How Your Mind Gets Made Up
Uncover the invisible forces steering your everyday thoughts, from cognitive biases to social manipulation. Learn to spot mental traps, sharpen your critical thinking, and explore whether your choices are truly your own.
Like Duolingo, but for How Your Mind Gets Made Up. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Invisible Pulls on Your Thinking and Reclaiming Your Autonomy. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Your Mind Gets Made Up
- People selectively notice and remember proof that supports an existing belief
- Contradicting signs (like an afternoon energy crash) get explained away or ignored
- A critical thinker deliberately seeks disconfirming evidence rather than just validation
- Presenting a situation in terms of gains makes people feel safe and risk-averse
- Presenting the identical situation in terms of loss triggers fear and risk-seeking
- Manipulators and marketers exploit word choice to bypass rational calculation
- Money, time, or effort already spent cannot be recovered whether you stay or leave
- Rational decisions must be judged only on what makes your future hours better
- Enduring misery just to avoid 'wasting' money actually doubles your loss
- The brain estimates danger based on how easily a dramatic visual or story comes to mind
- Sensational, graphic events feel frequent even when their statistical rate is minuscule
- Boring, routine dangers (like car accidents) feel safer simply because they lack vivid drama
- We attribute other people's bad actions to internal character flaws
- We excuse our own bad actions by pointing to external circumstances and obstacles
- Self-awareness requires giving others the same circumstantial grace we give ourselves
- Unsolicited gifts trigger an uncomfortable psychological urge to balance the social scale
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Your Mind Gets Made Up the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
You start a trendy new morning routine, but feel exhausted by two in the afternoon. What does your mind tend to do?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where How Your Mind Gets Made Up takes you
- 1
The Invisible Pulls on Your Thinking
- Spotting the Biases That Steer Your Choices
- Detecting Social Influence and Manipulation
- 2
Reclaiming Your Autonomy
- Practicing Everyday Critical Self-Awareness
- The Puzzle of Free Will and Determinism
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
How Your Mind Gets Made Up is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Your Mind Gets Made Up today.
Download Tomo, search How Your Mind Gets Made Up, and play your first lesson in under a minute.