On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits by Herbert Wray

Author:Herbert, Wray [Herbert, Wray]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

I GO TO A spinning class a couple of days a week, and I recently noticed something interesting. We exercise to music, and all the instructors use songs as units of measure. They shout things like “Three songs left! Give it your best!” Or “Last song now! Leave it at the gym!” Songs, of course, are not really meaningful units, because a song might be three minutes and twelve seconds, or five minutes and thirty-three seconds, or something else. But all of us spinners know what the instructor means: he means units of motivation and work and—well, calories burned, energy. It’s the flip side of food, but it’s currency nevertheless. All this is driven by the calorie heuristic, which commingles money, energy, food, and need. At its root, the calorie heuristic is a fear of doing without. In the most basic sense, fear drives many of the choices we make—and even choices we fail to make. The very act of choosing is a terrifying necessity of life, and we will do a lot to avoid choosing. The decoy heuristic, coming in the next chapter, is one of our mind’s tools for easing the anxiety of choosing badly. It may explain why you’re living in your current home, why you voted for a Democrat in the last election, and maybe even why you find a particular stranger attractive.

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