You know those glowing foam "party sticks?"
They're a great way to make people feel like they're part of the show, and not just a passive audience. There's a psychological side to it, too: When you've got one in your hand, you feel an urge to wave it in the air. Then all of a sudden, you're dancing.
Your brain sees that you're dancing, and based on that information, you realize that you're having a great time. (After all, you wouldn't be dancing if you weren't.)
It's an interesting situation where our mind takes cues from our body, as well as our environment, and uses this information to deduce how we're feeling.
*We don't dance because we're having fun; we're having fun BECAUSE we're dancing.*
This inversion of cause and effect is FASCINATING, and by seeing it for what it is, we can make more intentional choices about how we design events -- and how we perceive reality.
In my video last week, I talked about the role of phones in engagement. We spend a lot of time between 0-50% engagement -- which encompasses the range of consumption to creation.
The higher end of this familiar range is when we are capturing content with our phones. And so the inversion happens: We take pictures of things to convince ourselves that they have value.
We *think* we're documenting the value, but in reality, we're convincing ourselves that it exists.
The problem, of course, is it means that we miss some magical moments, because they're drowned in phones as we scramble to document them.*
*to see what I mean, google "new years 2024 phones Paris," and look for the video results.
We need to remember that the best moments — the ones with REAL value — happen when we experience something so powerful that our phones have no place there at all. That's where we experience -- or create -- deep engagement.
