Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
Plans held within our own head don't seem to mean that much. I have had tons of plans to get things done around the house, to stop snacking on baked goods, and to read more, but I often find the time ticking by while I waste time reading news stories that don't mean much to … Continue reading Facilitating Behaviors
I listen to a lot of politics and policy podcasts, and one thing I learned over the last few years is that asking people to vote and encouraging them to vote isn't very effective. What is effective, is asking people how they plan to vote. If you ask someone where their polling place is, how … Continue reading The Mere Measurement Effect
Our society makes fun of the unrealistic optimist all the time, but the reality is that most of us are unreasonably optimistic in many aspects of our life. We might not all believe that we are going to receive a financial windfall this month, that our favorite sports team will go from losing almost all … Continue reading Nudges for Unrealistic Optimism
The world is a complex place and people have to make a lot of decisions within that complexity. Whether we are deliberate about it or not, we create and manage systems and structures for navigating the complexity and framing the decisions we make. However, each of us operate from different perspectives. We make decisions that … Continue reading Should We Assume Rationality?
"Losses evokes stronger negative feelings than costs. Choices are not reality-bound because System 1 is not reality-bound," writes Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow. We do not like losses. The idea of a loss, of having the status quo changed in a negative way without it being our deliberate choice, is hard for … Continue reading Framing Costs and Losses
A theme that runs through a lot of the writing that I do, influenced by Stoic thinkers such as Marcus Aurelius and modern academics and productivity experts like Cal Newport, is that we don't have as much control over our lives as we generally believe. Writings from Aurelius show us how much happens beyond our … Continue reading Depleting Self-Control
Humans are gossip machines. We like to talk about and think about other people, especially the negative traits and qualities of others. At the same time, we are self-deception machines. We downplay our own faults, spend little time thinking about our mistakes, and deny any negative quality about ourselves. Even when we are the only … Continue reading Gossip Machines
Morality and our behavior is one of the spaces that I think demonstrates how little our actions and behaviors seem to actually align with the way we think about ourselves and the level of control we have in our lives. We believe that we are the masters of our own sails and that we are … Continue reading The Time for Being Moral
A topic I am fascinated by and plan to dig into in the future is motivated reasoning. We are great at finding all of the reasons and examples for why the things we do are overwhelmingly good and justified, while finding all the flaws in the people and things we dislike. Our brains seems to … Continue reading Take a Close Look at What Feels Right
There are not many things that pull people together quite like religious beliefs. Sports pull us together when our kids are on the same team, when we are all in a stadium, or when two of us are wearing the right hat on an airplane, but those don't make for strong ties that are lasting … Continue reading Religion As a Community Social Structure