On a scale of Homer to Spock, I’d say I’m about a George W. Bush. Clearly a smart guy (and no I never voted for the man), W would often rely on his personal heuristics and biases (not racial or socioeconomic per se) to help him with his decisions.
We all do this to some extent, otherwise it would be extremely difficult to get almost anything done. Rather than think every decision through, we rely on rules of thumb to guide us on our way. This works really well for us on tasks that we do all the time – things like driving, purchasing food, and engaging in conversations. Where we typically struggle is with tasks that we don’t do very often – things like buying houses, deciding on our education, and writing blog posts.
We also struggle with things where we know the likely outcomes, but the outcomes are so far in the future that they feel as if they are outside the event horizon of the action in question. Think about the effects of diet on your overall health. You know eating unhealthy food will make you unhealthy, but any given single meal is unlikely to make a difference either way (given its not poisonous).
How can we get back on track? How ’bout a little nudge in the right direction? That’s the proposal of authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. They call their philosophy for how to approach giving these nudges libertarian paternalism. So the thought process is we give people the maximum amount of choices, but we also set an intelligent default. So the default food for example if you were to get an order delivered would be healthy and well-balanced if you were looking to optimize health, of course the people could override the default if they wanted to, and order two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
There are great proposals in this book, for smart defaults around all kinds of things. Some of my favorites for general proposals are:
- Save More Tomorrow: Default for 401k is enrollment in a single fund that is well balanced (per the “financial experts”) which starts you at a low contribution rate and raises your 401k contribution rate every time you get a raise (or until capped)
- Organ Donations: Default is enrollment
Here’s a great TED video by a colleague of the authors in the field of Behavioral Economics that discusses organ donations.
How do we move from acting only on behalf of our short term self interest (our inner-Homer) and get to acting on behalf of our long term self interest (our inner-Spock)? Well there are a couple of neat strategies that I like mentioned here in Nudge.
- Clocky – An alarm clock with wheels which launches off your bed to the far corners of the room after you hit snooze once. Then you have to go find where it ended up when it goes off the second time, at which point you’ll most likely be awake as you’ll be out of bed hunting for the alarm clock.
- StickK – A website that lets you put up your own real money, which you only get to keep if you stick to your goals. Otherwise the money either goes to charity, or anti-charity.
I think Clocky looks fun, and would like to get one at some point. StickK on the other hand is something I started using right away. I have a few vices that I’d like to modify my behavior around, and a few goals that I’d like to see me accomplish. I set each one up in StickK to be monitored on a weekly basis, an amount to be given to my anti-charity should I fail, and a referee to make sure I’m not just mailing it in on my commitment.
Here are my commitments
- No non-work internet usage while at work ($100 a week to anti-gay marriage)
- My product status is green ($100 a week to anti-gay marriage)
- 4 hour turn around on all work phone calls ($100 a week to anti-gay marriage)
- No fastfood, doughnuts, or candy ($10 a week to anti-gay marriage)
- 1 blogpost here on Cosmic Wanderlust a month ($10 a week for the month following a miss to anti-gay marriage)
- Losing Weight ($10 a week to anti-gay marriage if I don’t stay on pace to be 185 lbs by Dec 4)
- No Su Doku ($20 a week to anti-gay marriage)
So, I chose the anti-gay marriage folks, as I am really passionate that marriage is a civil right, and that to deny it is a huge form of prejudice. I know that I don’t want one red cent going to denying people their civil rights, and it would really eat me up if I had any sort of positive impact for that cause. I also chose some large amounts so that I wouldn’t be tempted to think ah, no big deal if I were to choose to slip up. How much is this total over the life of the agreements?
$6940 of cold hard cash on the line via my credit card.
You can follow my latest progress here. Right now, though two weeks in, I’ve got a 94% rate. (I forgot about the no candy rule after I had a few drinks and decided to go to the movies and ended up with some Twizzlers). This means that I’m going to have to donate two times that amount to the other side to even things out with my beliefs.
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