The Person My Algorithm Thinks I Am

A few months ago, YouTube recommended a video to me about the psychology of people who spend a lot of time alone. I had recently started doing remote freelance work. I was home most of the time, and, consequently, alone most of the time. But, I had never searched YouTube for anything about spending a lot of time alone.

I stared at the recommendation for a second and thought, “Well. That’s a little unnerving.”

The strange thing was not that YouTube had recommended something completely unrelated to me. It was the opposite. The recommendation was accurate enough to feel personal, even though I had no idea what combination of signals had produced it.

YouTube does not need to know what my days look like in the human sense of knowing. Its recommendation system uses behavioral signals such as watch and search history, likes and dislikes, “Not interested” feedback, subscriptions, and patterns among viewers with similar interests. YouTube itself describes recommendations as predictions about what a viewer is likely to enjoy, not as conclusions drawn from some complete understanding of the person watching.

Still, when a prediction lands squarely on something true about your life, the mechanics become easy to forget. It feels a little like being seen. And that raises a question I have started thinking about more often:

Who, exactly, does my algorithm think I am?

I Know What I Should Do, So Why Don’t I Do It?

Last night, I made it partway through doing the dishes. Well, not partway through washing them, exactly.

I filled the kitchen sink with hot, soapy water and put the dishes in to soak. I don’t have a dishwasher, so this is usually the sensible first move: let the water loosen everything up and make the actual washing easier.

Then I got on my laptop and decided the dishes could wait until tomorrow.

That thought has become very familiar to me over the past year. Dusting can wait until tomorrow, sweeping can wait, the clothes that need to be hung up can wait.

Almost anything involving cleaning seems to successfully survive one more day without my intervention.

I trace this change in myself back to a 4-year span of several loved ones' deaths: my grandpa, my dog, my cousin, and then my stepdad. I don’t bring these up to serve as a diagnosis or a complete explanation for every dish I leave in the sink; it’s simply where I notice a before and after in my own life. Since then, procrastination has become much more of a default mindset, and “I’ll do it tomorrow” has become easier to believe.

The frustrating part is that I know better.

I know a kitchen full of dirty dishes is not the environment I want to wake up to. I know I feel better when my home is clean. More importantly, I know perfectly well how to do all of these things.

I also know plenty of productivity tricks.

I have bought and created planners…many planners. I’ve set timers on my phone, broken larger jobs into smaller steps, grouped similar tasks together, and talked about procrastination in therapy.

So, the problem is clearly not a shortage of information.

Sometimes I know what I want to do, know how to do it, intend to do it, and even begin to do it.

Yet, I still stop.