James Harbaugh

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about James.


How to Create a M...
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (page 59 of 336)
14 hours, 4 min ago

 
The Willpower Ins...
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (page 45 of 275)
Apr 20, 2026 12:51AM

 
Frankenstein: The...
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (63%)
Apr 21, 2026 08:36PM

 
See all 89 books that James is reading…
Loading...
Rory Sutherland
“And in reality ‘context’ is often the most important thing in determining how people think, behave and act:”
Rory Sutherland, Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

Rory Sutherland
“Rory’s Rules of Alchemy The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea. Don’t design for average. It doesn’t pay to be logical if everyone else is being logical. The nature of our attention affects the nature of our experience. A flower is simply a weed with an advertising budget. The problem with logic is that it kills off magic. A good guess which stands up to observation is still science. So is a lucky accident. Test counterintuitive things only because no one else will. Solving problems using rationality is like playing golf with only one club. Dare to be trivial. If there were a logical answer, we would have found it.”
Rory Sutherland, Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

Steven H. Strogatz
“This synergistic character of nonlinear systems is precisely what makes them so difficult to analyze. They can’t be taken apart. The whole system has to be examined all at once, as a coherent entity. As we’ve seen earlier, this necessity for global thinking is the greatest challenge in understanding how large systems of oscillators can spontaneously synchronize themselves. More generally, all problems about self-organization are fundamentally nonlinear. So the study of sync has always been entwined with the study of nonlinearity.”
Steven H. Strogatz, Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

Robert H. Lustig
“(1) reward is not contentment, and pleasure is not happiness; (2) reward is dopamine, and contentment is serotonin; (3) chronic excess reward interferes with contentment; (4) business has conflated pleasure with happiness consciously and with clear-cut intent, specifically to get you to buy its junk or engage in hedonic behaviors favorable to industry; (5) government has passed legislation to make it easier to buy that junk or make easier access to engage in those behaviors to drive profit and GDP, and the Supreme Court has justified and supported these practices; and (6) buying that junk or engaging in those behaviors long-term and without thought can leave you and society fat, sick, stupid, broke, addicted, depressed, and most decidedly unhappy.”
Robert H. Lustig, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains

Dean Burnett
“Importantly, intrinsic motivation seems the more potent kind, because, you could argue, the rewards come from within our own brains.42 The contradiction produced here is that sometimes if you coerce people into doing something via rewards like financial incentives, they feel less like it’s their decision to do it, so their motivation becomes contingent on said rewards. Basically, once the reward is received/removed, the associated motivation fades away. This doesn’t seem to happen if it stems from an internal, personal source, if it’s our own decision to do it. One study focused on children who were given art supplies to play with.”
Dean Burnett, Happy Brain: Where Happiness Comes From, and Why

220 Goodreads Librarians Group — 321155 members — last activity 1 minute ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more
year in books
Erinc
271 books | 1 friend

Matthew
2,173 books | 27 friends





Polls voted on by James

Lists liked by James