A funny thing happened last week. I bought an app called “Days of Life” after a recommendation from my ‘What You Will Learn‘ co-host, Adam Jones. I’ve got notification set to daily, so every day it tells me how many day I have left to live, based on the average life expectancy for an Australian male in today’s society. It’s a little daunting to see that over a quarter of my pie chart has been used up, but it’s a little bit of inspiration each day when I get that notification. It gets me back on tracked and helps me stay focused.

I only bought it after a brief moment of hesitation though. When he told me about the app, I loved the idea and went straight to the App Store to download it. But I paused… it wasn’t free. The app cost $0.99 (it might’ve been $1.99 or even $2.99, I don’t remember exactly, but it was under $3 but it wasn’t free). I’m used to just downloading apps for free… I even download them for free then get sucked in to making ‘in-app purchases’ that would far outweigh that 99 cents. But We’ve been conditioned to expecting free apps. When I think about it, a few bucks is really nothing. It’s less than the coffee I was sipping on at the time. But it’s that notion of ‘pegging’, a cognitive bias, that meant the 99 cents seemed an enormous price to pay for something I expected to be free.

I eventually sucked it up and forked out the buck or two to get it. And I haven’t regretted it! I’m sure it’s a pretty easy thing to make, but that dollar or two has helped me regain focus and motivation every day since I first downloaded it.