On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits

by Wray Herbert

Our lives are composed of millions of choices, ranging from trivial to life-changing and momentous. Luckily, our brains have evolved a number of mental shortcuts, biases, and tricks that allow us to quickly negotiate this endless array of decisions. We don’t want to rationally deliberate every choice we make, and thanks to these cognitive rules of thumb, we don’t need to.   Yet these hard-wired shortcuts, mental wonders though they may be, can also be perilous.   They can distort our thinking in ways that are often invisible to us, leading us to make poor decisions, to be easy targets for manipulators…and they can even cost us our lives.   The truth is, despite all the buzz about the power of gut-instinct decision-making in recent years, sometimes it’s better to stop and say, “On second thought . . .”   The trick, of course, lies in knowing when to trust that instant response, and when to question it.  In On Second Thought, acclaimed science writer Wray Herbert provides the first guide to achieving that balance.  Drawing on real-world examples and cutting-edge research, he takes us on a fascinating, wide-ranging journey through our innate cognitive traps and tools, exposing the hidden dangers lurking in familiarity and consistency; the obstacles that keep us from accurately evaluating risk and value; the delusions that make it hard for us to accurately predict the future; the perils of the human yearning for order and simplicity; the ways our fears can color our very perceptions . . . and much more.   Along the way, Herbert reveals the often-bizarre cross-connections these shortcuts have secretly ingrained in our brains, answering such questions as why jury decisions may be shaped by our ancient need for cleanliness; what the state of your desk has to do with your political preferences; why loneliness can literally make us shiver; how drawing two dots on a piece of paper can desensitize us to violence… and how the very typeface on this page is affecting your decision about whether or not to buy this book.     Ultimately, On Second Thought is both a captivating exploration of the workings of the mind and an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to learn how to make smarter, better judgments every day. 

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help, Science, Audiobook, Personal Development, Brain

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Tsvetelina Mareva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Много интересно четиво за т.нар. когнитивни капани (евристики или кратки пътища), които често ни подвеждат да действаме ирационално във всекидневни ситуации. Книгата е разделена на 3 части, които разглеждат систематично и подкрепено с множество експерименти и изследвания биологично обусловените, умствените, числовите и накрая духовните евристики. Има множество примери, които онагледяват тезите на когнитивните психолози. Най-интересна ми беше последната част, в която се обясняват уклоните към опростяване, категоризация, стереотипизиране, придържане към статуквото и др. Много ми хареса, че авторът Рей Хърбърт в нито един момент не оценява евристиките като положителни или отрицателни. Неколкократно се споменава, че от еволюционна гледна точка те са много полезни и са спомогнали за оцеляването на човека, но в съвременния свят често играят лоша шега. Идеята за написването на книгата е, че като познаваме тези механизми на действие, ще сме в състояние да ги преодолеем или поне да се замислим дали това, което ни идва спонтанно като най-доброто решение в дадена ситуация, действително е такова. Препоръчвам книгата, както и цялата поредица "Психология от Изток-Запад". Аз лично мисля да си я набавя.

[Kater Cheek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read so much pop science on neurology that I'm always skeptical that a book will surprise and delight me with new information, and I'm delighted to say that this book does. Herbert wins by focusing on heuristics, an important idea that is usually touched on in any books that discuss how people think but rarely to this extent.

Heuristics affect people in every way from dieting to political game theory. You may have heard of this as "priming" and the most commonly repeated study is the one where people are "primed" with words about age and senility, and end up walking slower as a result. Apparently, we're even more malleable than that. Tired people overestimate the slope of hills, and every person consistently over-estimates how happy or how sad they will be as a result of events in their life.

I recommend this for people who like pop science books on neurology/psychology. It's also a good book for people who might be interested in psychology and want something that's easy to understand yet backed up with a generous amount of data.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about little mental short-cuts we make and are often unaware of. Explanations through Evolutionary Psych. are common. Some of them are just amusing and some are rather thought provoking. If you have an interest in psychology and how we think, or think we think, then I recommend it. The chapters are not all that related, so it is a good book to just pick up and read a bit, then lay by the side until you need some reading material. Great coffee shop book for me. Informs me of some of the research being done in psychology without the need to read academic papers. I've highlighted folks whose research I might want to read for myself someday.

Some of the later chapters have helped me understand the thought processes of folks who seem horribly intolerant, and the findings generally agree with my experiences and observations. The fact that we each have varying tolerances for ambiguity is discussed and this ties in with Hofstede's book on cultural differences; and helps understand the foreign culture I find myself in a bit more.

Great book to have around.

[Azita Rassi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating subject matter and wonderful style of writing. The writer has a delightful knack of making complicated concepts both accessible and attractive. Great read.

[Mark Speed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your brain is destroying your life. You. Yes you, brain! You are an incompetent idiot! You were designed for a simple life on the savanna, and your primitive behaviour is trashing my life, and the lives of everyone on this planet.

True story. I was reading this book and having internet dates at the same time. For the first time in years, I had a terrific date. We were compatible on every level. The only downer was that she was then unavailable for ten days due to family and work commitments. Stupidly, I responded to an email from someone who wasn't wholly suitable. And that was that - I got into the wrong relationship. Don't get me wrong: woman #2 is a lovely person, and we're still in touch. She read the copy of this book that I lent her and even commented that she was the 'decoy' choice from chapter 11. The relationship lasted just a couple of months. To this day, I still wonder about my extraordinary stupidity. For a long time, I thought of sending her a copy of the book with the relevant page tagged and explaining the nonsensical choice I'd made. But who wants to date an idiot - even an honest one?

The above story and the opening paragraph are true. I mean, you always suspected your brain's decisions were devoid of reason, didn't you? This book proves it. But, given that you are your brain, what are you going to do about it? The only answer is to buy this book and try to modify your idiotic and irrational behaviour. However, it didn't work in my case when it came to my dating decision. Apparently I'm beyond help: I literally will not take good advice when it is spelled out to me.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent little book on some of the hard-wired mental shortcuts (heuristics) we use to facilitate many of our daily decisions. Life would soon become overwhelming if we had to grind out every little decision we make by rigorous analysis or deep thought. Many of these heuristics are hard-wired - they served us evolutionarily. They were never designed to be perfect - they work most of the time, but not all of the time (we evolved to fear snakes, even though many/most are not dangerous - better to be safe than sorry). In addition, as we have become cultural as well as biological animals, many of these shortcuts serve counter-productive ends (stereotyping strangers leads to racism).

The author covers many of these heuristics. They include momentum heuristic (some of us are wired to continue doing what's worked in the past, others may be wired to be more adventuresome and explore new things and ideas - this may help explain some of the difference between liberals and conservatives); the fluency heuristic (we are wired to favor actions and decisions that come easily to mind); the anchor heuristic (our ideas are anchored by "comparables"); design heuristic (we are designed to see, i.e., invent, order and purpose out of daily events); and many others. What I found especially interesting in many of these heuristics is the author's descriptions of social psychology experiments that buttress the findings. Fascinating.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat interesting, but bothersome biases and beliefs of the author got in the way.

[Kostadin Krushkov · Rating 2 out of 5]

„Евристики" означава практически познавателни правила, дълбоко вкоренени преки мисловни механизми, които всеки из-ползва в ежедневието при обичайни ситуации на вземане на решение и преценка.


За пръв път науката показва как хората постепенно се преврщат именно в онези фигури, за които са имали обидно карикатурна представа. Тоест онези, които възприемат старостта като период на безпомощност, били много по-податливи на някакъв вид сърденосъдово заболяване през следващите 40 години от живота си.

Да не решаваш означава да решаваш.

[Pete Welter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book because I've become interested in our decision-making process...and especially how many of our decisions are made on autopilot where hidden and sometimes counter-intuitive biases have significant effects on what we do.

"On Second Thought" is a survey across a diverse set of heuristics - mental shortcuts - that we use to figure out what to do in a variety of situations. Herbert categories these heuristics into three major categories: those involving the body, those involving numbers and those involving the mind. It's disturbing to me how much our intuitive biases affect what we think is rational decision making - and the fact that we are generally blind to it. With some kinds of reflection and thought habits we can work towards overcoming of these, overall we have to accepting that much of what we do is for reasons that we don't even know.

If you have read Dan Ariely's books on irrationality in our economic decision-making, or Daniel Kahneman's excellent "Thinking Fast and Slow" which discusses the interplay between our intuitive and our rational minds, then the gist of this book will be familiar. The difference is that those two authors are also researchers, while Herbert is a science writer, and so he spends his time describing a broad swath of research being done in these areas.

As such, if you'd like an introduction to this field written in an accessible manner, or if you want a survey book to introduce to the players in the field, then I can definitely recommend this book. However, if you expect a deep dive into the research, then this book probably won't be what you are looking for.

[Pap Lőrinc · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book can be summed up with the sentence, that appeared a lot more often than it should have: ``and that's exactly what the researchers have found``.

Why is the following story disturbing: ``poor family; their dog died in an accident; they had to eat the dog``? It's obviously, because the dog was basically part of the family - but the book always gravitates towards stupid, made up evolutionary causes, like: ``we simply cannot say why this is wrong, we just feel it; the cause might be an evolutionary legacy from the times when we haven't started eating meat yet``.

That's just stupid, and every presented study was completely ruined by all those: ``and people don't like rejection, because back in the days, if your tribe rejected you, you would have died``. They're completely made up, conjured up after the conclusions - as if that's how science works. These pseudo-historical tales also don't have anything useful to add: I won't learn how to avoid all those cognitive biases or even to help me in observing them in action.

While this book probably tries to follow the footsteps of Kahneman, it's nothing like his work. Most cognitive biases probably have a very simple cause: fear of the unknown - which is a valid fear, unlike what the book keeps saying: ``we can all agree that this bias is completely irrational``.

The last third of the book has some science in it, written in a less fairytaily-way, but still isn't tailored for everyday usage, rather to showcase all the ways psychologists can misinterpret artificial environments (``would you push the fat man in front of the bus to save other people ...?``).

[Clark Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and approachable

Note: this review first appeared on Amazon

This is one of those books -- like "Connected" (Christakis and Fowler) and "The Politics of Happiness" (Bok) -- that gets beneath what we think we think and helps us arrive at what we actually think and, more importantly, why we think it. "On Second Thought" is light and easy to read, which is not a critique as it is loaded with illuminating studies from the edges of this science frontier. This is a powerful and illuminating field and this approach gives the book staying power. I'll refer to it again and again in the future as the various heuristics captured in each chapter offer many ah-ha moments of insight. I found especially intriguing the discussion of existential angst and fear of death as determinant of political ideology (and foundation for genocidal actions) especially interesting. Equally compelling, and something that is carried throughout, is just how exhausting truly grappling with decisions can be for the brain. Our glorious grey matter uses some serious glucose to ponder things deeply and the ensuing state of exhaustion can have disastrous consequences. It's no wonder we have evolved to use cognitive shortcuts, but the trick -- and something this book does not fully address -- is how do we recognize and prevent the heuristics that may inadvertently lead to negative outcomes. Hopefully, that will be in his next book. Until then, I expect "On Second Thought" to become well-worn.

[Sal Coraccio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, what amounts to, an introductory or at best, high-level, book on cognitive psychology; heuristics in particular.

Certainly fascinating material ("framing" is my particular fave)regardless of the delivery mechanism. I have a tough time saying anything really laudatory about the thing, though it really is quite good. The presentation is more of a journalistic report, rather than a scientific exploration with more exposition than contextual explanation. For the latter there are plenty to choose from (I am going to go choose another now).

And while it purports to provide compensatory strategies - there isn't a ton of that going on.

But it is a fast read, and worthy of it. Useful as reinforcing previous readings or as an early choice in the topic.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

It would probably have been more interesting if I hadn't already read tons of books like it. The same examples get old after a while. So does the repetitive use of the word "heuristic". Enough already!

The format is a bit textbookish, so I recommend this to all students of heuristics. Otherwise, go read some Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Ariely, How We Decide or Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this one on Audible and found it a very interesting overview of the shortcuts that our brains are hard-wired to take in different areas. Shortcuts that made sense throughout our evolution to keep us alive may not always be either valid or helpful in the modern world, and this book outlines a different category in each chapter and gives explanation and examples of each. It's meant as an introduction for the layman and is very approachable, probably not detailed enough for someone actually working in the field of study already, but for those of us who are not it's definitely fascinating and enlightening.

[Kara of BookishBytes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like what the author tried to do here. But I think it has been done better. For example, I far preferred The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonical which seemed to site several of the same studies, and came to the same conclusions, but gave more suggestions for application in the readers' lives.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The heuristics explained are fascinating. I now find myself understanding why I think in certain patterns and why it is or isn't helpful. I really like the many case studies and psychologists experiments detailed in the book.

[Gypsy Lady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Page 29
We “see” the world through the lens of our emotions, and our vision in turn shapes our fears, motivation, and self-esteem. Call it the visionary heuristic.

Page 70
The Greek system embodies much that is sad and unflattering about human nature, especially the cruelty of exclusion and the often desperate need to belong. Psychologists are very interested in these dynamics, because they apply beyond the frat house. Why is inclusion in groups and clubs so important to us, and what cognitive and emotional resources do we use to avoid rejections. Or, more important, to deal with the inevitability of rejections?

Page 93
There is a general sense, that, beyond basic arithmetic, math is only useful for future math teachers, to torment another generation of high school students. Unhappily, such disdain for numbers has left a lot of Americans mathematically illiterate – or “innumerate,” in the coinage of experts. New evidence suggests that inept everyday mathematicians make unwise judgments and regrettable decisions in everything from personal health to real estate. What’s more, those of us who are bad with numbers appear more likely to make bad choices because we are under the sway of our own unchecked emotions.

Page 94
They did a set of experiments comparing mathematically savvy people with the mathematically challenged. Let’s call them the nerds and the dimwits, just to save space.

Page 118
Human knowledge may be trivial but it’s infinite.

Page 129
These laboratory scenarios can be entertaining, but the inability to take another’s perspective can be the source of a lot of misunderstanding and sorrow in real life. Think of couples trying to negotiate a shared life, or business partners agreeing on strategy. Our initial, fact, and automatic judgment is that someone else’s view or desire or perspective is exactly the same as our, just because that’s what is most prominent in our minds. But communications depends on how swell we can adjust our egotistical anchoring view away from that automatic perspective. If we can’t learn to see a range of possible views, we are likely to misunderstand – and be misunderstood. Perspective taking is the foundation of fairness, which is also wrapped up in the calorie heuristics, the topic of the next chapter. The calorie heuristic is about exchange and currency – but currency broadly defined to encompass hunger money, deprivation, and our basic human sense of human decency.

Page 134
So fairness is fundamentally jarring to the brain, and fairness is fundamentally rewarding.

It appears that we can temporarily damp down the brain’s contempt center, in effect allowing the rational, utilitarian brain to rule, as least momentarily. So it seems contempt does not go away when the economic pie is sliced unfairly; it just goes underground.

Page 137
This ancient and automatic entwining of food and money can skew our diets in other ways as well. Consider this bit of trivia: Americans typically eat yogurt out of eight-ounce containers. By contrast, the typical yogurt in a French market is less than five ounces. This seemingly pointless fact may hide a fundamental psychological truth about how humans regulate their consumption – and, in fact, how we make all sorts of choices in life.

The French don’t double up on their tiny yogurts to get the same volume of food or caloric intake as Americans. Instead, they simply stop eating after one serving, and therefore eat less overall, and therefore are more slender and healthier than overweight Americans.

Page 151
I am writing this just a few days after the election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States, a historic event not matter what your political stripe. But you are reading this much later. As I write I am filled with hope and expectation, like much of American, yet even as I write, I wonder how I will feel a year or two from now – how the country will feel. Can we carry that excitement and goodwill into the future? Are our expectations too high?

Page 156
Here’s one more example fro Gilbert’s Harvard lab. Why is it that psychologist asks, that most of us would drive clear across town to save $50 on a $100 radio, but wouldn’t consider the same inconvenience to save $50 on a $100,000 car? The answer is that we think in relative terms, not absolutes. Getting a good radio at half price is a bargain. Getting that fancy care for $99,950 doesn’t feel like a bargain at all; the savings are trivial. Such reasoning and behavior drive economists crazy, because to an economist $50 is $50 is $50. But paradoxically, it takes an act of supreme imagination to et to this obvious truth.

Page 157
It’s a bit irrational, but apparently the brain is not wired to imagine the gradual dissipation of emotion over time; slightly less excitement tomorrow, even less the next day, and so forth. The fact is most people’s emotions good and bad, gradually head back toward a present emotional baseline, but it’s very difficult to see that when you’re in a peak experience.

Page 193
The problem with stereotypes; they contain enough truth to be both humorous an cruel

Page 211
Many of the contagion beliefs that linger in the modern mind are a form of magical thinking. Think of cooties. Cooties are fictional germs that spread on contact; they are disgusting and they are everywhere, and nowhere are they more prevalent than in the vivid imagination of just about every American child. They are often carried by unpopular kids, and almost always by kids of the opposite sex, and they clearly have a moral dimension, Indeed, one is much more likely to ”catch” a classmate’s unpopularity from cooties than to come down with a fever.

Page 227
Psychologist Peter Kahn talked to African American children in inner-city Houston about air pollution, most seem to grasp the idea of pollution and to know it was not a good thing. But when he probed them further, the kids showed no concern about their air. That is, they did not think that Houston was a polluted city, even though it was at the time (and remains) one of the most polluted cities in the country.

These kids ranged in age from seven to eleven years old. They knew about environmental degradation in the abstract – the idea was in their analytic brain, from lectures or books or whatever – but they weren’t experiencing it. They had no idea that the air they breathed was a far cry from the cleaner air their grandparents breathed.

Kahn finds this worrisome. He believes that with every generation, kids are losing some of their experiential knowledge of the natural world and their expectations for what is a normal interaction with nature, creating a kind of generational amnesia. If nature is indeed a source of mental and emotional replenishment, this could emerge as one of the most compelling psychological issues of the not-so-faraway future.

Page 251
Human are the only species that systematically murders its own for ideological reasons. More than 50 million people were victims of mass murder in the twentieth century, making it the deadliest century on records. That included the Ottoman Turks’ murder of 1.5 Armenians, the Nazis’ extermination of 6million Jews, Mao’s murder of 30 million Chinese, and the Khmer Rouge’s destruction of 1.7 million Cambodians.

Why would this be? Philosophy is not threatening in any literal sense; it can’t maim or make you die, even when it’s very different from your view. Scientists are intrigued by this paradox. Why is philosophy – or worldview, or ideology – so threatening? Or to flip the questions around, what are the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of mass murder and genocide?

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

My name is Jon. In 2008, Andrea Axelbert of Haxlor university conducted a study and asked 100 participants whether my name was Jon. 89% said that it was.

This is my amazing review of On Second Thought. In 2017, another study was conducted by Antoine Figenberger of The Institute of Amazing Reviews in which the subjects were asked whether this was a review and whether it was amazing, somewhat amazing, slightly amazing, or not amazing. 98% of participants agreed that it was a review, and 85% of participants rated it as some form of amazing.

It seems like every line in this book is backed up by a study. I guess that would be good if it weren't every line. It gets tiring. It's like footnotes every line. There is no flow.

And some of those studies felt more like correlation than causation. For example, one study said that people who wore uniforms missed less work than people who wore regular clothes. The conclusion was that wearing regular, age appropriate clothes made people feel older and made them sick more than uniforms which were age neutral. My immediate thought was that a uniform job and a non uniform would be salaried. Hourly jobs encourage working while sick with either "no work, no pay" or "go to work when sick and get paid for your sick time later." Salaried jobs usually don't comp your sick time and if you don't use it you lose it, encouraging salaried workers to stay home when sick. Ooooor...it could be that clothes make people feel old. Aaaand this could be an amazing review. And my name could be Jon.

I'm glad this book is over, really.

[Clement · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved it. The book was hard to read at the beginning because there are so many psychology experiments presented and I had to slow down and imagined the scenes to understand the points. However later on I found a trick which is to read the conclusions first and if intersting enough, I then flip back to the experiments. The book explains a lot of things I have been wondering for so long such as why there werer so many massacres happing in the last centuries just because races, religions, philosophy views differences.

Quotes:"Langer and her Harvard colleagues have been running similarly inventive ex- periments for decades, and the accumulated weight of the evidence is convincing. Her theory is that we are all victims of our own stereo- types about aging and health. We mindlessly accept negative cultural cues about disease and old age, and these cues shape our self-concepts and our behavior. If we can shake loose from the negative clichés that dominate our thinking about health, we can mindfully open ourselves to possibilities for more productive lives even into old age"

[David Leapheart · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book starts with an anecdote of some climbers who were killed in an avalanche. It's a cautionary tale of heuristics (mental short cuts) in action, which shows how the short cuts can outgrow their evolutionary usefulness and lead us to certain doom. But the author spends the whole book explaining various heuristics, and never ventures to recommend to the reader how to use (or not use) these thought processes to their advantage. I came away thinking that if the mountain climbers who opened the book had the opportunity to read the book, they still would have died in the avalanche, because while there's lots of information in the book, there are no recommendations for using heuristics to live better. In short, if heutisitics are our first thoughts, On Second Thought never discusses what the second thought ought to look like!

[GingerOrange · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh…

I liked the concept of the book and it was honestly interesting. But the whole point, the ‘how-to’ bit was missing. Each chapter was a new heuristic and I think the author explained it well enough for a lay person such as myself. Though, I think there were too many references to experiments and the author did go off on a few tangents. But that was all good except for the missing bit in how to combat these heuristics. I think that was very unclear and I’m still left scratching my head now.

Overall, interesting and well-explained concepts. Just missing how we can practically apply this new knowledge.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book 82 of 2022
Lots of good information to ponder and a few tidbits I'll definitely make use of. Like any NF that I listen to, I know I would get more out of it if I listened at a slower speed, took notes or read in print, but then I probably wouldn't take the time to read it, so it's a fair trade off. Recommended for anyone interested in brain science, decision making, or why humans act the way we do/general sociology.

[Lê Nga · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting book that talks about the habits of our mind, which we unconscious do everyday. Knowing them could help us make some decision that could bring life or death, or simply improve our life a bit more.
Anyway, the book is a bit dry. It lists many experimemts and their conclusions, but I would love to see these conclusions with more specific numbers and data. Of course, I could dig in every articles, but you know, because of the default heuristic, I do not want to do it.

[Tyler Standish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heuristics are short cuts we use to make decision making faster. Sometimes that's a good thing, other times not so much. Marketers know about heuristics and use them to sell you products, you should know them too. This book can help understand why our brain takes short cuts.

[Natalie Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Herbert is a funny and interesting author. He explained the materials and gave plenty of examples to ensure clarity.

I find myself already using the information in my everyday life.

This is also a topic I'll reference, research, and become intimately familiar with.

[Don Bennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas that are very skimmable and most chapters could be cut in half. Applications to modern Issues and problems are not dealt with as much as they could have been which kept it rather middle of the road and blah...the author definitely “staying in their lane”.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of really fascinating ideas and pieces of research in this book. It does seem that some of the studies draw conclusions before it is clear whether there is enough evidence to support them (correlation or causality?). Nevertheless, it was so interesting to see the pros and cons of different brains at work, their abilities or lack thereof equaling strengths or weaknesses depending on the situation.

A quote I liked: Scarcity can even skew our choices of lovers and partners if we're not careful.

[Matthew Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

There r no strategies for personal growth n this book. A lot of interesting studies that r definitely useful but often times not much more than anecdotal.

[Nancy Currie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting look at why we do what we do and how we can override the brain's natural response system.

[George Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent accompaniment to Power of Habit, Mindset, Grit, etc. Good section on perception of age side effects.