Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

This book was a gift from my mom for my birthday alongside with “Eat, Pray, Love”. So what I understand from this is that my mom thinks I need to eat, pray, love and take a closer look at my behaviour in economics. This should make me a pretty well rounded individual… in theory.

Before anything I have to make a comment about the previous post too. This blog has not been very publicized from my part. I mean I gave it to a few family members and friends but no facebook publicity or anything. Given this guess how many views did my previous entry get? … well so far a total of 91. Of course my ego is more than ready to accept this as a result of my excellent wit and writing. But I have a feeling it needs to accept reality that people are interested in miraculous farts. So who knows maybe from now on I will slip a fart or two in every other post and see how far we go.

Now back to the book “Predictably Irrational”. I liked the read and of course I was impressed by the personal story of the author. The name of the author in the title is a link to his website if you would like to read more.

I do strongly believe I am very finely tuned with fate one way or another and the right book just comes in my hands at the right time. Anyway the reason why this was a particularly useful read it’s because I found a few nice lessons and maybe some I will apply, as I am currently setting up an online store with my mom. She is the creative talent and I am the other one. If interested to take a look: Pusha’s World and please feel free to make suggestions.

One realization was related the power of “FREE” and how it becomes such a blinding factor that you tend to stop rationalizing if the need for the object justifies the purchase. But we are all guilty of it I mean I wrote in my previous article how I ended up buying a book blinded by the one pound price and it wasn’t even what I wanted. Of course I can tell myself oh but it’s a book and I can read it and it is not the bad type of consumerism but at the end of the day I could have slipped into the same trap with other things as well such as a 10 pairs of turquoise socks.

I liked the chapter related to social norms and how people do feel motivated to work when there is a cause they believe and they feel they are being appreciated for it. So it is not always about money, we do care. It is good to know everyone wants to help one or another underneath it all.

The chapter on why we overvalue what we own hit a cord. I am one of those people who like to collect things. I am not a hoarder per se but I have various collections and things stored. And probably the harsh reality of it is that the monetary value of them is not what I imagine it to be. But for some reason I feel I want these things with me. Some part of this is due to the fact I have moved a few places and a couple of countries by now so maybe it is my way of keeping them in my life one way or another.

As another side to this, I also have to learn to price items as part of the shop venture. The focus is on one-of-a-kind knitted items, which my mom makes. To reflect the true passion, creativity and time put into the work to create them I would have to put very high prices. But I do try to step outside and view it from the buyer’s perspective and see how we can make it more attractive and affordable to them.

The last chapters of the book focused on our shady morals. Basically how easy we are ready to bend our principles when we can have a bit of gain for ourselves when it does not involved cash.

Lesson? I need to return the red pen I took from work…..