This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
I love new gadgets and gizmos, and I’m constantly trying new sites and apps. So I was intrigued by the title of Eric Athas’s upcoming book, Saying No to New.
Athas is an editor at The New York Times, where he helps journalists make the most of new tools. He’s also a lifelong early adopter. He told me he used to wait in line for new iPhones. But his upcoming book argues for thinking twice about acquiring new stuff.
1. The Vanishing Gap Between Wanting and Getting
When Athas and I were growing up, if you wanted to buy something cool you saw on TV, you’d have to drive to a store. You or your parents would have to spend cash. If you ordered something by mail, you’d wait weeks for delivery.
Today, you can tap on a phone and the thing that caught your eye appears at your door the next day. You can even buy now, pay later, so you don’t need cash. Coming next? AI agents that shop for you proactively. They anticipate what you want so you don’t have to make any decision at all.
Athas calls this the collapse of the “new-thing gap.” The time, distance, and cost between seeing something new and acquiring it has shrunk. That gap used to protect us from buying on impulse.
- One-click ordering eliminated distance.
- Free shipping removed the physical effort of the pickup errand.
- Deferred payments eliminated financial friction. You don’t even need the money.
Athas suggests we reintroduce friction by pausing long enough to ask whether the new thing will actually matter a month from now.
2. Show and Tell: Our Gadget Graveyards
Athas and I compared old odd gadgets in our offices.
From my desk:
- Multiple VR headsets. I have at least three, including one with the plastic still on it. You slot your phone in, close it up, and get an immersive view. Remember when The New York Times announced in 2015 it would ship a million Google Cardboard VR headsets? Athas confirmed that the headset now lives in The Times’s in-house museum.
- Lumo posture band. This posture sensor had a belt that wrapped around my waist and buzzed when I slouched. It was a cool, if weird, concept, but the buzzing was distracting, I still slouch, and the product was discontinued. It’s lived in my drawer for years.
- Plaud AI recorder next to my brother’s old tape recorder. The old one has a red Record button, a Play button, and a Stop button. You know exactly what to do with it. The Plaud is sleeker but less intuitive.
- Sand timer. This one is both decorative and useful. It’s silent, easy to use for timing, and never needs to be charged. I use it to stay focused during hard tasks.
From Eric Athas’s desk:
- A USB coffee mug warmer. Cracked. Unused. Athas’s take: Once you introduce a USB cord into the coffee experience, it loses its magic.
- NeeDoh stress balls. A kid craze. Athas’s children wanted them, squeezed them for a day, and abandoned them. He wrote about the NeeDoh fad here. I have multiple stress balls, and I use them often. Consumer Reports warns they can create a sticky mess or worse.
3. New Things Worth Saying Yes To
Athas’s book isn’t about rejecting everything new. It’s about choosing things thoughtfully so that the genuinely useful things don’t get crowded out. Some of the new tools we like:
- Seek app. Free. Point your phone at any plant or animal in nature and learn what it is. I discovered it during the pandemic and still use it regularly.
- Merlin app. Free. Record birdsong and the app identifies the species. Athas and I are both fans.
- Granola. AI meeting summaries. It’s now part of my workflow. Here’s why: It’s infrastructure for me, not novelty. Free for basic transcriptions and summaries. I pay $14 per month for additional features, like storing meeting notes for months and querying them with Claude.
What these tools have in common: They solve a real problem, they’ve lasted, and we’ve stuck with them.
4. Our Brains Chase Seductive Novelty
Athas’s new book is grounded in neuroscience. When we encounter something new, we get a dopamine hit. That neurological response evolved to help our ancestors survive. New food sources, new paths, new shelter: Those discoveries were rewarding.
But sometimes novelty seduces us without offering anything meaningful. In one study Athas describes, rats repeatedly crossed an electrified grid just to explore an unfamiliar area. They chose pain plus novelty over a known food source. Humans do something similar. We covet a new phone partly for its camera, but partly just because it’s new. Then we do it all over again. Even if we can’t afford it. That’s one reason why so many Americans are in debt.
I recently read Dopamine Nation, a surprisingly engrossing book by Dr. Anna Lembke, about how our brains are so readily seduced by pleasure.
What results is an unfortunate cycle. We get something new, enjoy it briefly, and soon we’re scanning for the next new thing. My college adviser, Daniel Kahneman, studied and wrote about this “hedonic treadmill” effect.
His research showed that we overestimate how much a new purchase will improve how we feel. And novelty tends to wear off quickly. He called it “hedonic adaptation.”
That doesn’t mean we should avoid all new things. But it does mean we should think carefully about whether there’s something genuinely meaningful behind the new shine.
5. Experiences Outlast Products
Research shows that trips, cooking classes, concerts, and other new experiences tend to give us more lasting delight than new products do.
That’s partly because experiences tend to be social. You go with someone. Or you meet people there. You talk about it afterward. Trips have a beginning, middle, and end. You have a story you can retell. A new pan doesn’t generate much conversation after the first week. Its novelty fades fast.
Kahneman, who was one of the best teachers and advisers I’ve ever had, introduced me to the related “comforts versus pleasure” theory. It was originally described by Tibor Scitovsky in The Joyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction. It changed the way I think about spending money.
Comforts are things we buy and then quickly adapt to. A nicer couch. A bigger TV. They feel great at first, then they fade into the background.
Pleasures, on the other hand, are transient experiences: a delicious dinner with friends, a live concert, surprise flowers, or a summer walk with someone you love in a new city.
These kinds of experiences are brief, but they retain their emotional charge when you reflect back on them. Kahneman’s argument, supported by numerous studies, was that pleasures enhance happiness more durably than comforts because we don’t adapt to them. The research findings’ bottom line: If you want more happiness, splurge on special experiences with loved ones rather than expensive things.
Athas’s suggestion: If you’re drawn to something new, try turning the purchase into a social experience. Waiting in line with a friend for trendy cookies transforms a dopamine-seeking buying excursion into an experience and a fun shared memory.
Daniel Pink recently made a compelling video on the same theme: how to spend money so it actually makes you happier. His take aligns with Athas’s and Kahneman’s. Spend on experiences, not things.
6. Ask These Questions
Athas suggests a few questions to ask before you acquire something new:
- Will I still use this in a month? Will this serve an ongoing purpose, or will it get stuck in the background? (I’ll use this one the next time I’m tempted by a kitchen gadget or iPhone app).
- Is it intuitive to use? Athas points to modern car dashboards as a cautionary tale: Touchscreens that look futuristic can end up being more confusing than the knobs and buttons they replaced.
- Is it likely to distract you? A sand timer, a paper book, a physical photograph: These do one thing well without pinging you. A single-purpose app on your phone, on the other hand, puts you one swipe away from email, Instagram, and other Internet rabbit holes.
7. Good Enough is Sometimes Enough
Athas’s coffee maker still works. His wife wants him to upgrade. He resists, not out of stubbornness, but because it does exactly what he needs. He programs it at night. He wakes up to fresh coffee. No learning curve.
His suggestion: Before replacing something, ask whether what you already have is still good enough. Something better always exists, but if the upgrade is just about novelty, it might not be worth the effort, expense, or space.
I have more than 600 apps on my phone. I use only a small fraction regularly. But I’ve realized that going back and manually deleting everything I’m not using is a waste of time. In the digital domain, unlike the physical one, unused things don’t take up much space. Going back and deleting emails or apps one by one feels like more of a waste than letting them sit idly in the graveyard.
8. Paper Books and Quiet Treasures
About two-thirds of Americans still read books on paper despite the convenience of ebooks. Part of what’s appealing about them is sensory: the way pages turn, the way a book feels in your hands, the smell of the paper.
But there’s another advantage. A paper book doesn’t send notifications. It offers no tempting apps. The same goes for vinyl records, Polaroid photos, sand timers, and handwritten journals. Each of these enables you to deeply focus on what you’re doing.
My grandfather taught me to use a Minolta camera when I was little. The quality of its pictures doesn’t match that of an iPhone. But old objects like the Minolta have intrinsic value beyond their function. A hand-me-down camera is a reminder of love.
I have more than 50,000 photos on my phone. That abundance, paradoxically, devalues each individual image. When film was limited and developing took days, every picture felt more precious. Anticipating which pictures might turn out was part of the thrill of photography. I don’t want to return to that era. But the photos my wife and I have printed and framed mean more to me than many of the ones sitting in my phone’s camera roll.
9. Choices Are Contagious
The last chapter in Athas’s book is about invisible influence. If your friends are constantly upgrading their homes, devices, or apps, you might feel the pull to keep pace. It’s tempting to follow the cultural lead of those around us.
The reverse is also true. Choosing to stick to what you have quietly signals to other people that it’s okay to keep the old thing, to skip the trend.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.