The Upside Of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits Of Defying Logic At Work And At Home Quotes
"I have never met anyone who never procrastinates. Delaying annoying tasks is a nearly universal problem."
"The key to my enduring what psychologists call a 'negative immediate effect' for the sake of a 'positive long-term effect' was movies."
"Despite the prodding of conscience, we often would rather avoid doing something unpleasant now for the sake of a better future."
"Lack of medical compliance is, in fact, a very common problem."
"I greeted this as good news. First, I finally knew what I had; second, a promising new experimental drug looked as if it might be an effective treatment."
"We all hate grinding through receipts while doing our taxes, cleaning up the backyard, sticking to a diet, saving for retirement."
"In a perfectly rational world, procrastination would never be a problem."
"We routinely behave as if sometime in the future, we will have more time, more money, and feel less tired or stressed."
"Human error and technological developments...can also make it more difficult for us to behave in a way that truly maximizes our interests."
"We inevitably end up making mistakes and sometimes fail magnificently."
"To try to understand the way we really operate so that we can more readily observe our biases, be more aware of their influences on us, and hopefully make better decisions."
"Sadly, most of us often prefer immediately gratifying short-term experiences over our long-term objectives."
"We should be able to discern among all the options facing us and accurately compute their value—not just in the short term but also in the long term—and choose the option that maximizes our best interests."
"Our overvaluation of the things we make runs so deep that we assume that others share our biased perspective."
"The effort that we put into something does not just change the object. It changes us and the way we evaluate that object."
"The desire for revenge—even at great personal expense—can serve as an effective enforcement mechanism that supports social cooperation and order."
"When we cannot complete something into which we have put great effort, we don’t feel so attached to it."
"Once we feel that we have created something, we feel an increased sense of ownership—and we begin to overvalue the usefulness and the importance of 'our' ideas."
"Despite all the harm caused by revenge, the threat of revenge can serve as an effective enforcement mechanism that supports social cooperation."
"Everyone wants a toothbrush, everyone needs one, everyone has one, but no one wants to use anyone else’s."
"As long as we create it, we tend to feel rather certain that it’s more useful and important than similar ideas that other people come up with."
"The process of falling in love with our own ideas may lead to fixation and dismiss others' ideas that might simply be better than our own."
"The experiment showed that many of the people who had the opportunity to exact revenge on their partners did so, and they punished severely."
"The decision to punish others was related to a feeling of pleasure."
"Punishing betrayal, even when it costs us something, has biological underpinnings."
"The similarity between humans and chimps suggests that both have an inherent sense of justice."
"Revenge and trust are, in fact, opposite sides of the same coin."
"Trust is why we get so upset when the social contract is violated."
"I don’t want to trade a $700 billion dollar giveaway for a few bridges."
"I want reforms of the industry, and I want it to be as punitive as possible."
"Everyone in America would give big bucks for the joy of throwing rotten tomatoes at them."
"The public remained livid, because the central issue of rebuilding trust was neglected."
"The word 'sorry' completely counteracted the effect of annoyance."
"Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence."
"Acts of revenge are not easy to observe from the CEO’s office."
"Maybe we can make a PowerPoint presentation about the event or write a case study for the Harvard Business Review."
"Time heals all wounds precisely because, over time, you will partially adapt to the state of your world."
"After the shopping spree Ann will be very happy, but her happiness will soon wear off as her purchases lose their novelty."
"Using the intermittent approach, Ann can create a higher overall happiness level for herself."
"One of my graduate school advisers used to say that he wanted to become an expert on wines that cost $15 or less."
"If he started buying fancy $50-a-bottle wines, he would get used to that level of quality and would no longer be able to derive any pleasure from cheaper wines."
"Transient experiences are fleeting, so you can’t adapt to them as readily."
"Real progress—as well as real pleasure—comes from taking risks and trying very different things."
"Our happiness does depend to some degree on our ability to keep up with the Joneses."
"Not all experiences lead to the same level of adaptation and not all people respond to adaptation in the same way."
"Our task is to figure out how we respond to adaptation in order to take advantage of the good and avoid the bad."
"Imagine that you have just arrived at a party. As you walk in, the host writes something on your forehead."
"Assortative mating is generally a good description of the way people tend to find their romantic partners."
"The sour grapes concept derived from this tale is the idea that we tend to scorn that which we cannot have."
"Less attractive people learn to view nonphysical attributes as more important."
"The process of reprioritization helps us adapt. In the end, we all have to make peace with who we are and what we have to offer."
"When we’re led to care about individuals, we take action, but when many people are involved, we don’t."
"Thinking more like Mr. Spock can make us less altruistic and caring."
"I am unable to multiply one man’s suffering by a hundred million."
"Just because we care more about vivid examples of misery doesn’t mean that this tendency always helps us to make better decisions."
"The number of people affected by different tragedies and the amount of money directed toward these tragedies mismatch dramatically."
"Prevention is directed at saving people who are not yet sick."
"Our emotional biases favor nearby, singular, vivid events can stir us to action in a broader sense."
"By saving even just one person, we can actually do something complete and enormous."
"Emotions are fleeting, but the decisions we make in their wake can have long-lasting consequences."
"We take our past actions as an indication of what we should do next."
"The pain of injury is only an agent of future health."
"Emotions, in their raw form, are fleeting and often misleading."
"The quest for justice is a fundamental human desire, yet its pursuit can lead us astray."
"Adaptation is the silent navigator of our lives, constantly steering us toward equilibrium."
"The value of an experience is not in its duration, but in its intensity and the memories it leaves behind."
"In the economy of emotions, revenge is a currency that impoverishes."
"The beauty of human connection lies not in the sameness, but in the understanding and appreciation of differences."
"Online dating, a marketplace of souls, often forgets the heart is not a product to be traded."
"Empathy fades in the face of numbers, but flourishes in the presence of a story."