The one-sentence summary

• The best ideas aren’t always complicated and the incredibly straightforward stuff is often overlooked in the search for a complex answer
• Many smart people lack the set of essential skills which could roughly be described as “common sense”
• There are 7 principles here that can be adapted for attacking most everyday problems

1. Many things are simple – despite our tendency to complicate them
2. You need to know what you’re trying to do – many don’t
3. There is always a sequence of events – make the journey in your head
4. Things don’t get done if people don’t do them – strategic wafflers beware!
5. Things rarely turn out as expected – so plan for the unexpected
6. Things either are or they aren’t – don’t fudge things
7. Look at things from other’s point of view – it will help your expectations

• In a world of over complication, asking some simple questions can really make your life easier. For example:

~ What would be the simplest thing to do here?

~ Describing an issue or a solution in less than 25 words

~ Telling it as though you were telling a six year old

~ Asking whether there is a simpler way

• Try writing the minutes of a meeting before the meeting – then you’ll know what you want to get out of it
• It highlights the difference between duration and effort. “How long will it take you to have a look at that?” “About an hour.” But when?
• It explains the reasons why things don’t get done: confusion, over-commitment, inability – usually busy people never say there’s a problem!
• Plan your time assuming you will have interruptions – the “hot date” scenario

• The orientation is very much based on a project management perspective, which is fine if you are one, but others may prefer to cherry-pick the most applicable ideas
• Anyone who flies by the seat of their pants would have to be very disciplined to apply these ideas. It’s a bit like dieting

The one-sentence summary

Every human being, no matter how diverse, complies with economic logic.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• If humans are so clever, why do we smoke and gamble, or take drugs and fall in love? Is this really rational behaviour? And how come your idiot boss is so overpaid?
• In fact, the behaviour of even the unlikeliest of individuals complies with economic logic, taking into account future costs and benefits, even we don’t quite realise it.
• Rational choice theory affects most things, and can sit happily even with the most passionate emotions.
• Most things can be explained: overpaid (apparently useless) bosses, proximity to neighbours, racism, and divorce decisions.
• Rational people respond to incentives: when it becomes more costly to do something, they will tend to do less. In weighing up their choices, they will bear in mind the constraints on them, and their total budget. And they will consider the future consequences of present choices. This applies just as much to prostitutes and criminals as it does to anyone else.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The idea that everybody responds to incentives and consequences may have wider application than we think.
• Game theory (Von Neumann) uses rational decision making to analyse every decision in a way that should lead to calmer, more beneficial decisions, but it is hard for the layperson to implement. Most of us just follow the ‘wisdom of crowds’ principle, but don’t adjust our guesses.
• Human interactions are so shot through with ambiguity that they are better viewed as focal points (Schelling): where and when would two people who can’t talk meet each other in New York?
• Tournament theory means that workers sabotage one another to win the top job: the bigger the boss’s pay, and the less they have to do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for everyone else to aim for it.
• ‘Egonomics’ is mental civil war: should I smoke or not? All humans wrestle with such conflict.
• For every year that a woman delays having her first child, her lifetime earnings rise by 10%.
• The ‘death of distance’ doesn’t make the world flatter, it makes it spikier, with evermore activity taking place in cities – centres of innovation and idea exchange.
• The rate of technological progress is proportional to the world’s population – currently we should have a world-beating idea every two months (1 per billion people per year).

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Nothing, but don’t expect any charts or easy sections.

The one-sentence summary

Treat information with great suspicion until you know the real story.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Eighty per cent of companies think that they are fraud free, but a recent survey actually revealed fraud in forty five per cent of them
• There are seven degrees of deceit:
• White lie: told to make someone feel better or to avoid embarrassment
• Fib: relatively insignificant, such as excuses and exaggerations
• Blatant: whoppers used when covering up mistakes or apportioning blame
• Bullshit: a mixture of those above combined with spin and bluff to give the best impression
• Political: similar to bullshit but with much bigger scale and profile
• Criminal: illegal acts from fraud to murder, and their subsequent denial
• Ultimate: so large that it must be true. As Joseph Goebbels said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It confirms what we all suspect – that the workplace constantly bombards us with lies, fakery and spin
• Case histories of Enron, Boo.com, the European Union and others provide the proof on a grand scale
• Deconstructions of other levels of lying help the reader to navigate their way through the day-to-day types. You can then decide how to react.
• It has tips on how to suck up to the boss, pass the buck and endure meetings
• Everybody should read the chapter on Lies and Leadership

“The truth is more important than the facts.” Frank Lloyd Wright

“Those that think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow colour blind.” Austin O’Malley

“Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.” George Carlin

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The book essentially condemns most corporate cultures and so needs to be viewed lightly by those who have to work in them
• There is a moral dilemma lurking within: do you tell the truth and get trod on, or join the liars?

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This quirky book explains the benefits of making bad decisions, why unreason is better than reason, and shows how risk is the security in your life. It’s about having the confidence to roll the dice.
• The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else. They are dull, predictable, and lead you nowhere. Unsafe decisions cause you to think and respond in a way you hadn’t thought of.
• I want is better than I wish
• It’s better to regret what you have done than what you haven’t.
• Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you’ve got, and fix it as you go.
• There is no right point of view. There are personal, conventional, large and small ones. You are always both right and wrong. Advances in any field are built upon people with the small or personal point of view.
• What is a good idea? One that happens. One that doesn’t isn’t. If an idea is not taken up as a solution to a problem it has no value.
• Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Authenticity is invaluable. Originality isn’t. “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” Jean-Luc Godard

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The booked is packed full of inspirational and contrary thoughts – just the place to start if you are bogged down or suffering from inertia.
• Until the Mexico Olympics of 1968, high jumpers faced the bar, and the record stood at 5′ 8″. Dick Fosbury turned his back on it and leapt 7′ 4″, by thinking the opposite of everyone else.
• In 1889 George Eastman invented the Kodak brand. It means nothing but was chosen because it was short, was not open to mispronunciation, and could not be associated with anything else.
• “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw
• Meetings are for those with not enough to do. They are performances, acts to convince people of their own importance.
• The world is what you think of it. So think of it differently and your life will change.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Not much. This book is all about jumping off points, so don’t expect to be guided by hand through the creative process.

Here's the podcast of another book I summarised a few months ago (see Levitt & Dubner) – Superfreakonomics.

Download Superfreakonomics