Upside of Irrationality


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Hardcover
334 pages
ISBN 9780061995033 Published June 2010
Harper
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Upside of Irrationality
The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
By Dan Ariely 

Related Blog Posts
Inc's Best Books for Business Owners 2010
Posted Dec. 8, 2010 4:57 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Inc.com offers a wealth of information for business people, particularly small business owners. While many media outlets make end of year lists, Inc's list is particularly geared toward this group of readers.  To create their list, they asked small business and business book experts to weigh in. Those experts were: "editor at large Leigh Buchanan, who writes Inc.'s monthly "Skimmer's Guide" book review; editor-at-large Bo Burlingham, the author of Small Giants; contributing writer John Warrillow, the author of Built to Sell; BrandAsset Consulting president John Gerzema, the co-author of Spend Shift; contributing writer Suzi Sosa, the founder and president of the MPOWER Foundation; and Jack Covert, founder of 800CEORead.com, an influential blog that tracks new releases."

Jack's recommendations include:

Switch by Chip and Dan Heath

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Bury My Heart at Conference Room B by Stan Slap

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

Read more about Jack's picks and the other excellent books that Inc's chosen experts selected for their 2010 list of the Best Books for Business Owners.



Amazon's Best of 2010
Posted Nov. 4, 2010 9:28 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Amazon has announced their Best of 2010 list, and a business book cracked the top 10 overall choices. Michael Lewis's The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine barely did so, coming in at number 10. (Two other books in the top ten that may appeal to nonfiction readers are The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, which came in at numbers one and five respectively.)

As they've done in previous years, Amazon has broken the books into separate categories and listed their editors' picks next to the customer favorites. I always enjoy seeing the differences between what editors choose and customers vote for with their pocket books. And I would enjoy it more if I were Michael Lewis, who topped both lists in the Business and Investing category.

The customer favorites were:

The editors' picks were:

If you're interested in what's been listed in the past, I've linked to our post from previous years below.

Best of 2009 | Best of 2008 | Best of 2007 | Best of 2006 | Best of 2005 | Best of 2004



Friday Links
Posted Sept. 3, 2010 11:10 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ Chris Guillabeau's The Art of Non-Conformity will be released on Tuesday—a book I hope everyone reading this blog will pick up. On his blog yesterday, he briefly discussed Seth Godin's departure from traditional publishing before laying out the Strategy, Tactics, and the Plan for the Next 97 Days he has devised for entering the publishing arena that Seth is leaving. And his plan is the only plan that has ever succeeded: think big; work hard. Responding to the notion that “The only authors who sell books anymore are those who have popular blogs,” he writes:

Where does a popular blog come from—does the blog fairy descend from the sky with a passionate group of readers, all eager to support a new writer?

It's a valid question, and we are glad this dedicated, unconventional (indeed, dedicatedly unconventional) individual has taken a step into traditional publishing, and we wish him the best on his Unconventional Book Tour.

If you'd like to learn more before picking up a copy of his book for yourself, you can read the interview Callie Oettinger did with him over at Steven Pressfield Online, or dig into some of his online offerings.

➻ Scott Stratten's UnMarketing also comes out next week, and in true social-media guru fashion, he did a 140-character interview on Twitter with new PR pros. Some advice:

@ssiewert: How can young pros/Gen Y apply their years of personal experience online to achieve business objectives?

@unmarketing: You have the advantage, since you’re already online. Be yourself, have an opinion but also be humble. You don’t know everything yet.

➻ The Bullish on Books blog had a great guest post from our dear friend Erika Andersen today, entitled You’ve Been Laid Off – Now What? She used the space to discuss how, once you declare an intention, or "put up your sail to catch the wind you’re looking for—it makes you available to other winds, as well." And Erika knows. She is one of the best advisers in country and the author of two outstanding books, Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic, the latter of which was recently made into a PBS special (Check your local PBS listings for the airtime, or purchase the DVD at shopPBS.org).

➻ The Economist recently took a look inside The innovation machine, reviewing Vijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble's book recently released on the topic, The Other Side of Innovation. From the article:

Many would-be innovators deal with the trade-off between efficiency and innovation by rejecting traditional management entirely. They repeat mantras about “breaking all the rules” and “asking for forgiveness rather than permission”. They set up skunk works (small, autonomous units with a remit to innovate) and mock the boring corporate types who write their pay-cheques. But again this is counter-productive. Mocking the corporate establishment only encourages it to starve you of resources.

They also touch on Warren Bennis's Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership briefly, and thought it looks like a great book, I think they did so only to have an excuse to introduce the topic of innovation by writing "Today there is no hotter topic in management theory than 'sperm in the air.'"

➻ Bob Sutton, author of the soon-to-be-released Good Boss, Bad-Boss, wants to know... Is Your Boss A Certified Brasshole? And he has devised a test for you to find out.

➻ Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, writes a twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun. His most recent post discussed the 10 Best Books For Back To School Business Reading, and his list is very solid:

I personally think that if you have read all of these books, just go ahead and forgo going back to school and get on out there and start conquering the world.

➻ The 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style went on sale this week, but you can get the original edition (1906) for free. Head on over to Papercuts to figure out how.

➻ "In addition to being a bullfighter and magician, he's a lazy river, a slow moving train, a future hall-of-famer playing through the pain, he's a grizzly bear." And his son is a book reviewer.



Jack Covert Selects: The Upside of Irrationality
Posted June 16, 2010 4:11 a.m. by 800-ceo-read

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Home and at Work by Dan Ariely, Harper, 330 Pages, $27.99 Hardcover, June 2010, ISBN 9780061995033

One of the hardest things to do is to follow up a great success with another one. The expectations are high; the pressure daunting. Dan Ariely had a smash success with his first book, Predictably Irrational, but he clearly overcame any sophomore slump because his new book, The Upside of Irrationality, is brilliant. As in his previous book, Ariely uses academic research and medical experiments to ask and answer some intriguing questions, like whether performance based incentives actually increase performance and why (and when) we get used to things.

You may question how the book different from the previous. Ariely explains: “The Upside of Irrationality is … highly personal. Though my colleagues and I try to do our best to be as objective as possible in running and analyzing our experiments, much of this book (particularly the second part) draws on some of my difficult experiences as a burn patient. [...] My journey provided me with some unique perspectives on human behavior.” That is not to say that this book skimps on the research, but the increase of personal reflections makes for a well-balanced and accessible read.

Ariely is clearly an extremely intelligent and educated person, and still, his writing reads like he is just a buddy you bowl with every Wednesday night. His many fascinating antidotes can change your way of thinking about many everyday things, like money, work, friendship and happiness. For example, regarding the aforementioned performance-based incentives: “using money to motivate people can be a double-edged sword. For tasks that require cognitive ability, low to moderate performance-based incentives can help. But when the incentive level is very high, it can command too much attention and thereby distract the person’s mind with thoughts about the reward. This can create stress and ultimately reduce the level of performance.” One of the experiments they conducted involves six simple games and measures the pressure the participant puts on himself trying for the big dollars.

It is not often that I would suggest that you pick up a business book as a “beach read.” The Upside of Irrationality book is an exception. Take it to the cottage and enjoy… and learn.



Do You TED?
Posted June 14, 2010 5:24 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Cruising Twitter this morning, I read a quick mention of a talk on TED ("TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free.") The Tweet recommended Dan Pink's talk on motivation--needing a little motivation myself these days, I clicked. And spent an enjoyable 18 minutes listening to Dan Pink's entertaining and convincing argument that "there is a mismatch between what science knows and business does." In this case, Pink is talking about motivation, about how money as motivator only works for the simplest tasks, and autonomy works better as a motivator than money for many other more creative or fluid tasks which predominate our work culture in the 21st century.

Listening to his argument about science v. business brought to mind how many "business" books I've been reviewing lately that use science to illuminate the behaviors and motivators of people. It's what has, all these years, intrigued me most about business books: business books are about work, and work is about the people who do it. Business books help improve the working conditions of the people who make up business. I'm not terribly interested in profit margins and day trading, or whatnot, but I am interested in people.

Recently, we've recommended a handful of books that are more about the why than the what.

Switch by Chip and Dan Heath combines "psychology, sociology, management, and case studies [to] tell stories of people and organizations who have successfully implemented significant changes--even when change is hard."

Click by Ori and Rom Brafman is described as "a fascinating psychological investigation of the forces behind what makes us click with certain people or become fully immersed in whatever activity or situation we're involved in."

The Upside of Irrationality by social scientist, Dan Ariely (watch his TED talk here) "exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job, how one unwise action can become a long-term habit, how we learn to love the ones we're with."

Happiness at Work by Dr. Srikumar Rao (watch his TED talk here) isn't so much a research-based book as a guidebook subtly influenced by Eastern philosophy meant to "show you that it isn't the negative thing that happens to you that causes your unhappiness, it's how you see it."

New June books like Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz, which "explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude towards error corrodes relationships--whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations," and The Why of Work by Dave and Wendy Ulrich, which is an excellent extension from Dan Pink's talk because it explains that "according to studies, we all work for the same thing--and it's not just money. It's meaning." Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains looks at "technology's effect on the mind," asking, "Is Google making us stupid?"

It is easy to lose track of time surfing TED and watching the oodles of video talks (a little like spending some time reading thought-provoking manifestos on our ChangeThis.com) site), but it is time well-spent, particularly if you have a company that allows for autonomous learning and development time, like Dan Pink argues for. Business books (and their surrounding media) are no longer strictly about doing business, but are instead include explorations in learning about what motivates and engages us as workers which is key to improving our performance and our satisfaction in our work.






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