build content and campaigns that keep people watching, reading, clicking, and remembering.

Emotional intelligence is too often ignored in marketing, but its impact on success can be profound. It’s more than understanding the emotional drivers of your audience, it’s about creating a genuine, empathetic connection that creates trust and brand loyalty. 

This isn’t merely an idea, but an actionable strategy that brands can implement to inspire and persuade customers effectively.

How to Incorporate the Idea of Emotional Intelligence Into Your Marketing

1. Understand Emotional Marketing

Brands can harness the power of pathos to elicit desired emotions from their audiences. By understanding and tapping into these emotions, you can forge a stronger ‘bond’ with your audience and drive deeper engagement. 

For example, Coca-Cola ran a “Choose Happiness” campaign that attempted to correlate Coke to happiness, and although there is no logical connection between the two, it was an effective campaign. 

Emotions such as happiness, trust, surprise, and even fear can be powerful tools in persuading your audience. Eliciting these feelings at the right moments can guide your audience further down the conversion funnel more effectively.

2. Eliciting Customer Emotions

Get listed in professional directories. This includes lists of businesses in your area, in your industry, or professionals with certain licenses. Even Facebook groups can help.

3. Crafting Emotional Narratives

People are natural storytellers, and we respond positively to stories that resonate with us on an emotional level. Stories allow us to empathize with characters, visualize issues, and imagine ourselves in the narrative. For marketers, this is a very potent tool if used properly. 

A compelling narrative can humanize your brand and create an emotional bond with your audience. It allows you to demonstrate your brand values and better portray a brand promise or mission statement. From overcoming obstacles to achieving a far-fetched goal, stories imbued with emotions can significantly enhance your marketing impact.

4. Personalization Through Rigorous Customer Discovery

Emotional intelligence can also power personalization and understanding in marketing. Understanding your audience, what makes them tick, and what makes them run, is one of the most essential steps in this process. Gauging the emotional reactions of your customers and having a proper understanding of who they are will allow you the personalize your content to each segment. 

One of the most incredible examples of the lengths that companies will go to understand customers’ emotions is found in the car company Bently. In 2015, Bently released an emotion recognition app that analyzed what car buyers found inspirational. The outcome of this technology was a custom Bently, tailored perfectly to what the buyer found inspirational. 

Emotional personalization’s go further than just typing their name into an email. It’s about using insights gained from behavioral data and your emotional intelligence to deliver messages that truly resonate on a personal level.

Integration of Emotional Intelligence in Marketing

The integration of emotions into marketing strategies offers the potential to connect on a deeper level with potential customers. By understanding, eliciting, and responding to customer emotions, a brand can create more impactful and resonant marketing campaigns. Emotional intelligence, thus, becomes a critical tool in the marketer’s arsenal, facilitating deeper connections, and ultimately, driving success.

Remember from Part 1 (How the Brain Processes Information and Why It Matters in Marketing): The Reticular Activating System, or RAS, is the brain’s bouncer. This pinky-sized part of the brain determines if we should give conscious attention to something (like what your date is talking about in a restaurant) or if we can ignore it (like other people’s conversations in that restaurant). To get someone to stop scrolling and look at your website or ad, you need to send a clear signal to the RAS that you are worth the mind’s conscious thought.

There are six approaches for getting on the VIP list so the RAS bouncer lets you through:

PERSONAL

VISUAL

TANGIBLE

CONTRASTABLE

MEMORABLE

EMOTIONAL

The highest impact approach that you can use right now in your marketing efforts is VISUAL. 30% of the human brain is dedicated to its visual system, which is the largest area of the brain dedicated to one system. It follows, therefore, that images and pictures will have the largest impact in capturing attention. Content with visuals gets around 94% more views than content without visuals. 

You’re probably already using visuals in your content. So now the question is – which visuals work best?

The Right Visuals Make the Right Impression

There are unlimited ways to present your content visually, but only some will get your messaging past the bouncer. One technique is to appeal to the viewers’ emotions. Take a look at how visuals and emotions work together in these ads.

This image has immediate emotional impact. The two faces have a striking contrast and present a relatable situation. It’s clear how this meatloaf differentiates itself – it’s not just good meatloaf, it’s meatloaf that your kids will like. For any parent seeing that ad, that is a huge draw!

Another technique is to draw in the viewers’ attention with clear visual hierarchy and a focus on the product itself.

Apple is the master of using composition to draw people’s eyes to their products. This is an easy ad for the RAS to focus attention on. The iphones are front and center. There’s nothing else to look at to distract the viewer.

Unfortunately, Android doesn’t win attention with this design. It’s not clear where the eye should look because the visual is cluttered. While Apple’s website’s sleek look matches the sleek, modern technology they’re selling, Android’s website is cluttered with colors and shapes. It’s a missed opportunity to get attention on their products.

The Right Colors Make the Right Impression

The science behind the impact of color on our brain is impressive. Let’s compare red and blue.

In an experiment comparing the effects of red or blue on people’s ability to complete tasks, red increased performance on detail-oriented tasks (memory retrieval, proofreading, etc) by 31% compared to blue. On the other hand, when scientists experimented with creative tasks, participants created twice as many creative outputs when in a blue environment than in a red one.

When the background color of a product or product imagery is red, people showed preference for ads that featured specific product details. When the background color is blue, people showed preference for ads with creative messaging and imagery. For example, in one study participants were shown a new fictional toothpaste brand. They were more receptive to negative messaging (“cavity prevention”) when the ad was on a red background, and more receptive to aspirational messaging (“tooth whitening”) when the product was on blue.

Colors matter. There’s a reason why so many fast food chains use so much red in their branding; red encourages appetite. Check out this article for a detailed infographic about what different emotions evoke.

Try the 5-Second Test

To test if your marketing visuals are getting you past the Reticular Activating System bouncer, perform a 5-second test on your website or ads. In a 5-Second Test, a user is asked to view your graphics for five seconds only. Then they are asked to describe what they saw. If users can’t tell what you do, what makes you unique, and what’s in it for them as potential customers after viewing your visuals for five seconds, it’s time to make a change!

Try https://www.photofeeler.com/ for testing pictures of people to see how others react to them.

To understand why this happens, let’s look at the primal mind.

The Reticular Activating System: The Brain’s Bouncer

The primal mind can be thought of as the part of our psychology that we inherited from our ancestors through all the years of human evolution. It’s the most basic part of our mind – the one that tells us to take our hand off a hot stove or hit the brake when the car in front of us comes to a sudden stop. This part of our mind works unconsciously to keep us safe. It decides what external stimuli to pay attention to, and what we can ignore.

A lot of the work around the unconscious and conscious mind is managed by the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS is a small part of our brain that controls what stimuli get into the brain for conscious consideration. Think of it like the bouncer outside of a busy club. The bouncer decides who gets in and who stays out. Keep this in mind (pun intended) as we talk more about the relationship between evolutionary psychology and marketing. As marketers, we want the brain to pay attention to what we do. We have to get past that bouncer.

The interesting thing about the RAS is that while its first concern is keeping us safe, it’s also heavily influenced by our focus. Take this example. In the following video, count the number of passes the team makes.Play

Now that you’ve finished the video… How many passes did you count? And did you notice the man in the gorilla suit walking through the court?

This is a great example of the bouncer in our brain doing its job. When you want to focus on counting passes, the RAS lets that information in so we can complete our task. When you aren’t focusing on counting passes, the RAS let’s the whole scene in, including the man in the gorilla suit.

As you drive home from work, your brain knows exactly what to do. You know where to turn and where to expect a traffic light. The RAS is on call to let in additional information as necessary, like the example of slamming on your brakes when someone in front of you stops suddenly. Besides those cases, the unconscious mind takes on most of the work.

Harnessing the power of the conscious and unconscious minds

The unconscious mind plays a huge part in the decision making we do all day every day. And that’s incredibly helpful and necessary because we make 35,000 decisions every day.

Imagine if we needed to make all 35,000 of those decisions consciously. We’d be completely overwhelmed. That’s why it’s crucial that our unconscious minds are so capable. That part of the brain gets things done, including the things we don’t need to consciously review, like the turns we make on our drive home.

In The Power of Fifty Bits by Bob Nease, Nease talks about the steps we can take to bridge the gap between what we intend to do and what we actually do. If the brain processes 10,000,000 bits of information, the conscious mind is in charge of “50 bits” of those. There’s so much happening behind the scenes that we don’t consciously influence. What we need to do as individuals – and what we need to understand to be good marketers – is harness the potential of those 50 bits to achieve our goals.

Because the conscious mind – the thinking mind – is only in charge of processing a small portion of inputs, we must harness the power of the RAS to make sure that the messages we want to get through to people makes it past the bouncer. 

How to Get Past the Bouncer

Remember, the RAS is on the lookout for what information we need and what information we don’t need. If we tell the RAS to count the number of times players pass a basketball, it lets us focus on counting. When a potential customer is scrolling through Facebook and sees your ad, what does the RAS do? Does it tell the brain to focus on that ad, or does it ignore your ad and let you keep scrolling?

There are six approaches for getting on the VIP list so the RAS bouncer lets you through.

PERSONAL

VISUAL

TANGIBLE

CONTRASTABLE

MEMORABLE

EMOTIONAL

The highest impact approach that you can use right now in your marketing efforts is VISUAL. In the next article, we’ll take a deeper dive into this approach.

Key Takeaways

1 – In order to grow your company in a noisy digital environment, it’s critical to understand how human attention works. Understanding evolutionary psychology and its impact on what draws our attention and focus allows us to stand out and capture the attention of potential customers.

2 – There are key principles you can leverage to utilize this mechanism, the most important of which is visual.

See you in part two.

I’ve done a lot of reading about how the brain works and how the brain manages all sorts of different situations. The thing about the brain is that it likes to make predictions. It wants the world to follow certain patterns. When new information comes in, our brains like to analyze it and figure out what to expect next. It’s like a map of cause and effect that the brain can lay on top of the world and use it to get us from point A to point B reliably and safely.

But what happens when patterns change? What happens when the brain’s map becomes unreliable?

Since COVID appeared in early 2020, our brain’s maps have become filled with uncertainty. Things didn’t happen the way we expected to. Sure, it’s understandable…how could any of our brains handle a worldwide event that pulled us out of the normal course of our lives, took us out of our offices, took our kids out of school, and filled the TV and internet with terrifying stories and a whole host of information to disseminate, some of which was accurate and some not so much? Without a predictable pattern, our brains experienced enormous stress.

Stress Isn’t Necessarily a Bad Thing

Let’s back up. People tend to talk about stress like it’s a bad thing, but that’s not true. Stress is a normal, helpful tool our bodies use to get through difficult situations. When you run into a rattlesnake on your hike, stress causes your adrenaline to spike and sends you running in the opposite direction. (I think so, at least. An initial scan of google results shows a few options for dealing with rattlesnakes, but I’ve looked it up and can assure you: humans can outrun rattlesnakes.) When the guy in front of you cuts you off on the highway, that adrenaline spike makes you slam your foot on the brake. Stress has an important evolutionary purpose. 

When stress is manageable, it actually increases alertness and performance, like when you’re slamming your foot on the break. It improves memory by encouraging the growth of stem cells that become brain cells. Think of it this way: if you always stub your toe on the coffee table, you’re more likely to remember to step out of the way next time. Your memory improved. It’s an evolutionary adaptation that has a place in our world.

Unfortunately, evolution couldn’t predict the world we live in now.

Finding a Solution

The nervous system comprises both the body and the brain, and it’s bidirectional, so the brain can stress out the body and vice versa. When you’re in a high stress state, telling yourself to calm down does next to nothing or even makes things worse. Instead, look to your body.

Ignore anyone telling you to calm down when you’re feeling stressed. Neuroscientist Andrew Humberman says, “When you’re stressed, and you tell yourself, ‘Don’t stress,’ or, ‘Calm down,’ that rarely works. … It usually has the opposite effect, and it can be damaging for relationships.” (source) You can’t use your mind to control your mind. You can, though, use your body to control your mind. 

The two items below are evidence-based methods that use mechanisms that are the fastest way to take yourself out of stress and into a more balanced state. The great thing about this list is that they can be done at almost any time for no money – a stress reduction technique that requires weekly meditation sessions on top of a mountain isn’t realistic, but these methods are.

1. LOOK TO THE HORIZON: People think of the eyes as a part of the body connected to the eyes, but that’s not exactly right. The eyes aren’t just connected to the brain; they’re part of the brain. We can use our eyesight to calm ourselves when we’re feeling tense using something called panoramic vision. When we’re on a walk outside and look off to the horizon, which “releases a mechanism in the brain stem involved in vigilance and arousal” (source). Changing the way we view our environment actually relieves stress!
2. TAKE A LONG WALK: Any google search around taking walks will turn up hundreds of results about the benefits of walking for mental and physical health. One key element of walks that can have an enormous impact on mental health is that “forward movement (simply moving and propelling your body forward through walking, running, swimming, biking and more) suppresses the brain’s fear response and encourages us to be more courageous and confrontational” (source). Moving forward, whether it’s on a walk around the block, swimming back and forth in the pool, or running around the park, makes us more courageous. It also releases dopamine which lowers anxiety.
3. TAKE DEEP BREATHS: “The Physiological Sigh” was discovered in the 1930s and can be used to help us find a sense of control when we’re feeling stressed or anxious. This sigh is a special breathing technique where we take two inhales followed by a long exhale. It’s actually something we do involuntarily throughout the day, and it’s essential for lung function. By performing this mindful sigh a few times, you can actually make the body feel more relaxed. You can read more about sighing here.

Here is the thing: our lives have gotten immensely more stressful in the last few years, and it’s unlikely that this is going to go away. While stress isn’t always a negative thing, it can interfere with our daily lives and hold us back from being our best selves. Next time you’re feeling overwhelmed with stress or anxiety, try one of the techniques above and let me know how it goes!

(We actually procrastinated a ton on this blog post. We started it months ago. How’s that for irony?)

Think of everything we do as an open or closed loop. Closed loops are tasks that have clear start and end points, like filling out a form or eating at a restaurant. The action starts and finishes. Don’t get me wrong – you can procrastinate on a closed loop all day long. Still, with a closed loop, you get that dopamine boost when you check it off on your list because it’s done. Even better, once it’s done, it’s off your mind.

Open Loops Are Inherently Stressful

Open loops are much harder for us. These are the tasks that sit with you longer because their start and ends are less clear. For example, studying for a test. You can study for an hour, but are you really finished? Maybe you need to spend more time on a certain topic. Maybe you need to look something up that wasn’t clear. There isn’t a clear moment when your studying is “done,” so the task is that much more stressful.

Another example is creative work. Michelangelo took seven years to complete the painting of the Sistine Chapel. Obviously we don’t know what was going through his head, but he must have had moments where he thought he was done but wasn’t sure, right? There’s no way to know when a painting is “complete” – the artist needs to follow their instincts and make a decision.

Open loops are tougher on our brains than closed ones because of this uncertainty. When our brains are dealing with that stress, we tend to procrastinate to avoid that feeling.

Procrastination Isn’t Always a Bad Thing

Procrastination is a huge problem, right? Not entirely. It turns out that procrastination isn’t always bad. One interesting study on creativity found that procrastination is actually really good for projects, especially creative or innovative ones. 

When you’re procrastinating on a project with an open loop, it can actually help. The key is that you have to start the project…and put off finishing it. Because when you do that, part of your mind is working on it the whole time. That’s what famous artists like Michelangelo would do: they would start a project, and then let it sit. They’d get some cognitive distance. With an open loop hanging over your head, part of you is always working on it. And then, when the deadline approaches, you get this massive sort of channeling of energy of all that background thought.

It’s bad if you put off ever starting the project. You have to trick yourself basically. “I’m only going to start this, but then I’m going to not work on it anymore.” 

The problem is that if you’re on to the game, the effect decreases. You can’t self-select when you’re going to feel that energy. It has to be outside pressure. And we all want to avoid that outside pressure, right? Intrinsic motivation seems like the best way to do things. But outside pressure is literally the only way to get the best out of ourselves.It has to be imminent danger, and then all of a sudden you get all the stuff done. Which is a terrible feedback loop, right? Because it’s self-reinforcing.

Impending events – social pressure, deadlines – help. They raise our bias for action. You’re more likely to jog if you have a 5K coming up. If there isn’t an actual timeline, you can make one by envisioning negative consequences – this is actually really effective! Fear is motivating; it gets you into an activated state. But you can’t let it overtake you. Channel it into specific actions that move you closer to closing that loop.

Here are some things you can do when procrastination has you stuck:

• Use procedural memory to jumpstart action: write out or think through all the steps you need to do. This primes the neurotransmitters and creates a visualization to create a bias towards action.
• Chunk the task, making each part as small as possible.
• Create a schedule for when you’ll get each part of the task done. (This never works for me…maybe it will for you!)

Next time you’re procrastinating, think to yourself, is this valuable? Is there an open loop I’m avoiding dealing with? If you haven’t started the loop, that’s a problem. That’s when you need to amp up the stress to get started. But if you’ve started the task and you’re giving yourself cognitive dissonance, you can call yourself Michelangelo. That’s where some great thinking happens…when we’re not thinking about things.

If you’re procrastinating too much even after you’ve opened the loop, try some of the techniques above and let me know which ones work for you!

Like working out, or driving to the office, or eating breakfast – I know how much time to leave for the stuff I need to do. Kind of. It turns out that we’re really bad at estimating how long things take…even when they’re things we do all the time.

Here’s how they figured this out: back in the 70’s, two Israeli psychologists named Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky did some research around why we seem to estimate our time so terribly. They asked groups who knew the subject matter equally well to estimate best case and worst case scenarios for a 90-day project. These guys were all expert groups in their field. The two groups’ worst case and best case estimates – without the groups communicating with each other – came within three days of each other. Both estimates by both groups were too short by 40%. (Source)

We see this in the real world all the time. Take construction projects…how often do those finish as quickly as they’re supposed to? Here in Colorado, the Denver International Airport opened in 1995 16 months past when the city said it would be done (not to mention almost $3 billion over budget!). Even if we tell ourselves not to, and even if we have tons of evidence that our estimates have historically been way too optimistic, the human mind seems to only be able to estimate the best case scenario, which is usually wildly under what it actually will be.

This seems crazy, because we know we do have the ability to estimate accurately. Remember, I know how long it takes me to eat a meal or finish a workout, right? But I’m still late to meetings.

So that begs the question…what do we do about this? How am I supposed to get anything done in time when I know my estimate for how long it’ll take is going to be wrong? There isn’t a quick fix to this problem unfortunately, but there are a few things that help.

1. Account for the planning fallacy: Give yourself a break! We’re all dealing with this.
2. Break down the task into chunks: The smaller we can make each part of the process we’re estimating, the better we are at estimating it. There’s a trade off, obviously. If you estimate how long things will take every day, you’ll spend more time breaking a task down than just doing it. But for those huge projects like building an airport, where you have to have thousands of parts working together, planning has to happen at a micro level. And the sheer amount of planning that takes is crazy. Luckily, most of our day to day tasks are way simpler.
3. Identify game-stopping constraints: Find the absolute key bottlenecks that can throw off your plan. For example, if I’m trying to get to a meeting on time but I know that I get stuck at a train maybe one in 20 times, I should account for that in deciding when to leave. For a construction site, there may be a bottleneck when someone’s waiting for an inspection from a department that is notoriously always behind. Take these things into account when you make your plan.
4. Reassess early and often: If we know our timelines are going to be off, we have to check in on our progress early and often. Are we still on time? What do we need to adjust in our plan? This may not save us from the Denver airport problem, but it should make things a little better.
5. Analyze and learn from the past: This is huge. Whatever we’re working on, we’ve done it before, or we’ve done something similar, or someone else has done it before. Look for areas where you were off. Take a close look at what happened in the past and use it to plan better in the present.

Your turn. When was the last time you underestimated how long something would take? What was your takeaway from that experience? And help me out…if you’re getting to meetings on time, what’s your secret?

That includes both what we do and the joy and wonder we can feel in life. Both are far more attainable than we realize. I have pursued that belief to the ends of the goddamn earth. 

In that pursuit, I’ve discovered that 95% of what’s out there in this domain is just flat out bad ideas that sound good but aren’t real world applicable. It sounds great in theory and sounds nice on a plaque on the wall but is actually useless when it comes to making a real difference in your life. Not only is it useless, but it distracts you from the tools that do help. The problem with all these things is that you beat yourself up for it not working and it costs momentum and time better spent elsewhere.

If you’re interested in this and want to save that inordinate amount of effort to find what’s helpful or not, I’m sharing two things that will help you in your life and help you make the journey towards living the life that YOU want, that YOU desire.

These are battle tested ideas that you can apply to your life knowing that they’re based on sound scientific research and not just platitudes.

Before I get into this, some back story.

Cold Showers

A while ago, I read that cold showers have incredible health benefits. And I thought, no way. They’re terrible. Can’t be true. But the research shows that cold showers actually reduce stress levels. They make you more alert, which means they get you ready for the day. I’m all about starting the day right and boosting productivity, so I decided to give cold showers a try.

Guess what?

I was right. They fucking suck.

But here’s the thing: just because something sucks doesn’t mean it’s not good for you.

Which brings me to my first point, which comes from The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. I hope you’ll read it and get as much out of it as I have. The idea is that we do all we can every day to avoid challenges, pain, and suffering…and by doing so, we deprive ourselves of the greatest joys.

For example, exercising is a pain (literally). It’s physically taxing. But when we don’t exercise, we’re depriving ourselves of years of life, of the energy and vitality that comes from finishing a great workout.

So what Holiday says is that obstacles aren’t things you happen on along the path. Obstacles ARE the path. They’re the paving stones you’re building towards your desired future. You can’t avoid obstacles…you NEED them to pave the way. Think of it this way: if you want something, then that’s a thing you don’t have. So something is in your way. So the only way to get that thing is to deal with the obstacles. And embracing those challenges as a constant in life is what lets you grow.

Think of it like that cold shower. I want to feel more focused during the day, and I want to be more productive, and the cold shower is going to get me there. It’s an obstacle, and getting past my internal resistance to it is what’s going to get me to my desired outcome. So here’s what I’m going to do.

• Acknowledge: First, you have to acknowledge that the thing is hard. “I know this is going to be hard. It’s going to suck.”
• Decide: Decide why you’re doing it. “I’m taking this cold shower because it’s going to make me feel more alert and ready to start my day.”
• Decide (but differently this time): Decide you’re going to enjoy it. “I’m going to enjoy this shower because it’s going to get me to my desired result.”

By deciding you’re going to enjoy something, you can actually train your brain to release dopamine. You can actually enjoy that cold shower knowing it’s going to suck.

But here’s the thing…Acknowledge-Decide-Decide doesn’t work that well if you’re stressed, overwhelmed, stuck, whatever. Which leads me to my second point: there’s a right way to build a gratitude habit.

Gratitude vs Appreciation

If you’re like me, you’ve always heard that keeping a gratitude journal will relieve stress and anxiety. I don’t know if it works for you, but it doesn’t work for me. I never do it consistently. It gets repetitive. Don’t get me wrong – it works okay for some people. But there’s something better out there.

Appreciation

This totally changed things for me. I found out that this technique works THREE TIMES as well as keeping a gratitude journal. Here’s how it works.

Think of a time someone expressed genuine appreciation for you. Think of that time where they expressed appreciation and it gave you that heartwarming feeling. When you think about your experience in that moment for 30 seconds – you can write it down or not, this helps at first but isn’t always needed – it doesn’t just help you reframe your perspective. It actually floods your body with this feeling of gratitude, releasing serotonin and oxytocin into your system. You physically can’t feel stress at the same time as when you’re feeling this sense of being appreciated. It resets your system and recharges all those parts of the brain you need to manage stress.

It lets you jump into that cold shower.

Cool, right?

I’d love to talk to you more about this – I could talk about this all day long – so let me know what you think. Drop me a line or leave a comment and let me know when you start taking cold showers, or maybe when you get yourself to try salad instead of fries. I’d love to hear about it!

-Derrick