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The Psychology of Everyday Decisions, a free psychology course on Tomo

The Psychology of Everyday Decisions

Like Duolingo, but for The Psychology of Everyday Decisions. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

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 How Your Mind Cuts Corners and The Invisible Power of Others. It starts from scratch.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Milo the Mindful Meerkat, the guide who teaches the The Psychology of Everyday Decisions course
The Psychology of Everyday Decisions
with Milo the Mindful Meerkat
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in The Psychology of Everyday Decisions

  • Automatic thinking handles effortless everyday tasks like reading a billboard or dodging an obstacle without conscious focus
  • Slow analytical thinking requires deliberate mental strain and physical focus, such as calculating 17 times 24
  • The brain relies on automatic shortcuts by default to save cognitive energy
  • Availability bias causes people to judge how common an event is by how easily a vivid picture or memory pops into mind
  • Sensational, memorable events feel frequent even when actual statistical rates are extremely low
  • Confirmation bias leads people to actively search for information that backs up what they already suspect is true
  • Contradicting data is systematically ignored, minimized, or rationalized away
  • Balanced judgment requires intentionally looking for data that disproves your belief
  • Framing identical statistical outcomes as losses triggers fear and makes people avoid that option
  • Framing outcomes as gains makes people feel safe and more willing to accept the choice
  • The mathematical odds remain identical regardless of the words used to package them
  • The anchoring effect pulls a person's valuation toward whatever initial number is presented first
  • Even when an initial number is arbitrary or obviously inflated, it establishes the mental benchmark for comparison
  • Subsequent judgments adjust insufficiently from that first established anchor
  • Human memory reconstructs events on the fly using fragmentary cues, current feelings, and expectations
  • The brain fills in missing gaps in recall rather than storing untouched, complete recordings
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives The Psychology of Everyday Decisions 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.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Why Your Brain Loves Shortcuts

Which activity makes your brain turn on slow analytical thinking?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where The Psychology of Everyday Decisions takes you

Discover the hidden mental gears shaping your decisions, memories, and social interactions every day. Learn why your brain relies on shortcuts, how situations secretly steer behavior, and what actually drives human motivation.

  1. 1

    How Your Mind Cuts Corners

    • Spotting Your Brain's Automatic Shortcuts
    • The Flawed Machinery of Memory
  2. 2

    The Invisible Power of Others

    • The Hidden Pressure of the Situation
    • How Behavior Actually Takes Shape

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
Explain Like I'm 5

The Psychology of Everyday Decisions is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. 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 The Psychology of Everyday Decisions today.

Download Tomo, search The Psychology of Everyday Decisions, and play your first lesson in under a minute.