Dweck found that children’s performance worsens if they always hear how smart they are. Kids who get too much praise are less likely to take risks, are highly sensitive to failure and are more likely to give up when faced with a challenge.

Fitness requires an investment of time. A lot of time. And after many, many months or years go by, and much effort is expended, one day you will find yourself standing in the gym, feeling tired, and you will ask yourself, “What am I doing here?” The correct answer is, “I am working up to squatting 315.” If your answer is, “I don’t know,” you start getting all philosophical. The gym is not a place for philosophy. The gym is a place for action. Goal-oriented action. Do you know what happens to philosophical types in the gym? They find themselves trapped underneath a bar while having an existential crisis. Don’t do that.

Basically, if you’re depressed, act as you would if you were excited, and if you’re manic, act as you would if you were depressed.

The short version is this: The easier the behavior, the less it depends on motivation. “

No matter what price we choose, we always make the same revenue.

media companies and the media industry are often constitutionally incapable of changing because they are still solving the last problem.

I defined “complaining” for myself as follows: describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem. I later added the usual 4-letter words and other common profanity as complaint qualifiers, which forced me to reword, thus forcing awareness and more precise thinking.

I am currently out of the office on vacation.

I know I’m supposed to say that I’ll have limited access to email and won’t be able to respond until I return — but that’s not true. My blackberry will be with me and I can respond if I need to. And I recognize that I’ll probably need to interrupt my vacation from time to time to deal with something urgent.

That said, I promised my wife that I am going to try to disconnect, get away and enjoy our vacation as much as possible. So, I’m going to experiment with something new. I’m going to leave the decision in your hands:

If your email truly is urgent and you need a response while I’m on vacation, please resend it to interruptyourvacation@[redacted].com and I’ll try to respond to it promptly.
If you think someone else at [the company] might be able to help you, feel free to email my assistant, and she’ll try to point you in the right direction.
· Otherwise, I’ll respond when I return…

Warm regards,

Josh

As for fining parents, well, one study found that doing so actually increased the number of times they were late picking up their kids, because it changed their interpretation of the situation from, “It would be rude to be late too often” to “This is a fair exchange—I can stay at work for another 30 minutes and pay the day care center for that privilege.” It’s what’s inside people’s heads that really matters.

It’s the complexity of the world we’ve created which is the main problem. Faced with vast amounts of data and a shortage of time we opt for simplicity, and focus on a few salient signals which generally work.

http://www.ted.com Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

If you believe that something's going to taste good, you look for the qualities that confirm that. If you believe the milk is spoiled, you drink the milk looking for confirmation of that, too.

This has great implications for wine. If you buy cheap wine, you think it's going to be terrible.

There was an experiment recently by one of Cialdini’s former students, Noah Goldstein. He went to look at hotels, which are always begging us to recycle our towels. He tried to figure out what message would be the most persuasive. They decided that if you applied the Cialdini principles, you would need to have a message that appeals to people, and tells them that other people like them are behaving in this way. What they came up with was the message, “76% of the people who have stayed in your room have been recycling their towels.” And it turns out that that was the most successful intervention.

Incredible food interview with Wansink

Commitment generates success as people are nudged into continuing

Motivation for behavior change comes from arranging the situation so that the intended / desired behavior results in the best outcome. <br />
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In the case of a lion sitting on a rock, It turns out the rock he sat on was temperature controlled. It was warm on cold days, cool on hot days. No need to train the lion or tie him to the rock or hope he likes the view. Just make the rock a place he wants to sit.

Wansink on WWII food research / Kurt Lewin neckmeat experiment

10 mistakes in behavior change

"He seemed so pleased," she said. "It was as if he'd never been asked to do something for someone else before."