Tag: “Science”

Systems thinking tries to understand the rules that determine how different systems—some seemingly unrelated—behave, how they interact and how they influence each other.

Daniel Pink tells us in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that working is as natural as playing and resting and that, under the proper conditions, humans will accept and even seek this kind of responsibility.

I have to say that I am finding extremely interesting the reading of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, by Daniel Goleman. In my opinion, knowing how to pay attention where we need to do it at every moment is, probably, one of the most valuable skills today, and also, one of the most difficult to achieve. This book addresses the issue from a perspective based entirely in science, which gives the material exhibited a special relevance, well above most of the common posts and guru-tips you can find on the internet.

In this article I am not going to explain how you should make your decisions (who the hell am I?). Simply, I will present you a set of facts and theories about the decision making process. The idea is that if you know the process by which you make your own decisions, you will be able to make them more effectively. Also, let it be said, knowing how the human’s mind works in this type of processing also gives you the ability to influence others’ decisions (if you work in advertising, marketing or sales, this should be of your interest.)

You have probably heard of the famous experiment that was conducted a few decades ago in a laboratory at Stanford University: a few children were left alone in a room and were told that they could have a candy at that time or wait until the experimenter came back, in which case they could have two candies. The experiment did not end there, since the social and cognitive skills of these children were tested some years later. The result was that, at least academically, the ones who had delayed instant gratification obtained better scores and were more popular than those who had not.