Marketing Dopamine • October 10, 2026
The New Tool Feeling
There is a particular kind of excitement that comes with signing up for new software.
The demo looked effortless. The dashboard is clean. For a moment, it feels like the missing piece has finally arrived, and that once it is set up, everything will run the way it should have all along.
Then a few weeks pass. The tool is mostly unused, or used halfway, or quietly replaced by the next one that promises to do it better.
The excitement was real. The progress was not.
Buying the tool feels like solving the problem. It is usually just the beginning of a new one.
This is marketing dopamine at work. The reward arrives at the moment of the decision, before any of the actual work is done. Your brain registers the purchase as progress, so the urge to move forward is satisfied without anything moving at all.
Tools are not the problem. Many of them are genuinely useful. The trouble starts when a new tool becomes a substitute for a clear plan. Software can carry out a strategy. It cannot decide what that strategy should be.
Before the next sign up, it is worth asking a quieter question. Is the problem really that I lack the right tool, or that I have not yet decided what I want the tool to do?
A tool amplifies whatever is already there. Clarity first, then the tool.
The most effective businesses I know rarely have the newest software. They have a few simple tools, used consistently, in service of a plan they actually understand.
Lisa Carmichael is the author of The Marketing Dopamine Workbook: From Awareness to Action, available now, a companion to her book Marketing Dopamine: What Your Brain Is Really Doing When You Think You’re Building a Business, coming soon. Learn more at marketingdopamine.com
Ouch! This is exactly what I was thinking about this morning… 😉
Ah – the shiny object syndrome – and yes, I have had that but I’ve curtailed my addiction 🙂 occasionally do hop onto a new platform or try a new tool, but I’ve learned to let them go if they’re not doing what I think they’re going to do. I tend to try to start with the free version so that I’m not spending a lot of money playing with them.
Tools are certanly tempting and exciting, but, without a plan, the tool is just the newest toy in a string of new toys. Yep, I’ve experienced the New Toy Syndrome.