5 psychological principles from The Undoing Project

Last month, I wrote about the phenomenon of Decision weighting after reading the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Some friends then recommended another book featuring the work of Kahneman and Amos Tversky: The Undoing Project. The Undoing Project covers much of the same material as Thinking, Fast and Slow, but in an…

Decision weighting according to Kahneman

Let's play a game called "Would you Rather?" Would you rather have... A) a 90% chance at winning $1000; orB) $900 guaranteed? Most people choose option B with little hesitation. It has the same expected value (= probability × prize) as option A, but more certainty. There's no FOMO (fear of missing out); there's no…

Design ethics books

Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro and The Ethical Design Handbook by Trine Falbe, Kim Andersen, and Martin Michael Frederiksen TL;DR: If you want passionate, angry inspiration and high-level advice, read Ruined by Design. If you want good case studies and scattered tactical tips, read the Ethical Design Handbook. If you, like me, are practicing…

Radical Candor for individual contributors

I win a lot of contests. In NHL hockey games, there are 3 periods of play with intermissions between. Often, they'll choose 2-3 people from the crowd of 20,000 people and ask them to play a funny game to win a prize. I don't know how, but I've been chosen for these dumb games THREE…

Making the “Switch” to running

I recently read the book "Switch" by Chip and Dan Heath. I was inspired to read it by TS Balaji, who mentioned it in his interview with DesignBetter. I expected it to be all about corporate change management, but was happy to see it cover everything from large-scale cultural change to individual change. Instead of…