|
Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, did an experiment. He gave two options: Would you accept a gamble that offers a 10% chance to win $95 and a 90% chance to lose $5? Or. Would you pay $5 to participate in a lottery that offers a 10% chance to win $100 and a 90% chance to win nothing? Well… if you studied engineering, you have convinced yourself that the two problems are identical. In both, you are either richer by $95 or poorer by $5. But that’s engineering mindset… No question why we take so long to find someone that can endure us. The reality is that the second option attracts more people. A bad outcome is much more acceptable if it is framed as the cost of a lottery ticket that did not win than if it is simply described as losing a gamble. We should not be surprised: losses evoke stronger negative feelings than costs. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you should take a look to the book below. It will teach you to avoid gambles and call some costs, investments.
​
PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Not exactly “gold plating” in the luxury sense. Worse. Engineering gold plating. They didn’t want a baggage system. That would have been what they needed, but too boring. Too normal. Too “let’s move suitcases from A to B without humiliating ourselves in front of the entire planet.” No. Denver International Airport wanted something better. A fully automated baggage system. Airport-wide. High-speed. Radio-controlled carts. Miles of track. Computers deciding where every bag should go. Basically,...
They wanted to save money. Of course. Because nothing says “excellent public procurement” like taking a complex, mission-critical system and pretending the cheap option is also the clever option. In 2007, the Queensland Government in Australia needed a new payroll system for Queensland Health. Not a tiny organisation. Tens of thousands of employees, multiple awards, complex rosters, allowances, overtime, penalties, shifts… The kind of payroll system that makes normal payroll systems cry in...
Let’s say you want to get in shape. You can buy a gym membership. Fine. You pay the fee. You get the little towel. You walk in pretending you know exactly what you’re doing. Then you start lifting weights like a chicken “sin cabeza”… no head. A machine here. Some dumbbells there. A bit of treadmill because you saw someone else doing it. And then you hope willpower, motivation, and the fitness gods do the rest. Good luck with that. Now, if you’re serious… Really serious… You hire a personal...