Every new app, platform, or tool arrives promising to save you time — and somehow you end up busier than before. This isn't a bug in your habits; it's a pattern the American philosopher John Dewey identified a century ago. Dewey argued that tools don't just help us do things; they quietly reshape what we think is worth doing. The calculator didn't just speed up arithmetic — it made people ambitious about calculations they'd never have attempted by hand. So when you adopt a new technology, the honest question isn't 'will this make me more efficient?' It's 'what new appetites will this create that I don't yet have?' Carry that lens into your next software demo or app download — look not at the feature list, but at the behavior the tool is designed to reward.

Think of a technology you adopted to solve one problem. What new demand or habit did it quietly install that you didn't choose?

Drawing from Pragmatism — John Dewey