The Best Summary of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
A brief, no-fluff summary of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Six Principles to Always Get Your Way Cialdini has spent a lifetime researching the psychology of …
Psychology
The Art and Science of Doing Nothing
Idleness is a lost art. That’s the message behind Andrew Smart’s book: Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing. “Being idle,” he writes, “is one of the most …
A Discussion on the Work of Daniel Kahneman
Edge.org asked the likes of Christopher Chabris, Nicholas Epley, Jason Zweig, William Poundstone, Cass Sunstein, Phil Rosenzweig, Richard Thaler & Sendhil Mullainathan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, …
How to Succeed in Sales: Insights from Daniel Pink’s “To Sell is Human”
The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is, you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman No matter what you do for a living, …
Max Bazerman Offers Books for Leaders
Max Bazerman, the author of the best book on general decision making that I’ve ever read, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, came out with 7 book recommendations1. I hadn’t heard of …
True Grit: What an Olympic Snowboarder, an A-list Actor and Finland Can Teach Us About Building Resilience
“Grit is passion and perseverance for extremely long intervals.” *** Last month I hi-lighted the research of Angela Duckworth on why grit can matter more than IQ in determining success in …
Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
[quote]”The main problem is that we think we understand the minds of others, and even our own mind, better than we actually do.”[/quote] Despite the fact I do it countless times a day, …
Hooked — How Companies Create Habit Forming Products
How do companies create habit-forming products? It’s simple: They manufacture them. In 2008 Nir Eyal was part of a team of Stanford MBAs starting a company backed by “some of the brightest …
The Cookie Monster Knows More About Willpower Than You
I had no idea how much thought actually went into the programming of Sesame Street before reading Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. Willpower is important to life success and that’s why …
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
“It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.” — Molière *** “Why is it so fun to be right?” That’s the opening line from Kathryn Schulz’ excellent book …
Angela Duckworth on Why Grit Matters More than IQ
Angela Duckworth has advanced our understanding of how self-control and grit impact success more than most. When she applied to the PhD program at Penn, she wrote that her experiences working in …
Falsification: How to Destroy Incorrect Ideas
Sir Karl Popper wrote that the nature of scientific thought is that we could never be sure of anything. The only way to test the validity of any theory was to prove it wrong, a process he labeled …
Decision Journal: Template and Example Included
One of the strangest things about being human is that we can’t trust our own memories of what we were thinking. Not because we forget but rather because our brains actively edit the past to make …
Slow Down and Think
Sebastian Garcia made a mistake, but he couldn’t figure it out. At the 2011 National Junior High Chess Championship, he was looking strong and heading towards a victory. Then he made a mistake, …
Goal Induced Blindness
In 1996 a disaster of historic proportions happened at the peak of Mount Everest. In the entire climbing season of 1996, fifteen climbers died. Eight of those deaths took place on a single day. …
The Structure of a Story
“Human beings master the basics of storytelling as young children and retain this capability throughout their lives.” — Stephen Denning When psychologist T. A. Harley researched the academic …