How do I know what I actually want among all the noise and algorithmic recommendations?

Ask who set the route. The New Top 10% says a feed that feels made just for you is the most powerful kind of default, because it passes for your own taste. Check what you want where the algorithm is not talking: at a threshold, in a phone-free minute, before you open the feed.

When the recommendations are right

The hard version of this question is not about bad recommendations. It is about good ones. The feed shows a song you love, a video you needed, an article that fits your mood. The book describes exactly that: a morning where the playlist, the news and the route to the train all feel tailor-made.

Its observation is that this feeling is the most powerful mechanism of the digital default. Because it feels like your personal taste and your free choice, there is no logical reason to look beyond it. The default works not by being bad, but by being pleasant.

The numbers the book cites

Move III backs the point with two surveys. In a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 85% of TikTok users in the United States said the content the algorithm gave them on their "For You" page is interesting, at least somewhat. In a September 2026 YouGov survey in Australia, 54% of Gen Z said that, if given the option, they would rather keep algorithmic recommendations switched on, compared with only 31% of all adults.

These are the book's citations. They are not figures checked here. What they illustrate is that people are not tricked into liking what they are shown: many of us genuinely do like it. That is why the question "do I like this?" cannot tell you whether you chose it.

A better question: who set the coordinates?

The book proposes a different question, and it is the heart of Move III: who set the coordinates and the boundaries of this route? The point is not that the route is wrong. It is that when you forget to ask, you are no longer choosing among the options. You are moving inside boundaries that were set in advance.

Move III compares today's algorithm to a Roman Metator, the officer who walked ahead of the camp and marked the ground. The algorithm does it dynamically, redrawing the coordinates of your reality with every touch. The book's warning is that there is no vacuum: if you do not set your own north, someone else will.

Three ways to hear yourself

The book gives one exercise for this and the others are our application.

Take a phone-free, book-free minute. The book suggests leaving the phone outside the bathroom, the one place we go into alone, and making a space with no phone and no book either. Be with yourself. Notice what you want when nothing is suggesting anything.
Compare before you scroll. Before opening a feed, write down in a few words what you were looking for. Afterwards, check how close you stayed. This is our suggestion.
Ask the Move III question about one decision a day. Not about everything, which would be exhausting. About one: who set the options I am choosing from?

The new boss of our defaults

Move III pictures a manager walking into the room and saying "don't worry, we've prepared everything for you". Today, the book says, no manager needs to walk in: every morning the phone announces that same line. It is the new boss of our defaults.

The picture is not meant to frighten. It is meant to remind you that someone prepared everything in advance, and that the comfort is part of the mechanism. Once you notice that, you are not carried along without realizing it, and you can decide when it suits you to accept what was prepared and when it does not.

The threshold as a place to ask

Move IX adds a place to ask. It describes the doorway as a narrow interval between outside and inside, where a person can shift into neutral for a moment and make one conscious choice about the phone: bring it in, or leave it outside. The book is clear that nothing is forbidden. Sometimes the right answer is to bring the phone in. The value is that it comes in by decision, not on autopilot.

That is a useful model for wants in general. A want you can name at a threshold, with the feed out of reach, is more likely to be yours.

Measure without judging

For the phone itself, the book suggests two plain numbers: how many times a day you chose to dock your phone, and how long it stayed docked. Write them down at the end of each day and compare week to week. ZUZA, the doorway dock Beeri Tzori developed, counts docking so you do not have to. The numbers are a mirror, not a grade.

What this does not tell you

It will not tell you what you want. The book is careful about this. It does not say recommendations are bad, and it does not claim to know your taste. It says the question "when and where does it matter to me that my choice be truly mine?" is yours to answer, and that you can only answer it if there is a moment in which nothing is answering for you.

The preface and the first two chapters of The New Top 10%, by Dr. Yaacov Tzori and Beeri Tzori, are free to read: read the first chapters.

This post draws on Moves III and IX of The New Top 10% (the free first chapters). The surveys quoted are the book's citations and were not checked independently here. Suggestions marked as ours are applications, not quotes.