The End of Tiny Decisions

How Everyday Software Is Quietly Changing the Way We Think

Last Friday I wrote about some of the things we no longer do.

I no longer buy printer cartridges because my printer orders them automatically.

I don’t balance a checkbook anymore.

I rarely walk into a bank.

My online pharmacy reminds me when it’s time to refill a prescription.

Before we arrive at the theater, our movie tickets and seat assignments are already waiting on our phones.

After I finished writing that article, I realized I had missed the bigger story.

Those weren’t simply examples of chores disappearing.

They were examples of decisions disappearing.

None of those changes happened overnight. Each one seemed small when it arrived. None felt revolutionary. But together they quietly changed the way I move through an ordinary day.

For most of my life, software simply waited. It waited for me to type a command, click a button, or answer a question. It did exactly what I told it to do—nothing more and nothing less.

Today that relationship is quietly changing.

The software and services we use every day are beginning to notice things before we do. They recognize patterns, suggest alternatives, warn us when something doesn’t look right, and sometimes take care of routine tasks before we even think about them.

Think about an ordinary day.

Your calendar reminds you about lunch with a friend. As you’re getting ready to leave, your phone suggests departing ten minutes early because traffic has become heavier than usual. Halfway across town, your navigation system quietly reroutes you around an accident you never even knew existed.

Later in the day your credit card company asks whether you really made a purchase in another state. Your music service starts playing songs you’ll probably enjoy. A streaming service recommends a movie based on what you’ve watched before. Your pharmacy reminds you that a prescription will be ready tomorrow.

You probably don’t think about any of these events while they’re happening. Each one takes only a few seconds. Each one saves only one tiny decision.

Collectively, however, they quietly change how we move through the day.

One experience brought that home to me.

A few months ago, I paid for dinner using a gift card to cover most of the bill. I put the remaining balance—and the tip—on my credit card.

A few moments later my credit card company sent me a message asking if I had really intended to leave a 250 percent tip.

It hadn’t misunderstood restaurants. It had misunderstood gift cards. Since most of the bill had already been paid, the tip looked enormous compared with the small balance charged to the card.

The company didn’t reject the charge or interrupt my dinner. It simply gave me a heads-up that something looked unusual. If I had accidentally entered the wrong amount, I could have corrected it before it became a much bigger problem.

That struck me as a surprisingly important change.

Twenty years ago the transaction simply would have been processed and would have been up to me to discover the potential error. Today the software quietly notices something unusual and asks, in effect, “Did you really mean to do that?”

That isn’t software taking control.

It’s software becoming a better assistant.

Think back to the grocery shopping example from last week’s article.

Instead of waiting for me to notice that we’re running low on coffee or toothpaste, software could quietly prepare a shopping list based on our buying habits. It could compare prices, check our household budget, notice that a large insurance payment is due next week, and even suggest waiting a few days before placing a larger order.

Notice how the question changes.

Instead of asking, “Can I buy this?” the software begins asking, “Would this be a good time to buy this?”

I still make the decision.

The software simply gathers the information I would have looked up myself or probably ignored it until an issue arose.

Most people assume this story is about artificial intelligence.

I think it’s really about attention.

We often say technology saves time, but I’m not sure time is the real benefit. I think the scarcer resource is attention.

Every reminder, every forgotten bill, every stop at the grocery store for one item, every “Which way should I go?” occupies a tiny piece of our thinking. None of those moments matters very much by itself. Collectively, they fill our days with mental housekeeping.

I’ve lived through calculators, personal computers, the Internet, smartphones, and cloud computing. Each changed what I had to do and how I did it.

This new generation of software may become the first technology that changes what I no longer have to think about.

That doesn’t mean I want software making life’s important decisions. I don’t want it deciding where I should live, how I should invest my retirement savings, or which friends deserve my time.

But deciding whether I need more toothpaste?

I’m perfectly happy to let software handle that one.

Technology first reduced physical work. Then it reduced routine tasks. Now it is beginning to reduce routine decisions.

If that’s where we’re headed, then perhaps the important question isn’t whether software can make decisions for us.

The better question is this:

Which decisions are still worth making ourselves?

Those are probably the ones that define who we are.