That’s the title of a chapter in Predicably Irrational. Chuck recommended it over Outliers, so we went with that book. Catherine liked The Last Lecture better – but I think I agreed with Jason on it – where I was already kind of in line with the ideas in the Last Lecture so it wasn’t so new. And some of the chapters seemed forced. I don’t hold that against him, he didn’t have that much time to write. Just as a book, it wasn’t that good. As a symbol, fantastic.
Anyway, the illustrations drawn out (figuratively) in Predictably Irrational are helpful. Accounting for the cost of not making a decision is something I think will help me going forward. Recognizing how when two things aren’t easy to compare, adding a 3rd, that is similar, but slightly worse than the item you want people to choose, is a good way to manipulate decisions – that’s something I’m gonna try out on Sal once I figure it out.
But the chapter on expectations struck home today. We’re in a basketball tourney at work. We won our game today. It was much closer than I thought it should be (we played “next basket wins” and we needed a block/steal to win) – but since we won, we’d just learn from it and could move on. We’ll need to rotate and create more open space against a 2-3 zone…
But in the lockerroom afterwards, I heard the other team relate the game to a team member who came too late and missed the game. They said with him they could have won (might be true, since it was so close). That we were the worst team in the league and it sucked losing to us (really? we’re the worst?) and when the teammate that missed the game asked who they were playing, they called us the chumps that play in the afternoons. Man. I liked that.
I mean, we are chumps. But we’re the chumps that beat them.
It reminded me of playing racquetball with Shawn and how we both thought, win or lose, that we were still better than the other guy. Both of us thought that. And here, two teams played basketball, sized each other up, and both left thinking that we were better than the final score showed.
Why even play the game if we’re just gonna ignore the outcome?