Hooked on election coverage

How The Scarcity Loop steals your time and sanity this week—and how to fight back.

Post summary

• Most people will tune into U.S. election coverage this week—often compulsively and to the detriment of their time and sanity.

• Election coverage can pull us into The Scarcity Loop, the most powerful habit loop for leading us into behaviors we repeat and later regret.

• We’ll explain the architecture of The Scarcity Loop and how it can hurt us this U.S. election week.

• The result: You’ll reclaim your time and sanity and do more of what helps you and less of what hurts you.

Housekeeping

• This post, like all Monday posts, is free to all subscribers.

  • But only Members get full access to Wednesday and Friday posts. Become a Member here:

• Or follow this link for seven free days of Two Percent. We partnered with Substack to give you a free weeklong Membership through the app.

• ICYMI:

  • On Wednesday, we covered the ideal amount of strength and fantastic two upper-body exercises that tell you when you’re strong enough.

  • On Friday, we ran a bodyweight-only Burn the Ships workout that takes 35 minutes or less. It’s perfect for the busy holiday travel season.

Podcast/audio version

The post

Well, we have a week ahead of us. Every U.S. presidential election is consequential for the world.

But if the 20 political fliers and 30 political texts I’ve received daily since August are any indication, this election feels … bigger.

We’ll all have eyes on the election starting tomorrow morning. Social media feeds, news websites, cable news, and more will be tracking the election obsessively—giving us constantly changing, “breaking” vote counts as results trickle in.

When I find myself sucked into the vortex of election outcomes at the expense of better ways to spend my time, I’m reminded of the slot machine gamblers in my hometown of Las Vegas.

Election coverage and slot machines run on The Scarcity Loop, which is the most powerful habit loop for grabbing our attention, holding it, and often pushing us into behaviors that we later regret.

Today we’re covering:

• How election tracking falls into The Scarcity Loop and can steal our time, attention, and sanity.

• How election coverage and watching has changed over time to make it more compulsive.

• What you can do to avoid the election Scarcity Loop and stay sane this week. Or, at least, do something more productive than obsessively monitoring an outcome you can’t change once you’ve voted.

The scarcity loop of election coverage

• Section summary: Election coverage falls into The Scarcity Loop. It gives us an opportunity to learn important information. It has unpredictable rewards, with an unknown outcome and constantly-changing vote counts. And it has quick repeatability because we can check and recheck for election updates.

Slot machines are everywhere in my hometown of Las Vegas—in our casinos, grocery stores, gas stations, bars, airports, and more. And people play them around the clock.

That behavior, at face value, doesn’t make any damn sense. The longer you play a slot machine, the more money you lose. Yet the machines make more money each year than movies, books, and music combined.

In my book Scarcity Brain, I decided to figure out how a slot machine works. Like, why do people get hooked on these non-sensical contraptions?

If I could figure that out, I might learn something about many bad habits. A bad habit is doing the same thing over and over—even though it hurts us in the long run.

This question took me to a casino laboratory on the edge of Las Vegas, where a Ph.D. slot designer explained how a slot machine works. I then followed up with behavioral psychologists.

I found that slot machines work on a three-part behavior loop I call The Scarcity Loop. And it pulls people into all sorts of behaviors they later regret.

Its three parts are:

1. Opportunity: We have an opportunity to get something of value. For example, money, likes on social media, important information, matches on a dating app, a possession, and on and on.

2. Unpredictable rewards: We know we’ll get that thing of value at some point, but we don’t know when and we don’t know how valuable it’ll be.

3. Quick repeatability: We can keep repeating the behavior to try to get the thing of value.

Slot machines mastered this habit loop in the 1980s, but it’s now woven into many daily experiences.

Election coverage is no exception. If you find yourself sucked into election coverage this week, it’s got you.

Here’s how The Scarcity Loop works with election coverage:

1. Opportunity

With election coverage, the opportunity is information we deem valuable: The outcome of the election.

We have an opportunity to learn results that may shape our future—from taxes to civil rights to international relations and more.

2. Unpredictable rewards

Elections are unpredictable.

We know we’ll eventually learn who won. But we don’t know who will win and when that critical information will drop.

Today, the period from the start of the election to moment we learn the final results is like the wheels rolling on a slot machine.

We get all sorts of breaking news about constantly changing vote counts on cable TV, online, or on our phones.

At one moment, the numbers could be 47% for one candidate and 48% for another. But with every refresh, the numbers could change dramatically or barely move.

Each update feels suspenseful and significant—we never know exactly when or if a shift will happen, or what the shift will be.

This grabs us. Research going back to the 1930s shows that humans and many other animals get sucked into unpredictable rewards. If we know we’ll receive a reward but aren’t sure when, we experience a sort of exciting, suspenseful anxiety as we wait to see what this occasion will deliver.

One study found that unpredictable rewards “tap into fundamental aspects of human cognition and emotion.” Unpredictable rewards are the bedrock of addictive behaviors.

3. Quick repeatability

The unpredictable, constantly shifting numbers compel us to check and recheck the television, phone, or computer for election information. And we do.

All the way back in May, the Pew Research Center found that 60 percent of people were closely following the election.

That figure will only increase. The frequency and intensity with which we follow the election will also skyrocket this week.

How modern election watching became compulsive

• Section summary: Modern election coverage now offers far more unpredictable rewards and quick repeatability than in the past. This increased compulsive election monitoring.

Compulsive election-watching wasn’t always a thing.

Just as slot machines had to tweak The Scarcity Loop to become the compulsion boxes they are, so too did election coverage.

Since the 1800s, election information has become much quicker and easier to access. Decades of behavioral research (and common sense) show:

• The quicker we can do something, the more likely we are to do it.

• The easier it is to do something, the more likely we are to do it.

Here’s a quick timeline of how election coverage has changed:

• Through the 1800s and early 1900s, people learned election results from newspapers or via word of mouth from a neighbor who read the newspaper. Results may take days to reach you. No one could track changing vote counts in real-time.

• From the 1920s to mid-20th century, the speed of coverage and our exposure to it increased. Radio became widespread, so we could get real-time updates. When TV rose in the late 1950s, networks began real-time coverage. This increased interest in the elections, but broadcasters didn’t cover elections 24/7. Our access to information also required us to be at home with our single radio or TV.

• In the late 20th century, we got cable news and 24/7 coverage. Think on-screen updates of vote counts, exit polling, prediction models, calling winners before official results, etc. This dialed up the unpredictable rewards and quick repeatability—and fixated election-watching began.

• And then, in the early 21st century, we got the internet. Coverage wasn’t just happening 24/7 on cable news. It happened faster and deeper on social media and news sites, with minute-by-minute updates, interactive maps, analytics, and more. The Scarcity Loop intensified and became more powerful.

Election coverage is now faster, deeper, and, in many ways, more likely to suck us in.

As votes trickle in, millions become glued to phone, TV, and computer screens. We can refresh, refresh, and refresh to know every slight shift in percentages.

How to avoid the election Scarcity Loop

• Section summary: Here’s how to avoid the election Scarcity Loop and some benefits you might see if you avoid compulsive monitoring.

If you want to binge election coverage compulsively—i.e., if you get joy from that and it benefits your life—go for it!

Falling into The Scarcity Loop of election coverage isn’t necessarily a bad thing—so long as you’re aware of why you get sucked in and know when you’ve had enough.

That’s the thing—with Scarcity Loop behaviors, things are fine when we start, but then often turn bad before we’ve realized it.

The father of American psychology, William James, had a great line about this. He said that when we reach the end of our lives, our life experience will be equal to what we paid attention to—whether by choice or default. So the trick to living well is choosing what you pay attention to and quitting before things turn bad.

Once you’ve voted, your ability to alter the outcome of the election is over¹. No amount of news watching will change anything. And compulsive watching has downsides:

• Researchers at Texas Tech found that news bingers were more likely to have poor mental and physical health.

• The American Psychological Association has found that elections are a significant source of stress, and constant election monitoring makes it worse.

• It also steals our time, taking us away from healthier, more productive behaviors.

Three ways to avoid the election Scarcity Loop

• ClearSpace is a useful app for those who find themselves doomscrolling on their phone. It allows you to put reasonable limits on app use. The app’s approach leans on decades of behavioral research showing that adding time and friction to compulsive behaviors reduces their frequency. It alters the quick repeatability phase of The Scarcity Loop. This week, consider using ClearSpace to limit the apps you check too often (X, Facebook, Web Browser, etc).

• You can also use the Clearspace extension to block specific websites on your computer.

• Ask yourself, what else could I do with my time this week? In the periods you might spend monitoring the election, you could get in a quick workout, walk, read a book, meditate, prepare food for the week, hang out with your kid, etc, etc, etc. The possibilities are endless—and probably better for your time and sanity than obsessing over vote counts.

Have fun, don’t die, pay attention to what you pay attention to.

-Michael

Partnered with GOREWEAR

GOREWEAR designs outdoor gear for Two Percenters. Their products are tailored for endurance athletes and elevate our experiences across the best and worst weather conditions. GOREWEAR leverages the most cutting edge science and deeply comprehends the challenges endurance athletes encounter—leading to gear that works. No matter what Earth throws at us. Always. Use code EASTER30 for 30% off your next order. Discover more at www.gorewear.com.

1. Update 11/5: Monique Rice-Winn left a great comment disagreeing with this. She wrote: “I voted early as well and I agree and disagree with you on a few of your points. After you vote early or when you’re feeling angst, there are still things that you can do! Volunteer! I knocked on doors, put up signs, phone banked, talked to friends and family, answered questions, etc. There is always more that you can do to pass the time and remain productive!” I agree with her on that. I don’t think political volunteering is for everyone, but she’s right that there is more you can do than voting to impact election outcomes.