Deception: Are You Good at it?

What jobs require deception?  Military, spying, entertainers, smuggler, thief.  And what makes for good deception?  In the book, 48 Laws of Power says, "The essence of deception is distraction".  So what makes for good distraction?  Cognitive overload is one technique that involves giving someone a lot to think about, so their not thinking about this other thing over here.

Let's pause here and note something: deception is a word that carries negative connotations.  When I say "are you good at deception", that twists something in our gut.  Here's the rub:

We do this to ourselves all the time.

We allow our selves to get distracted with email, text messages, twitter, Facebook, etc...  I had to laugh, someone on Facebook said that Facebook is like the fridge: we're always opening it to see if there's something to eat.  It's true!  But is it effective?

Listen: you can't have a great thought if you're interrupted every 5 minutes.  You can't foster healthy relationships if the person you're talking with is always checking their phone.

So why do we do it?  Linda Stone, who coined the term Continuous Partial Attention, said this, "to be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter."  This flows out of our world view of who we are.  It's like when we were kids, we craved attention from those other kids around us.  In that case there may be 10-20.  On the internet, we think we're on a stage with millions watching.  If our identify comes from feeling connected, then we've got to reassess where our value comes from.