Do you ever feel unfocused and a bit antsy… when you should be working?
You have a To-Do List as long as your, er, arm. And even though part of you wants to get to work, other parts of you are doing everything they can to steal your attention.
And when you live in a distracting world, it’s easy to find something else to focus on.
If you look back at old books — even really old books, like Seneca’s “Letters From a Stoic” in which he writes,
Social Media companies find themselves in a tough spot. A “verified account” is viewed as an authority… but what if it’s a fake account? And what of the real accounts that aren’t verified? The selection process puts a question mark over the trustworthiness of our gatekeepers.
Some 50 years after Detroit’s trees were cut down —either for law enforcement reasons or for Dutch Elms disease— the residents are wary to plant new trees. The history of trees in Detroit shows how people can have two vastly different understandings of the same set of facts, and how persuading people takes more than just telling them what’s good for them.
Richard Thaler is a co-author of Nudge (PRL writeup here) and a professor of behavioral economics, exploring why people make decisions that may not appear rational.