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The Amazing World of 'Nudging'

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When I was five years old, my mother used to give me a glass of milk every day. I hated drinking it. My mother knew that I liked sweet things so she would show me a spoonful of sugar and then put it in the milk saying "finish the milk and you can get the sugar". I would hurriedly drink the milk to be rewarded with sugar and I still remember it tasted really nice.  Little did I know that mum was using some advanced techniques in Behavioural Economics and Marketing. I say advanced because in 2017 the Nobel prize for Economics was given to Richard Thaler, a professor at the Colombia University, for his work in behavioural economics around a concept called 'nudging'. Nudging refers to subtle changes in the environment allowing people to take decisions in their larger self interest. The key thing here is that people are not forced to take a certain decision; rather the choice sets are designed to 'nudge' them towards the best decision. Now a child may n

Gender Stereotypes

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At what age do people learn to associate tasks with genders? Surprisingly very early. An interesting experiment caught my attention done with 5-7 year olds at a school in the UK by a charity called Inspiring the Future. Children were asked to draw pictures of a firefighter, surgeon, and a fighter-pilot. Over 90% of the pictures were of men. http://www.mullenlowelondon.com/our-work/redraw-the-balance/  Question is how did the children start associating these professions with men? Where are they learning this from?  As a dad of three daughters, it is a really important point for me because I want my daughters to have equal opportunities in life when they grow up, irrespective of their gender.  It is also very easy to mix up gender inequality with gender differences. The issue is not whether men and women are wired differently. It doesn't matter if women find it hard to reverse park a car, or men have low threshold to pain. The issue is whether we should have inequali

Emotional beings

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Do we have some definitive answers about how consumers make their buying decisions? Apparently, not.  Most people believe that the choices they make result from a rational analysis of available alternatives. They look at the costs and benefits and then take a decision that optimizes their return. In reality, however, our decisions are influenced and determined greatly by emotions. If I have spent big money on buying a pair of shoes, it is not the damage to my bank account that matters, but what those shoes will make me look and feel like that has driven my decision. If emotions are the main drivers of behaviour, do people accept this? In most cas es, interestingly not. Our minds are good at coming up with very plausible and credible rational reasons for making the decision, after they had been taken. But at that point of decision making, this rationality did not exist. The process of rationalization after taking the decision is in every aspect of our lives. Hiring decisions

The Joys of Procrastination

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Is it possible? Can one really procrastinate and still feel good about it? If you look at the results, you can only say: why not? Wise people say that procrastination is optimism. It’s based on the belief that tomorrow exists. I am willing to say that procrastination is one of the most underrated, least understood, and unnecessarily degraded aspect of human nature. So this piece is an attempt to change this perception. I believe one can achieve much more through procrastination - all we need is a little bit of creativity and common sense. Our heart will leap with joy once it realizes that procrastination is a natural human trait and can be used as a growth and productivity hack. Does procrastination mean that you don’t love your work? Absolutely not. As Jerome K. Jerome says, you could be so fascinated with your work that you may sit and look at it for hours! Some people are very shy to accept that they are procrastinators, so they use innovative terms to describ