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The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home QUOTES

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home QUOTES

1 " To summarize, using money to motivate people can be a double-edged sword. For tasks that require cognitive ability, low to moderate performance-based incentives can help. But when the incentive level is very high, it can command too much attention and thereby distract the person’s mind with thoughts about the reward. This can create stress and ultimately reduce the level of performance. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

2 " ...[D]ivision of labor, in my mind, is one of the dangers of work-based technology. Modern IT infrastructure allows us to break projects into very small, discrete parts and assign each person to do only one of the many parts. In so doing, companies run the risk of taking away employees' sense of the big picture, purpose, and sense of completion. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

3 " Man is a pliant animal, a being who gets accustomed to anything. —FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

4 " It is very difficult to make really big,
important, life-changing decisions because we are all susceptible
to a formidable array of decision biases. There are more of them
than we realize, and they come to visit us more often than we
like to admit. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

5 " Upton Sinclair once noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”) "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

6 " ...[T]he distance Boston drivers generally maintain from the car in front of them is visible only with a good microscope. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

7 " I do believe that an improved understanding of the multiple irrational forces that influence us could be a useful first step toward making better decisions. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

8 " The effort that we put into something does not just change the object. It changes us and the way we evaluate that object. Greater labor leads to greater love. Our overvaluation of the things we make runs so deep that we assume that others share our biased perspective. When we cannot complete something into which we have put great effort, we don’t feel so attached to it. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

9 " One fall day in Boston, a tall mechanical engineering student named Joe entered the student union at Harvard University. He was all ambition and acne "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

10 " there is a great deal to be learned from rational economics, but some of its assumptions—that people always make the best decisions, that mistakes are less likely when the decisions involve a lot of money, and that the market is self-correcting—can clearly lead to disastrous consequences. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

11 " We are more than height, weight, religion, and income. Others judge us on the basis of general subjective and aesthetic attributes, such as our manner of speaking and our sense of humor. We are also a scent, a sparkle of the eye, a sweep of the hand, the sound of a laugh, and the knit of a brow—ineffable qualities that can’t easily be captured in a database. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

12 " Most blogs have very low readership—perhaps only the blogger’s mother or best friend reads them—but even writing for one person, compared to writing for nobody, seems to be enough to compel millions of people to blog. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

13 " ON AN INTUITIVE level, most of us understand the deep interconnection between identity and labor. Children think of their potential future occupations in terms of what they will be (firemen, teachers, doctors, behavioral economists, or what have you), not about the amount of money they will earn. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

14 " If companies really want their workers to produce, they should try to impart a sense of meaning—not just through vision statements but by allowing employees to feel a sense of completion and ensuring that a job well done is acknowledged. At the end of the day, such factors can exert a huge influence on satisfaction and productivity. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

15 " the translation of joy into willingness to work seems to depend to a large degree on how much meaning we can attribute to our own labor. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

16 " we don’t assume that people are perfectly sensible, calculating machines. Instead, we observe how people actually behave, and quite often our observations lead us to the conclusion that human beings are irrational. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

17 " I am not sure who started this chicken-and-egg problem, but as we consumers encounter offensive service, we become angrier and tend to take it out on the next service provider—whether or not he or she is responsible for our bad experience. The people receiving our emotional outbursts then go on to serve other customers, but because they are in a worse mood themselves, they aren’t in a position to be courteous and polite. And so goes the carousel of annoyance, frustration, and revenge in an ever-escalating cycle. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

18 " In the end, our research findings suggest that the online market for single people should be structured with an understanding of what people can and can’t naturally do. It should use technology in ways that are congruent with what we are naturally good at and help us with the tasks that don’t fit with our innate abilities. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

19 " and, much as in real dating, experience something together. If so inclined, she might even suggest that they try to play some online games together, explore magical kingdoms, slay dragons, and solve problems. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

20 " Jensen discovered (and many subsequent experiments confirmed) that many animals—including fish, birds, gerbils, rats, mice, monkeys, and chimpanzees—tend to prefer a longer, more indirect route to food than a shorter, more direct one.* That is, as long as fish, birds, gerbils, rats, mice, monkeys, and chimpanzees don’t have to work too hard, they frequently prefer to earn their food. In fact, among all the animals tested so far the only species that prefers the lazy route is—you guessed it—the commendably rational cat. "

― Dan Ariely , The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home