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Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan
"This engaging, beautifully written, and thought-provoking book is a must read for anyone who wants a deep understanding of how decisions get so easily derailed,and advice on how to stick to well-thought out plans. A truly entertaining journey that will keep you turning pages through the very end."
— Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
You may not realize it but simple, irrelevant factors can have profound consequences on your decisions and behavior, often diverting you from your original plans and desires. Sidetracked will help you identify and avoid these influences so the decisions you make do stick—and you finally reach your intended goals.
Award-winning behavioral scientist and Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino has long studied the factors at play when judgment and decision making collide with the results of our choices in real life. In this book she explores inconsistent decisions played out in a wide range of circumstances—from our roles as consumers and employees (what we buy, how we manage others) to the choices that we make more broadly as human beings (who we date, how we deal with friendships).
What factors are likely to sway our decisions in directions we did not initially consider? And what can we do to correct for the subtle influences that derail our decisions? Gino will provide compelling answers to these and similar questions.
For fans of Daniel Kahneman, Adam Grant and the Heath's brothers, this book will help you better understand the nuances of your decisions and how they get derailed—so you have more control over keeping them on track.
— Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
You may not realize it but simple, irrelevant factors can have profound consequences on your decisions and behavior, often diverting you from your original plans and desires. Sidetracked will help you identify and avoid these influences so the decisions you make do stick—and you finally reach your intended goals.
Award-winning behavioral scientist and Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino has long studied the factors at play when judgment and decision making collide with the results of our choices in real life. In this book she explores inconsistent decisions played out in a wide range of circumstances—from our roles as consumers and employees (what we buy, how we manage others) to the choices that we make more broadly as human beings (who we date, how we deal with friendships).
What factors are likely to sway our decisions in directions we did not initially consider? And what can we do to correct for the subtle influences that derail our decisions? Gino will provide compelling answers to these and similar questions.
For fans of Daniel Kahneman, Adam Grant and the Heath's brothers, this book will help you better understand the nuances of your decisions and how they get derailed—so you have more control over keeping them on track.
260 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
About the author
Francesca Gino
11 books93 followersFrancesca Gino is an award-winning researcher and teacher, and a tenured professor at Harvard Business School.
Her consulting and speaking clients include Bacardi, Akamai, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, Novartis, P&G, and the U.S. Air Force, Army, and Navy.
She has been honored as one of the world’s Top 40 Business Professors under 40 and one of the world’s 50 most influential management thinkers. Her work has been featured on CNN and NPR, as well as in the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Scientific American, and Psychology Today.
Her consulting and speaking clients include Bacardi, Akamai, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, Novartis, P&G, and the U.S. Air Force, Army, and Navy.
She has been honored as one of the world’s Top 40 Business Professors under 40 and one of the world’s 50 most influential management thinkers. Her work has been featured on CNN and NPR, as well as in the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Scientific American, and Psychology Today.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
March 10, 2013
I have been on a kick reading all sorts of books about motivation, drive, introverts, life strategies, etc. This book was next on my list to read. The title captured me because I am on that is easily distracted. I can walk downstairs to do one thing and find myself 5 minutes later upstairs doing something else. I was interested in what the book would have to offer.
The book focuses on nine principles for which the reader is to work with when trying to improve their focus.
1. Raise your awareness
2. Take your emotional temperature
3. Zoom out
4. Take the other party's point of view
5. Question your bonds
6. Check your reference points
7. Consider the source
8. Investigate and question the frame
9 Make your standards shine
When reading this most of these items seemed like common sense. However, what is so powerful about this book is that through all the research how easily we are affected. Most people know to raise their awareness for example. I am trying to get back into shape as I right this review. I know I have to watch what I eat, how I exercise, how much sleep, etc. We know this. Reading all the research that is shared by the author I was not aware at how much we can be sidetracked. Letting our emotions get in the way, viewing ourselves as more of an expert than others to list a few. Once again we might think this is a no brainer. Read the book. Read the research. Be amazed by how much we can impacted by the small things. Things that I never realized. Things are a chain reaction. One little thing can really shift the path we take as our days, weeks, years progress.
I really connected with a Chinese parable that was shard about a cracked pot.
This was one of my favorite parts of the book and how our perceptions or outlook on life events can really impact us.We can be either too narrow or too broad. The book cites examples of businesses and also research to support the idea. This was one of my favorite chapters by far. It really applied to me personally.
Some of the ideas and research I found in Dan Pink's book so that was cool to compare the ideas and take away their views on things. I kept thinking about how I could apply the ideas to teaching as an educator. The items expressed are those soft skills that are not really curriculum, but essential pieces to helping our students become productive adults.
All in all I enjoyed the books. I liked how there was example after example of research to showcase the ideas expressed. I need to think on the book more to see how I can move it to the education world. Many examples were business related which makes sense because we are all aware of many of these companies. A great read. One to check out if looking for something to think, ponder, and apply to your life.
The book focuses on nine principles for which the reader is to work with when trying to improve their focus.
1. Raise your awareness
2. Take your emotional temperature
3. Zoom out
4. Take the other party's point of view
5. Question your bonds
6. Check your reference points
7. Consider the source
8. Investigate and question the frame
9 Make your standards shine
When reading this most of these items seemed like common sense. However, what is so powerful about this book is that through all the research how easily we are affected. Most people know to raise their awareness for example. I am trying to get back into shape as I right this review. I know I have to watch what I eat, how I exercise, how much sleep, etc. We know this. Reading all the research that is shared by the author I was not aware at how much we can be sidetracked. Letting our emotions get in the way, viewing ourselves as more of an expert than others to list a few. Once again we might think this is a no brainer. Read the book. Read the research. Be amazed by how much we can impacted by the small things. Things that I never realized. Things are a chain reaction. One little thing can really shift the path we take as our days, weeks, years progress.
I really connected with a Chinese parable that was shard about a cracked pot.
This was one of my favorite parts of the book and how our perceptions or outlook on life events can really impact us.We can be either too narrow or too broad. The book cites examples of businesses and also research to support the idea. This was one of my favorite chapters by far. It really applied to me personally.
Some of the ideas and research I found in Dan Pink's book so that was cool to compare the ideas and take away their views on things. I kept thinking about how I could apply the ideas to teaching as an educator. The items expressed are those soft skills that are not really curriculum, but essential pieces to helping our students become productive adults.
All in all I enjoyed the books. I liked how there was example after example of research to showcase the ideas expressed. I need to think on the book more to see how I can move it to the education world. Many examples were business related which makes sense because we are all aware of many of these companies. A great read. One to check out if looking for something to think, ponder, and apply to your life.
December 23, 2020
It's easy to get sidetracked. I have become quite a pro at it. My wife says I just have undiagnosed ADHD, and while she may be right, I can't imagine that it can solely explain why I have such a hard time staying focused and finishing things. Take this book, for example. Francesca Gino's thoughtful and entertaining book "Sidetracked" is a good read, and yet I stopped and started it numerous times to read other books. I just get so easily distracted sometimes, which honestly scares the crap out of me because my wife and I are going to have a kid in November, and as excited and joyous as I am, I don't feel in the least bit ready. Okay, I do, actually, but it worries me that I'm the type of guy who occasionally forgets to take the garbage out to the curb for weekly pick-up. Aaargh! It's the same day every frickin' week! WHY THE F*** CAN'T I REMEMBER! And why the hell can't I remember to put lids back on ketchup bottles or pickle jars, or put the lunch meat back in the fridge?
Sadly, Gino's book doesn't really help in answering those very specific questions. I would actually have been pretty amazed if she had included a chapter entitled "Why can't you put lids back on pickle jars?". In that case, this book would have been perfect for someone like me. In truth, the book is full of extremely useful information, much of it applicable to real-life scenarios, but much of it probably targeted more toward business people. Gino is an associate professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, specializing in the ethics and sociology of business practices. Basically, she knows how and why marketing works and how one can avoid the "tricks" that advertisers use.
While it may sound a bit dry for those of us who don't have MBAs, it's actually pretty fascinating. Incorporating detailed research studies, anecdotes from the business world, and examples from her own personal life, Gino's book explains why our decision-making skills and behavior are affected less by our personal values and ethics and more on seemingly innocuous external factors, such as wearing sunglasses and the type of car a person drives. Our mind plays so many little tricks on us, which often causes us to lose sight of our initial goal and get completely derailed. And make us unable to put lids back on jars.
Sadly, Gino's book doesn't really help in answering those very specific questions. I would actually have been pretty amazed if she had included a chapter entitled "Why can't you put lids back on pickle jars?". In that case, this book would have been perfect for someone like me. In truth, the book is full of extremely useful information, much of it applicable to real-life scenarios, but much of it probably targeted more toward business people. Gino is an associate professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, specializing in the ethics and sociology of business practices. Basically, she knows how and why marketing works and how one can avoid the "tricks" that advertisers use.
While it may sound a bit dry for those of us who don't have MBAs, it's actually pretty fascinating. Incorporating detailed research studies, anecdotes from the business world, and examples from her own personal life, Gino's book explains why our decision-making skills and behavior are affected less by our personal values and ethics and more on seemingly innocuous external factors, such as wearing sunglasses and the type of car a person drives. Our mind plays so many little tricks on us, which often causes us to lose sight of our initial goal and get completely derailed. And make us unable to put lids back on jars.
February 19, 2016
Poorly written, meandering supposed piece of non-fiction. Amazes me this author was hired as a professor at the Harvard Business School, an otherwise distinguished college that publishes great business work. Instead, this author writes an unfocused book on past experiments she has performed on students at her earlier work at Carnegie Mellon. She thinks guessing weight and marbles is akin to deciding whether major parts of a corporation should shut down. Instead, one should see her experiments for what they are - pseudo science that don't test or validate the underlying thesis she is attempting to prove.
November 13, 2015
Sidetracked. I was expecting the book to be more about sticking with a decision made. The book focuses more on how our decisions can be affected.
Francesca is an associated professor at Harvard and uses a lot of studies (using mainly student volunteers?) to test her hypotheses. She spends an exhaustive amount of the book describing the logistics of each of her experiments which proved to be exhaustive to this reader. I would have much preferred more real-life examples.
The gist of the book is that our decisions are subject to a lot more than we think.
Francesca is an associated professor at Harvard and uses a lot of studies (using mainly student volunteers?) to test her hypotheses. She spends an exhaustive amount of the book describing the logistics of each of her experiments which proved to be exhaustive to this reader. I would have much preferred more real-life examples.
The gist of the book is that our decisions are subject to a lot more than we think.
October 27, 2022
Two word book review: pop psychology.
It was one of those books I really wanted to like, but I just couldn't get past the fact she never actually said anything and seemed to keep losing the larger picture by using way too many fluff stories. My recommendation: read the first and last section of each chapter, and just assume the rest of the chapter is her recounting how she tricked a bunch of undergraduate students into being part of a "study" that was set up to prove her already formulated point.
It was one of those books I really wanted to like, but I just couldn't get past the fact she never actually said anything and seemed to keep losing the larger picture by using way too many fluff stories. My recommendation: read the first and last section of each chapter, and just assume the rest of the chapter is her recounting how she tricked a bunch of undergraduate students into being part of a "study" that was set up to prove her already formulated point.
February 6, 2021
Скучновато исполненные пересказы исследований. Для селф-менеджмента подходят лишь некоторые, больше для маркетинга и продаж
July 4, 2023
oh boy what a dangerous book to review now...
[I hate reviewing flaky pop-science books after the tinfoil falls off, but here we go]
in the past month there's been a big stink about her and data fabrication from a decade ago (and a paper was retracted), and her coauthor on some of her papers that there's 'additional fraudulent data' (with the latest on wiki)....
Stay tuned!
---
The Chronicle of Higher Education
3 days ago
3 of Francesca Gino's Allegedly Fraudulent Studies Will Be Retracted
---
The National Review [coughs]
1 day ago
Harvard's Dishonest Honesty Scientist
---
NPR
1 day ago
Harvard professor who studies dishonesty is accused of falsifying data
---
Vox
5 days ago
Can you trust a Harvard dishonesty researcher?
The hard problem of faked data in science
[well it's not science, it's the soft-sciences and I'm being generous]
[the soft sciences, and even most of medicine is just packed with cherry picking and opinions masquerading as fact]
[it's not a hard problem, because the solution is just noticing a lack of good judgement, and not being a fucking sheep, with zombie-like kneejerk appeals to authority]
[It's no lie that Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane said that her generation was the most highly educated generation in American history, and fuck have we fallen with our curriculum, some things getting easier and some things getting harder.... with an obsession for testing and grades and squeezing out creativity]
---
I'm actually a huge fan of Catherine's review which gets an Eleven out of Ten for me!
"Poorly written, meandering supposed piece of non-fiction. Amazes me this author was hired as a professor at the Harvard Business School, an otherwise distinguished college that publishes great business work.
Instead, this author writes an unfocused book on past experiments she has performed on students at her earlier work at Carnegie Mellon.
She thinks guessing weight and marbles is akin to deciding whether major parts of a corporation should shut down.
Instead, one should see her experiments for what they are - pseudoscience that doesn't test or validate the underlying thesis she is attempting to prove."
---
And you get these compact, overly peppy reviews that, at moments make me cringe by the Ivy Leagues
Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University
Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford Engineering School
"We are often unaware of the many forces that affect our decisions—sometimes with devastating consequences"
"one of the smartest and most insightful decision researchers in the field"
"Her clever research informs every page of this book"
"it shows how our imperfect brains can mess-up our decisions"
"Remarkably useful because it shows us how to thrive and triumph...."
[oh gag me with a fucking spoon, and stick a fork in my eye - Michael Richards, March 34th 2029]
---
Let's look at the brilliance of Amazon
This book is awful
2/10
This book is awful and very long winded for no reason. The premise of the book was supposed to be about being sidetracked from plans and that causes them.
But a majority of the examples of the book are about being sidetracked from planned decisions, not really overall long-term or short-term plans.
Not the book I expected it to be!
Anthony T Newsom
---
Forget the 'How To' in the title
4/10
This book is actually a series of discussions of research performed by the scientist-author and her team into decisionmaking influencers.
There are no real "how to avoid having your decisions derailed" tips at the ends of the chapters, or the end of the book.
Mostly because the derailing elements are hard to avoid, other than trying to remain aware of them at all times - and there are dozens of ways we drift.
This is an interesting case of a book whose title is perfect but the book doesn't really pay it off. Sorry.
Mac McCarthy
---
[a wonderful summary!]
Much Evidence - Few Conclusions
4/10
This book contains a TON of statistical evidence, along with many reports detailing research projects.
The content seems to be mostly filler.
We're forced to weed through pages of elaborate laboratory findings in order to validate simple, basic conclusions. For example: we get distracted by other people's opinions, or by our own self-talk.
I guess that information is worth the price - $00.99.
a customer
---
Let's summarize the book
It's about errors of judgement.
Poor Judgement, mom and Mad Magazine taught me this when I was five years old.
---
oh yeah
let's get really DEEP here
we fuck up because we're distracted by the opinions of others!
oh and maybe our neurotic self-doubts.....
like please don't let them catch my fabricated data because I'm a Harvard girl!
[allegedly, if we believe the Lugenpresse of NPR and and Vox!]
---
I'll likely end the review on a sour note though
she just namedrops every Ivy League Business School
or Masters of Business
ugh!
And well, a second book by her that really adds very little....
maybe these books are for zombies in business class needing reading material on a plane ride and 5 star hotel, and can use this for toilet paper afterwards... certainly there must be some 4/10 funnier and deeper quasi-junk pop-almost-science books out there...
Ariely [the book IRRATIONAL]
Pink [the book DRIVE] and
Cain [the book QUIET]
all were going to get the dirty dingy bronze star for shitty pop-sci, that's great for a buck at the junk store, but sadly they all wrote glowing praise for this book...
So, I guess, I'll wait for a poop-science writer with a good Victorian 14 word title, and none of these retard one-word titles to grab my attention.
[sighs, and smashes a Paris junk store with crappy pop-sci books with my IBM THINK, desk paperweight slogan that Thomas Watson personally gave me.... as I steal the books in a box that says 'FREE BOOKS', as Paris burns from another riot because Algeria didn't make enough grapes for the French Foreign Legion, I guess]
[aw man, this Tony Robbins book is in French, damn..]
[wipes off the broken glass shards]
[hopefully no one writes a pop-psychology book about how I just exaggerated the effects of a IBM paperweight saying THINK breaks glass, or Gino herself writes a research paper on my distrust of social science... I'll leave that to the Heritage Foundation nutballs at National Review]
mind you, I did read through the National Review article on Gino, and it's actually decent, if you can wade through the schadenfreude and WF Buckley's skeleton smirking....
---
- small sample sizes
- tiny effects
- invalid exploratory analyses
- flagrant conflicts of interest
- an obsession with pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance
- low standards
- trust the science sheeple
- step into the reality distortion field by the Hidden Persuaders, A Quinn Martin Production
---
P.S.
NOTE this review
[and my reaction below]
ADVANCE PRAISE for Sidetracked:
"We are often unaware of the many forces that affect our decisions—sometimes with devastating consequences. In Sidetracked, Francesca Gino identifies and illuminates many of these forces to help us all make decisions that we, our mothers, and our kids will be happier with."
Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University
[author of the New York Times bestsellers Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty]
---
I just noted that I've given Dan Ariely six book reviews, that slipped my mind, and well, no wonder I'm not impressed with his review after pondering long and hard about Miss Gino's craptastic book.
Well I shocked myself that every one of his six books were.......
1 star reviews!!!
Which was pretty much a record for NOT being impressed by his views, or well, much of anything!
[I hate reviewing flaky pop-science books after the tinfoil falls off, but here we go]
in the past month there's been a big stink about her and data fabrication from a decade ago (and a paper was retracted), and her coauthor on some of her papers that there's 'additional fraudulent data' (with the latest on wiki)....
Stay tuned!
---
The Chronicle of Higher Education
3 days ago
3 of Francesca Gino's Allegedly Fraudulent Studies Will Be Retracted
---
The National Review [coughs]
1 day ago
Harvard's Dishonest Honesty Scientist
---
NPR
1 day ago
Harvard professor who studies dishonesty is accused of falsifying data
---
Vox
5 days ago
Can you trust a Harvard dishonesty researcher?
The hard problem of faked data in science
[well it's not science, it's the soft-sciences and I'm being generous]
[the soft sciences, and even most of medicine is just packed with cherry picking and opinions masquerading as fact]
[it's not a hard problem, because the solution is just noticing a lack of good judgement, and not being a fucking sheep, with zombie-like kneejerk appeals to authority]
[It's no lie that Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane said that her generation was the most highly educated generation in American history, and fuck have we fallen with our curriculum, some things getting easier and some things getting harder.... with an obsession for testing and grades and squeezing out creativity]
---
I'm actually a huge fan of Catherine's review which gets an Eleven out of Ten for me!
"Poorly written, meandering supposed piece of non-fiction. Amazes me this author was hired as a professor at the Harvard Business School, an otherwise distinguished college that publishes great business work.
Instead, this author writes an unfocused book on past experiments she has performed on students at her earlier work at Carnegie Mellon.
She thinks guessing weight and marbles is akin to deciding whether major parts of a corporation should shut down.
Instead, one should see her experiments for what they are - pseudoscience that doesn't test or validate the underlying thesis she is attempting to prove."
---
And you get these compact, overly peppy reviews that, at moments make me cringe by the Ivy Leagues
Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University
Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford Engineering School
"We are often unaware of the many forces that affect our decisions—sometimes with devastating consequences"
"one of the smartest and most insightful decision researchers in the field"
"Her clever research informs every page of this book"
"it shows how our imperfect brains can mess-up our decisions"
"Remarkably useful because it shows us how to thrive and triumph...."
[oh gag me with a fucking spoon, and stick a fork in my eye - Michael Richards, March 34th 2029]
---
Let's look at the brilliance of Amazon
This book is awful
2/10
This book is awful and very long winded for no reason. The premise of the book was supposed to be about being sidetracked from plans and that causes them.
But a majority of the examples of the book are about being sidetracked from planned decisions, not really overall long-term or short-term plans.
Not the book I expected it to be!
Anthony T Newsom
---
Forget the 'How To' in the title
4/10
This book is actually a series of discussions of research performed by the scientist-author and her team into decisionmaking influencers.
There are no real "how to avoid having your decisions derailed" tips at the ends of the chapters, or the end of the book.
Mostly because the derailing elements are hard to avoid, other than trying to remain aware of them at all times - and there are dozens of ways we drift.
This is an interesting case of a book whose title is perfect but the book doesn't really pay it off. Sorry.
Mac McCarthy
---
[a wonderful summary!]
Much Evidence - Few Conclusions
4/10
This book contains a TON of statistical evidence, along with many reports detailing research projects.
The content seems to be mostly filler.
We're forced to weed through pages of elaborate laboratory findings in order to validate simple, basic conclusions. For example: we get distracted by other people's opinions, or by our own self-talk.
I guess that information is worth the price - $00.99.
a customer
---
Let's summarize the book
It's about errors of judgement.
Poor Judgement, mom and Mad Magazine taught me this when I was five years old.
---
oh yeah
let's get really DEEP here
we fuck up because we're distracted by the opinions of others!
oh and maybe our neurotic self-doubts.....
like please don't let them catch my fabricated data because I'm a Harvard girl!
[allegedly, if we believe the Lugenpresse of NPR and and Vox!]
---
I'll likely end the review on a sour note though
she just namedrops every Ivy League Business School
or Masters of Business
ugh!
And well, a second book by her that really adds very little....
maybe these books are for zombies in business class needing reading material on a plane ride and 5 star hotel, and can use this for toilet paper afterwards... certainly there must be some 4/10 funnier and deeper quasi-junk pop-almost-science books out there...
Ariely [the book IRRATIONAL]
Pink [the book DRIVE] and
Cain [the book QUIET]
all were going to get the dirty dingy bronze star for shitty pop-sci, that's great for a buck at the junk store, but sadly they all wrote glowing praise for this book...
So, I guess, I'll wait for a poop-science writer with a good Victorian 14 word title, and none of these retard one-word titles to grab my attention.
[sighs, and smashes a Paris junk store with crappy pop-sci books with my IBM THINK, desk paperweight slogan that Thomas Watson personally gave me.... as I steal the books in a box that says 'FREE BOOKS', as Paris burns from another riot because Algeria didn't make enough grapes for the French Foreign Legion, I guess]
[aw man, this Tony Robbins book is in French, damn..]
[wipes off the broken glass shards]
[hopefully no one writes a pop-psychology book about how I just exaggerated the effects of a IBM paperweight saying THINK breaks glass, or Gino herself writes a research paper on my distrust of social science... I'll leave that to the Heritage Foundation nutballs at National Review]
mind you, I did read through the National Review article on Gino, and it's actually decent, if you can wade through the schadenfreude and WF Buckley's skeleton smirking....
---
- small sample sizes
- tiny effects
- invalid exploratory analyses
- flagrant conflicts of interest
- an obsession with pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance
- low standards
- trust the science sheeple
- step into the reality distortion field by the Hidden Persuaders, A Quinn Martin Production
---
P.S.
NOTE this review
[and my reaction below]
ADVANCE PRAISE for Sidetracked:
"We are often unaware of the many forces that affect our decisions—sometimes with devastating consequences. In Sidetracked, Francesca Gino identifies and illuminates many of these forces to help us all make decisions that we, our mothers, and our kids will be happier with."
Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University
[author of the New York Times bestsellers Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty]
---
I just noted that I've given Dan Ariely six book reviews, that slipped my mind, and well, no wonder I'm not impressed with his review after pondering long and hard about Miss Gino's craptastic book.
Well I shocked myself that every one of his six books were.......
1 star reviews!!!
Which was pretty much a record for NOT being impressed by his views, or well, much of anything!
June 25, 2013
This book describes a number of common influences that can conspire to divert us from our original plans and desires. Its objective is to help identify and avoid these influences so that our decisions stick, and we achieve the intended outcome. One of the aims of the book is to ‘help you stay on course toward your personal and professional goals.’
Based on 10 years (mainly academic) research, nine key principles emerge from three categories of influence – i) forces from within ourselves, ii) forces from our relationships with others, and iii) forces from the outside world. The book is not specifically aimed at the IT professional, and perhaps belongs more in the ‘self-help’ category.
The book is absolutely packed with research case studies – how else can the nine key principles stretch to 230 pages? However, the style of the writing made it feel much less of a text book on experimental psychology than it might have been.
A few typical examples from the book -
• The ‘cracked pot’ – an ancient Chinese parable that demonstrates what can happen when focusing too much on detail and not enough on the bigger picture.
• The ‘endowed progress effect’ – where people who receive an artificial inducement upfront of reaching a goal pursue that goal with greater persistence then when no inducement is offered.
• ‘Counter factual thinking’ – which means imagining different choices that could be made or could have been made when faced with a decision. Doing so should lead to a better understanding of the factors that are at play.
Despite the wealth of case studies, there were only a couple of real-world examples and most of the experiments were about personal rather than professional choices, so this is not a huge database of solutions for our everyday business decisions.
However, for those whose job relies on key decision-making, it might be worth getting hold of a copy – even if only one or two ideas come out of it.
Further information http://hbr.org/product/sidetracked-wh...
Reviewed by Mike Rees IT Consultant MBCS CITP
Score: 7/10
Based on 10 years (mainly academic) research, nine key principles emerge from three categories of influence – i) forces from within ourselves, ii) forces from our relationships with others, and iii) forces from the outside world. The book is not specifically aimed at the IT professional, and perhaps belongs more in the ‘self-help’ category.
The book is absolutely packed with research case studies – how else can the nine key principles stretch to 230 pages? However, the style of the writing made it feel much less of a text book on experimental psychology than it might have been.
A few typical examples from the book -
• The ‘cracked pot’ – an ancient Chinese parable that demonstrates what can happen when focusing too much on detail and not enough on the bigger picture.
• The ‘endowed progress effect’ – where people who receive an artificial inducement upfront of reaching a goal pursue that goal with greater persistence then when no inducement is offered.
• ‘Counter factual thinking’ – which means imagining different choices that could be made or could have been made when faced with a decision. Doing so should lead to a better understanding of the factors that are at play.
Despite the wealth of case studies, there were only a couple of real-world examples and most of the experiments were about personal rather than professional choices, so this is not a huge database of solutions for our everyday business decisions.
However, for those whose job relies on key decision-making, it might be worth getting hold of a copy – even if only one or two ideas come out of it.
Further information http://hbr.org/product/sidetracked-wh...
Reviewed by Mike Rees IT Consultant MBCS CITP
Score: 7/10
June 3, 2013
This is indeed the book that's billed in the title, but don't expect the usual "10 ways to stay on task" or "8 ways to manage your time more efficiently" type of business book.
Francesca Gino is a Harvard Business School professor who is one of the leaders in the emerging field of behavioral economics, and her strength is coming up with clever experiments that test why people actually act and think as they do.
Using that approach, she comes up with lessons that illuminate nine principles, ranging from taking a broader view ("zoom out") to knowing how to frame your incentives or how situations can enhance or hurt your moral compass.
There are loads of fascinating experiments in the book, but here are just a couple I liked.
In one experiment, Francesca and colleagues found that if an actor posing as a student stood up and declared that he had solved all the problems a group was working on, they were tempted to cheat to get more cash rewards, because he clearly had done so and looked like one of them -- but if he wore a T shirt from a rival school, they tended to cheat less because he was categorized as an "out-group" member and they didn't want to behave like him -- even though neither of the biases were particularly conscious.
Another one. She found that if students wore dark glasses while playing a computer game in which they had to allot money between themselves and the other player, they were much more likely to give themselves extra money than if they wore glasses with clear lenses, implying that the "feeling" of being hidden away dimmed their moral standards. And you thought that only little children thought you couldn't see them if they put their hands over their own eyes.
These smart and sometimes funny experiments are the backbone of the book, and while some think these tests, done mostly with undergrads, are too removed from real life, I tend toward the social psychologists' view that these are actually more rigorous ways of showing what actually drives our behavior.
Highly recommended.
April 24, 2013
The title of this book asks two questions. The second question is answered by the author with a tip at the end of each chapter. The first question though, which is the body of the author's work, can be answered much easier; people make decisions based on emotion, not on logic. Instead, read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
December 11, 2015
This book was filled with research studies, probably too many. I found it very helpful, though, and have written the summary of the book on pg 227, along with an experiment to jog my memory on the point of each one. It's a bit confusing because the points from the chapters are not the titles or subtitles of the chapters. I think this made the book much more difficult to follow.
1. **Raise your awareness**- Because our views of how capable and competent we are as individuals are often overly positive, we rely too much on our own information and ignore the valuable opinions that others have to offer. By raising your awareness, you can keep your self-views in check and recognize when they may be taking you off track.
STUDY: Just as if you wanted to lose weight you would start tracking daily weigh-ins and calorie intake, you need to carefully analyze what's happening. In the same way we must carefully analyze our decisions--scientists at Lily were overestimating probability of success for new drugs because they were too personally invested, so outsiders were brought in and profitability increased.
2. **Take your emotional temperature**- Even when triggered by situations or events unrelated to the decision at hand, emotions can derail us. They can lead to inaccurate analyses of the information at hand, thus moving us away from our plan of producing correct analyses. By taking your emotional temperature, you can examine what your emotions are telling you and whether they are clouding your decisions.
STUDY: People who were shown images that made them angry were less likely to trust the wise advise of someone than people who were shown neutral or happy images.
3. **Zoom Out**- We often focus too narrowly on the decision at hand our own views about it. As a result, we fail to see the bigger picture, including other people's roles. By zooming out, you can include more relevant information in your decision-making process so that you can avoid derailment.
STUDY: A company was so focused on suing the government of Poland for the amount that they were rightly owed, that they lost sight of the fact that Poland didn't have the funds to pay it. They were better off accepting a lesser sum and saving money on lawyer fees, but they were too narrowly focused to see it.
4. **Take the other party's point of view**-- There is always another side to a story: the other person's viewpoint. Failing to recognize the potential for a different perspective can prevent us from sticking to the plan. By taking the other side's point of view, you can analyze the decision you face from another person's perspective.
STUDY: New hires don't want to ask questions because they don't want to be seen as stupid. Bosses generally want them to ask questions because it saves wasted time and also appeals to their ego/makes sure training is done correctly. New hires are bad at taking the opposing point of view.
5. **Question your bonds**--As social beings, we easily form connections with others based on subtle factors, such as sharing the same birthday. These connections may expand our networks, but they can also derail our decisions. By questioning your bonds, you can carefully reflect on your ties and similarities to those around you and consider whether these bonds are affecting your choices for the worse.
STUDY: People who were cheering for their own football team simply could not identify many fouls committed by their own team. They were blinded by their own team pride.
6. **Check your reference points**- The people around us provide natural reference points to help us understand where we stand across a variety of dimensions, from attractiveness to performance. How we measure up in these comparisons matters and can easily result in derailment. By checking your reference points, you can uncover the real motives behind your decisions and readjust accordingly.
STUDY: People will work hard for stickers or points when they are in competition with others. We need to keep this in mind--we may accept a $65,000 job when others are making the same amount then accept a $75,000 job if others were making $85,000.
7. **Consider the source**-- We look at the effort others put into their decisions to evaluate the quality of those decisions. When evaluating the quality of decisions, we examine their outcomes. Finally, we also discount how situational factors led to a given outcome. These biases lead us to judge others inaccurately. By questioning your sources, you can carefully examine the information surrounding your decisions.
STUDY: People randomly assigned to create difficult trivia quizzes are thought of by observers as being smarter than the quiz takers. This is an attribution error because the quiz masters weren't smarter, they just had the advantage of creating the test. We have a hard time seeing the difference.
8. **Investigate and question the frame**-- We can view the same glass as half empty or half full. Similarly, we can frame our offers and messages to others in different ways. Simple changes in framing can have significant effects on our motivation to act. By investigating the frame, you caa ask questions about the way tasks, rewards, and choices are structured and learn how to avoid decisions being derailed.
STUDY: Those surveyed about voting in an election were asked either, "How clear are your thoughts about being a voter in tomorrow's election?," or, "How clear are your thoughts about voting in tomorrow's election?" Those who heard themselves described as a "voter" were much more likely to vote.
9. **Make your standards shine**-- Our plans commonly reflect our desire to be moral individuals and to listen to our moral compass. Yet, from the amount of lighting in a room to the amount of resources at our disposal, subtle forces can send us off course. By making your standards shine, you can remind yourself of the importance of keeping your standards salient and become more likely to stick with them.
STUDY: Environment matters. People taking a test in a dim lit room or even wearing sunglasses are more likely to cheat.
1. **Raise your awareness**- Because our views of how capable and competent we are as individuals are often overly positive, we rely too much on our own information and ignore the valuable opinions that others have to offer. By raising your awareness, you can keep your self-views in check and recognize when they may be taking you off track.
STUDY: Just as if you wanted to lose weight you would start tracking daily weigh-ins and calorie intake, you need to carefully analyze what's happening. In the same way we must carefully analyze our decisions--scientists at Lily were overestimating probability of success for new drugs because they were too personally invested, so outsiders were brought in and profitability increased.
2. **Take your emotional temperature**- Even when triggered by situations or events unrelated to the decision at hand, emotions can derail us. They can lead to inaccurate analyses of the information at hand, thus moving us away from our plan of producing correct analyses. By taking your emotional temperature, you can examine what your emotions are telling you and whether they are clouding your decisions.
STUDY: People who were shown images that made them angry were less likely to trust the wise advise of someone than people who were shown neutral or happy images.
3. **Zoom Out**- We often focus too narrowly on the decision at hand our own views about it. As a result, we fail to see the bigger picture, including other people's roles. By zooming out, you can include more relevant information in your decision-making process so that you can avoid derailment.
STUDY: A company was so focused on suing the government of Poland for the amount that they were rightly owed, that they lost sight of the fact that Poland didn't have the funds to pay it. They were better off accepting a lesser sum and saving money on lawyer fees, but they were too narrowly focused to see it.
4. **Take the other party's point of view**-- There is always another side to a story: the other person's viewpoint. Failing to recognize the potential for a different perspective can prevent us from sticking to the plan. By taking the other side's point of view, you can analyze the decision you face from another person's perspective.
STUDY: New hires don't want to ask questions because they don't want to be seen as stupid. Bosses generally want them to ask questions because it saves wasted time and also appeals to their ego/makes sure training is done correctly. New hires are bad at taking the opposing point of view.
5. **Question your bonds**--As social beings, we easily form connections with others based on subtle factors, such as sharing the same birthday. These connections may expand our networks, but they can also derail our decisions. By questioning your bonds, you can carefully reflect on your ties and similarities to those around you and consider whether these bonds are affecting your choices for the worse.
STUDY: People who were cheering for their own football team simply could not identify many fouls committed by their own team. They were blinded by their own team pride.
6. **Check your reference points**- The people around us provide natural reference points to help us understand where we stand across a variety of dimensions, from attractiveness to performance. How we measure up in these comparisons matters and can easily result in derailment. By checking your reference points, you can uncover the real motives behind your decisions and readjust accordingly.
STUDY: People will work hard for stickers or points when they are in competition with others. We need to keep this in mind--we may accept a $65,000 job when others are making the same amount then accept a $75,000 job if others were making $85,000.
7. **Consider the source**-- We look at the effort others put into their decisions to evaluate the quality of those decisions. When evaluating the quality of decisions, we examine their outcomes. Finally, we also discount how situational factors led to a given outcome. These biases lead us to judge others inaccurately. By questioning your sources, you can carefully examine the information surrounding your decisions.
STUDY: People randomly assigned to create difficult trivia quizzes are thought of by observers as being smarter than the quiz takers. This is an attribution error because the quiz masters weren't smarter, they just had the advantage of creating the test. We have a hard time seeing the difference.
8. **Investigate and question the frame**-- We can view the same glass as half empty or half full. Similarly, we can frame our offers and messages to others in different ways. Simple changes in framing can have significant effects on our motivation to act. By investigating the frame, you caa ask questions about the way tasks, rewards, and choices are structured and learn how to avoid decisions being derailed.
STUDY: Those surveyed about voting in an election were asked either, "How clear are your thoughts about being a voter in tomorrow's election?," or, "How clear are your thoughts about voting in tomorrow's election?" Those who heard themselves described as a "voter" were much more likely to vote.
9. **Make your standards shine**-- Our plans commonly reflect our desire to be moral individuals and to listen to our moral compass. Yet, from the amount of lighting in a room to the amount of resources at our disposal, subtle forces can send us off course. By making your standards shine, you can remind yourself of the importance of keeping your standards salient and become more likely to stick with them.
STUDY: Environment matters. People taking a test in a dim lit room or even wearing sunglasses are more likely to cheat.
April 21, 2018
Books like these should top the Bestsellers charts, not degrading musings of overly privileged, morally incompetent cases of Tucker Max’s adventures.
As it turns out reading about some guy womanizing, behaving as ratchet as it gets, drinking himself into the oblivion (yes it is a different genre, but a book nonetheless) gets people more engaged than scientifically based, reasonably constructed and soundly presented essentials of progressive human psychology. (Prestigious Harvard research after all) Understandable, but truly sad.
This book is brilliant. Actual relatable challenges of human behavior in adverse situations, supported by numerous studies and some helpful tips to get you started with bettering yourself.
I didn’t feel better about myself after reading “I hope they serve beer in Hell”, because for a second there I lost faith in humanity, however after reading this, the faith has been solidified, because this was a great reminder that everything is within our reach.
Very helpful to have references for extensive personal research post-reading.
As it turns out reading about some guy womanizing, behaving as ratchet as it gets, drinking himself into the oblivion (yes it is a different genre, but a book nonetheless) gets people more engaged than scientifically based, reasonably constructed and soundly presented essentials of progressive human psychology. (Prestigious Harvard research after all) Understandable, but truly sad.
This book is brilliant. Actual relatable challenges of human behavior in adverse situations, supported by numerous studies and some helpful tips to get you started with bettering yourself.
I didn’t feel better about myself after reading “I hope they serve beer in Hell”, because for a second there I lost faith in humanity, however after reading this, the faith has been solidified, because this was a great reminder that everything is within our reach.
Very helpful to have references for extensive personal research post-reading.
April 16, 2013
The bugs in the mind that sidetrack us
Did you buy the souvenir you meant to get on your holiday shopping trip? Did you achieve the business decision you set out to negotiate? Was your present to your loved one an over whelming success? Was your business launch profitable? Are your employees happy and productive? What we want and what actually happens can end up being very different. There is a mismatch when our actual choices collide with our goals. Why? The human mind has bugs that make it difficult to stick to our plans. We see this in the news of the day; the failure of prominent banks, the political scandals, our man made ecological disasters. It seems that these occur because we get sidetracked by forces from within us, from outside us and from our relationships. The problem is that these forces can seriously influence our decisions in negative ways and we often fail to anticipate them.
In this excellent and well structured book, the author shares the findings of 10 years extensive research, to help us understand why our decisions get derailed in the first place, and how we can stick to our original plan.
The book is in three parts, corresponding to the three different kinds of force at work in our lives, and at the end of each chapter, three within each part, there is a concluding principle for us to take away with us into our lives.
There are some surprising and not so surprising results.
Why do we ignore the business advice of others with more experience? This may be because we have an inflated perception of our self, we are over confident and have our own sense of power, which itself can be manipulated. So the first principle is to raise our self awareness: to be more aware of subtle influences on our decisions, and how biased perceptions of our own confidence can sidetrack our decisions.
Emotions can also have profound consequences in our personal and business lives. Emotional attachment or anger for example, even the weather, can distort our decisions if we don’t recognise the effect they can have. We would be wise to consider our emotional state before making important decisions. That is principle 2.
We do not see as much of the world around us as we think we do, especially if distracted – and we can be easily distracted. (This has obvious implications when using our cell phone whilst driving!) By having an overly narrow focus on the job in hand, by losing sight of the bigger picture, we can miss important facts and this can affect the quality of our decisions. Emails are a danger here, in that they lack the non verbal cues that are available in face to face conversation. We believe we can communicate better by email than we actually can!
There are some worrying aspects of our human nature. Gradual changes in the ethical behaviour of others over a period of time, say 6 years, can go largely unnoticed, and become acceptable to us, whereas one transgression up front, with the same long term effect, will be noticed and challenged. This of course can have serious implications in a company environment, from an audit perspective, for example. So principle 3 is to zoom out, to step back and look at our position from a distance.
Then there is the “curse of knowledge.” We often find it difficult to accept that others may not share our knowledge of something (public speakers please note!). After reading Chapter 4 you may think twice about giving your partner a socially responsible gift, such as an Oxfam goat!
And beware the insidious social bonds. Mixing business with pleasure can influence our decisions in unexpected and sometimes harmful ways. We can be influenced by the dishonest behaviour of others, and more so if that bond is strong, tempting us to cross our own ethical boundaries. This has significance in understanding gang culture, for example, but can be used in a good way as well. We are more likely to use our towels again in our hotel if we are told that the majority of fellow guests do so!
So pay attention to the influence others have on us and make sure our networks include people who bring out the best in us.
And so on…
The final principle, really bringing together all that has gone before, is to make our own standards shine. Don’t, the author urges, let circumstances send us off track.
Within each chapter the author carefully takes us through each principle step by step, explaining in some detail the real life experiments she has conducted on a seemingly inexhaustible supply of college students willing to take part, and that illustrate each specific point. And each chapter, each principle, is richly illustrated with stories, gained in large measure from her involvement in a wide range of businesses in the course of her work, but including other well known political, sporting and business tales.
This book has huge significance for us all, whether we are looking at our professional or personal goals. Some things I have learnt about myself are illuminating. It has certainly made me reflect on why some of my plans don’t come to fruition in the way I hoped, and has given me some useful tips to get me back on track in some of my current projects!
The book concludes with a useful summary of the nine principles we would do well to heed, whatever our lifestyle. The author finishes by urging us all to revisit our own plans and goals and think about developing new ones. She stresses the importance of developing clear plans, for all our negotiation and decision making, against which we can continually check our progress and keep our goals in sight. Learn to stick to that plan or change it for the better.
An excellent book, strongly recommended if you care at all about the path you want to take through life.
Did you buy the souvenir you meant to get on your holiday shopping trip? Did you achieve the business decision you set out to negotiate? Was your present to your loved one an over whelming success? Was your business launch profitable? Are your employees happy and productive? What we want and what actually happens can end up being very different. There is a mismatch when our actual choices collide with our goals. Why? The human mind has bugs that make it difficult to stick to our plans. We see this in the news of the day; the failure of prominent banks, the political scandals, our man made ecological disasters. It seems that these occur because we get sidetracked by forces from within us, from outside us and from our relationships. The problem is that these forces can seriously influence our decisions in negative ways and we often fail to anticipate them.
In this excellent and well structured book, the author shares the findings of 10 years extensive research, to help us understand why our decisions get derailed in the first place, and how we can stick to our original plan.
The book is in three parts, corresponding to the three different kinds of force at work in our lives, and at the end of each chapter, three within each part, there is a concluding principle for us to take away with us into our lives.
There are some surprising and not so surprising results.
Why do we ignore the business advice of others with more experience? This may be because we have an inflated perception of our self, we are over confident and have our own sense of power, which itself can be manipulated. So the first principle is to raise our self awareness: to be more aware of subtle influences on our decisions, and how biased perceptions of our own confidence can sidetrack our decisions.
Emotions can also have profound consequences in our personal and business lives. Emotional attachment or anger for example, even the weather, can distort our decisions if we don’t recognise the effect they can have. We would be wise to consider our emotional state before making important decisions. That is principle 2.
We do not see as much of the world around us as we think we do, especially if distracted – and we can be easily distracted. (This has obvious implications when using our cell phone whilst driving!) By having an overly narrow focus on the job in hand, by losing sight of the bigger picture, we can miss important facts and this can affect the quality of our decisions. Emails are a danger here, in that they lack the non verbal cues that are available in face to face conversation. We believe we can communicate better by email than we actually can!
There are some worrying aspects of our human nature. Gradual changes in the ethical behaviour of others over a period of time, say 6 years, can go largely unnoticed, and become acceptable to us, whereas one transgression up front, with the same long term effect, will be noticed and challenged. This of course can have serious implications in a company environment, from an audit perspective, for example. So principle 3 is to zoom out, to step back and look at our position from a distance.
Then there is the “curse of knowledge.” We often find it difficult to accept that others may not share our knowledge of something (public speakers please note!). After reading Chapter 4 you may think twice about giving your partner a socially responsible gift, such as an Oxfam goat!
And beware the insidious social bonds. Mixing business with pleasure can influence our decisions in unexpected and sometimes harmful ways. We can be influenced by the dishonest behaviour of others, and more so if that bond is strong, tempting us to cross our own ethical boundaries. This has significance in understanding gang culture, for example, but can be used in a good way as well. We are more likely to use our towels again in our hotel if we are told that the majority of fellow guests do so!
So pay attention to the influence others have on us and make sure our networks include people who bring out the best in us.
And so on…
The final principle, really bringing together all that has gone before, is to make our own standards shine. Don’t, the author urges, let circumstances send us off track.
Within each chapter the author carefully takes us through each principle step by step, explaining in some detail the real life experiments she has conducted on a seemingly inexhaustible supply of college students willing to take part, and that illustrate each specific point. And each chapter, each principle, is richly illustrated with stories, gained in large measure from her involvement in a wide range of businesses in the course of her work, but including other well known political, sporting and business tales.
This book has huge significance for us all, whether we are looking at our professional or personal goals. Some things I have learnt about myself are illuminating. It has certainly made me reflect on why some of my plans don’t come to fruition in the way I hoped, and has given me some useful tips to get me back on track in some of my current projects!
The book concludes with a useful summary of the nine principles we would do well to heed, whatever our lifestyle. The author finishes by urging us all to revisit our own plans and goals and think about developing new ones. She stresses the importance of developing clear plans, for all our negotiation and decision making, against which we can continually check our progress and keep our goals in sight. Learn to stick to that plan or change it for the better.
An excellent book, strongly recommended if you care at all about the path you want to take through life.
July 17, 2019
I really enjoyed this book, and it is one that I will reread. It was thought provoking and piqued my interest, and I am plan to read some of the works cited (if I am not sidetracked by a stack of other books already on my reading list).The book was not what I expected, based on the title. I found the book to be less about being sidetracked, and more about the factors that influence our decisions.
February 7, 2023
Creative social experiments that are interesting but limited practical application and a few too many jumps in assumption.
October 8, 2022
Highly recommend to anyone who is interested in learning about the psychology of decision making. This is not a self-help book, but a summary of research studies on the topic of decision making and what we can learn from it.
March 8, 2022
2/5 this is a collection of economic and psychological studies about decision making. While the proposed concepts and solutions are sound (take your emotional temperature, set up your standards, eveluate the influence others have on you), the delivery is lacking in engagement and somehow feels dragged out.
If you find a good summary or Blinkist, go for it, the whole book is not worth it in my opinion.
If you find a good summary or Blinkist, go for it, the whole book is not worth it in my opinion.
June 12, 2013
I found “Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan” by Francesca Gino to be an interesting, engaging, fascinating at times, and educational read. I also found it similar to the works of Dan Ariely that I've read and enjoyed, and it's not surprising that the two are colleagues and work together on some experiments. While Ariely had a different focus with his books, they both back up their conclusions and thoughts with very interesting experiments. I found these thoroughly enjoyable to read, and liked the points Gino made based upon them.
If you stop to think about why we do some of the things we do, you are probably like me and most others, and you just don't know. The results of the experiments and studies conducted for this book reveal how different factors, that we may be completely unaware of, influence the choices and decisions we make. It was fascinating to me to read about the studies and then the results and acknowledge that I'd done the same things in my life at times. It is sort of nice knowing that I'm not the only one, and that there were factors I didn't consider that were greater influences than I'd ever realized.
The book is divided into three main parts: Forces From Within, Forces From Our Relationships, and Forces From The Outside. Each of these sections contains chapters that focus on one aspect of being sidetracked. Those in the first part include inaccurate views of ourselves, infectious emotions, and an overly narrow focus. Those in the second part are lack of perspective taking, insidious bonds, and salient social comparisons. And finally, the chapters in the third section include irrelevant information, subtle changes in framing, and ambience and opportunity.
Those concepts may sound dry and boring, but the book is anything but. It is written in an easy to understand manner with lively descriptions of the experiments and results. As I said above, I found it most engaging and enjoyable to read, not dry or boring at all.
The conclusion, Sticking to the Plan, provides some guidance on how the reader can avoid getting sidetracked as described throughout the book. I thought this was an excellent way to bring everything home and make this book not just a fascinating read, but a practical one as well. I really do believe that a person armed with the knowledge presented in this book will be able to make better choices and decisions, and not let the many forces that get us sidetracked have as much effect on us as they did before learning about them. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to better understand why we do what we do.
If you stop to think about why we do some of the things we do, you are probably like me and most others, and you just don't know. The results of the experiments and studies conducted for this book reveal how different factors, that we may be completely unaware of, influence the choices and decisions we make. It was fascinating to me to read about the studies and then the results and acknowledge that I'd done the same things in my life at times. It is sort of nice knowing that I'm not the only one, and that there were factors I didn't consider that were greater influences than I'd ever realized.
The book is divided into three main parts: Forces From Within, Forces From Our Relationships, and Forces From The Outside. Each of these sections contains chapters that focus on one aspect of being sidetracked. Those in the first part include inaccurate views of ourselves, infectious emotions, and an overly narrow focus. Those in the second part are lack of perspective taking, insidious bonds, and salient social comparisons. And finally, the chapters in the third section include irrelevant information, subtle changes in framing, and ambience and opportunity.
Those concepts may sound dry and boring, but the book is anything but. It is written in an easy to understand manner with lively descriptions of the experiments and results. As I said above, I found it most engaging and enjoyable to read, not dry or boring at all.
The conclusion, Sticking to the Plan, provides some guidance on how the reader can avoid getting sidetracked as described throughout the book. I thought this was an excellent way to bring everything home and make this book not just a fascinating read, but a practical one as well. I really do believe that a person armed with the knowledge presented in this book will be able to make better choices and decisions, and not let the many forces that get us sidetracked have as much effect on us as they did before learning about them. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to better understand why we do what we do.
April 3, 2013
Getting sidetracked form our plans and initiatives is all too common of occurrences. Weather it’s not sticking to our New Year’s resolutions, or not following up with contacting an important business contact despite our best intentions to the contrary, we’ve all had to deal with not sticking up with our plans. Francesca Gino’s “Sidetracked” is a book that aims to help us stick to the plan by mining many deep and valuable psychological insights.
This is a thoroughly well researched and informative book. Gino possesses a wealth of well-constructed research and experience – both inside the university labs and in the business world. This book is filled with carefully explained studies that have taken many years to collect and establish, as well as many insights from the business consulting. The book is well written and engaging, and Gino takes great care to explain the mechanisms of her and her colleagues’ research in great detail. These are some of the best explained social science findings that I’ve come across in popular accounts, and anyone who has even the passing interest in psychology and social sciences in general would greatly benefit from reading this book. After reading it I have a much better appreciation for my own motivations, drives and blind spots, as well as those of others around me.
For all its great qualities, this book is not without some shortcomings. Most of the “real world” examples come from the business world (I guess this is not surprising for a book published by the Harvard Business Review Press) and oftentimes have more to do with big-scale corporate decision-making than with individual and personal decisions. Furthermore, I found it hard to see how some of the psychological insights and principles that were investigated throughout the book have direct bearing on getting sidetracked. Finally, this is really not a “self-help” book despite what its subtitle may suggest. The actual advice that it gives, or the concrete steps that it espouses, are minimal and usually relegated to just a couple of pages at the end of each chapter. Turning deep insights into concrete actionable advice has always been one of the most difficult tasks in any field, and I was hoping that this book would have done a better job of it.
This a smart, insightful, and very well written book that has a lot to offer to everyone who is interested in psychological underpinnings of our decision making. However, it has a somewhat limited value as a practical guide that can be immediately applied in our daily lives.
This is a thoroughly well researched and informative book. Gino possesses a wealth of well-constructed research and experience – both inside the university labs and in the business world. This book is filled with carefully explained studies that have taken many years to collect and establish, as well as many insights from the business consulting. The book is well written and engaging, and Gino takes great care to explain the mechanisms of her and her colleagues’ research in great detail. These are some of the best explained social science findings that I’ve come across in popular accounts, and anyone who has even the passing interest in psychology and social sciences in general would greatly benefit from reading this book. After reading it I have a much better appreciation for my own motivations, drives and blind spots, as well as those of others around me.
For all its great qualities, this book is not without some shortcomings. Most of the “real world” examples come from the business world (I guess this is not surprising for a book published by the Harvard Business Review Press) and oftentimes have more to do with big-scale corporate decision-making than with individual and personal decisions. Furthermore, I found it hard to see how some of the psychological insights and principles that were investigated throughout the book have direct bearing on getting sidetracked. Finally, this is really not a “self-help” book despite what its subtitle may suggest. The actual advice that it gives, or the concrete steps that it espouses, are minimal and usually relegated to just a couple of pages at the end of each chapter. Turning deep insights into concrete actionable advice has always been one of the most difficult tasks in any field, and I was hoping that this book would have done a better job of it.
This a smart, insightful, and very well written book that has a lot to offer to everyone who is interested in psychological underpinnings of our decision making. However, it has a somewhat limited value as a practical guide that can be immediately applied in our daily lives.
August 7, 2024
Francesca Gino is a smarty pants–she’s an associate professor of business administration in the Negotiation, Organizations, & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. In Sidetracked she explores and expounds upon the fact that simple, irrelevant factors can have profound consequences on your decisions and behavior, often diverting you from your original plans and desires. She backs up her book with research she and others have conducted and often shares the tests preformed, the results gathered, and what it all means to us and what it shows us about our behaviors and our decisions.
This is a very intellectual book and best digested in small pieces. I found it extremely intriguing, however, and she does a good job of taking the technical studies and experiments and breaking them into useful information. She also includes many real-life examples and amusing anecdotes to help drive the points of each chapter home.
I loved how preposterous some of the experiments conducted seem–in the chapter What The Cracked Pot Couldn’t See she shares about a crazy phenomenon called change blindness and how in the late 1990s an experiment was conducted where a person stopped people on a college campus to ask for directions. During each conversation two men carrying a large board passed between the two people speaking and the original questioning person was replaced with another person of the same gender. They were clearly different people but most of the time the person answer the questions didn’t realize that the change had taken place. How crazy is that? The entire book is filled with similar fascinating experiments–which she then goes to break down and then apply to “real life” situations and show us how these effect the decisions we make in life each day.
I ear marked several of the pages and found myself asking Bob to do things like draw an E on his forehead with his finger (see chapter 4 for why I’d do this!) so that I could check out things from the book, which then caused us to have many interesting discussions. Often while I was reading this I’d go “Oh!” and stop and read him something out loud.
This is a great book for anyone who is at all interested in human thought process, behavior, or just looking to get a little insight into how they can better recognize the biases that are effecting their decisions each day so they can make better ones, or anyone who would just like to challenge their brain a little and learn something new. I’d highly recommend it!
This is a very intellectual book and best digested in small pieces. I found it extremely intriguing, however, and she does a good job of taking the technical studies and experiments and breaking them into useful information. She also includes many real-life examples and amusing anecdotes to help drive the points of each chapter home.
I loved how preposterous some of the experiments conducted seem–in the chapter What The Cracked Pot Couldn’t See she shares about a crazy phenomenon called change blindness and how in the late 1990s an experiment was conducted where a person stopped people on a college campus to ask for directions. During each conversation two men carrying a large board passed between the two people speaking and the original questioning person was replaced with another person of the same gender. They were clearly different people but most of the time the person answer the questions didn’t realize that the change had taken place. How crazy is that? The entire book is filled with similar fascinating experiments–which she then goes to break down and then apply to “real life” situations and show us how these effect the decisions we make in life each day.
I ear marked several of the pages and found myself asking Bob to do things like draw an E on his forehead with his finger (see chapter 4 for why I’d do this!) so that I could check out things from the book, which then caused us to have many interesting discussions. Often while I was reading this I’d go “Oh!” and stop and read him something out loud.
This is a great book for anyone who is at all interested in human thought process, behavior, or just looking to get a little insight into how they can better recognize the biases that are effecting their decisions each day so they can make better ones, or anyone who would just like to challenge their brain a little and learn something new. I’d highly recommend it!
March 13, 2013
**Un-derailing the decision-making drive**
Say you’re in the market for buying a new car. What is your decision-making process? You probably do some research, test drive some cars, deliberate, and then decide. Chances are you think your decision-making process is a rational one that carefully considers all the relevant factors. It sure seems like you’re in the driver’s seat. But, the reality is that there are a slew of hidden forces influencing your choice and likely derailing you from the road of optimal decision-making.
Francesca Gino’s _Sidetracked_ pulls the curtain on these hidden forces that can get us sidetracked. She divides these derailers into three categories:
1. Forces from within: biased self-view, incidental emotions, and narrow self-focus
2. Forces from our relationships: lack of perspective taking, insidious social bonds, and salient social comparisons
3. Forces from the outside: irrelevant information, effects of framing, and ambiance and opportunity
The book is primarily a synopsis of the current research and experimental studies showing how these forces distort, distract, and determine our decisions. (Reading the book feels like sitting in the audience as the author passionately presents her and her colleagues’ research!) After exposing each of the nine potentially derailing forces, Francesca offers an Rx for staying on track. Although you may still convince yourself that you’re immune to these forces (hello biased self-view force), you might just be able to benefit from the increased self/other/environment awareness this book inspires. It’s much easier to stay on that road when you’re not driving with the blinders on! Welcome to the fully informed driver’s seat.
Just be sure to keep your eyes on the road for those hidden forces.
Say you’re in the market for buying a new car. What is your decision-making process? You probably do some research, test drive some cars, deliberate, and then decide. Chances are you think your decision-making process is a rational one that carefully considers all the relevant factors. It sure seems like you’re in the driver’s seat. But, the reality is that there are a slew of hidden forces influencing your choice and likely derailing you from the road of optimal decision-making.
Francesca Gino’s _Sidetracked_ pulls the curtain on these hidden forces that can get us sidetracked. She divides these derailers into three categories:
1. Forces from within: biased self-view, incidental emotions, and narrow self-focus
2. Forces from our relationships: lack of perspective taking, insidious social bonds, and salient social comparisons
3. Forces from the outside: irrelevant information, effects of framing, and ambiance and opportunity
The book is primarily a synopsis of the current research and experimental studies showing how these forces distort, distract, and determine our decisions. (Reading the book feels like sitting in the audience as the author passionately presents her and her colleagues’ research!) After exposing each of the nine potentially derailing forces, Francesca offers an Rx for staying on track. Although you may still convince yourself that you’re immune to these forces (hello biased self-view force), you might just be able to benefit from the increased self/other/environment awareness this book inspires. It’s much easier to stay on that road when you’re not driving with the blinders on! Welcome to the fully informed driver’s seat.
Just be sure to keep your eyes on the road for those hidden forces.
July 6, 2013
This is one of a series of books that explore the peculiarities of human decision making. It is well written and introduces readers to a fascinating literature--including research carried out by the author of this book. At this level, a successful volume.
But there are many other works covering the same territory, and this has a somewhat "deja vu" quality to it. Authors such as Ariely and Klein have written works in this same territory. Daniel Kahneman has authored a recent work, based on a vast literature that he and colleague Amos Tversky sparked.
The focus of this work?Gino begins by noting that (Page 2) "We have a rose-colored view of who we are and what we do, and we aim to behave in ways that are consistent with out self-image as capable, competent, helpful, and honest individuals." However, as she notes (Page 2), ". . .our decisions often veer off course in unexpected ways."
Among reasons for these forces affecting our decision making in unexpected ways are three factors: (1) factors within ourselves, (2) issues related to our interactions with others, and (3) elements from the outside world. On the first, for example, we tend to be much more confident in our understanding of issues and explanations than we should be.
Overall, a nicely written book, using research results nicely. But there is a bit of been there done that when compared with a variety of other works on the subject.
But there are many other works covering the same territory, and this has a somewhat "deja vu" quality to it. Authors such as Ariely and Klein have written works in this same territory. Daniel Kahneman has authored a recent work, based on a vast literature that he and colleague Amos Tversky sparked.
The focus of this work?Gino begins by noting that (Page 2) "We have a rose-colored view of who we are and what we do, and we aim to behave in ways that are consistent with out self-image as capable, competent, helpful, and honest individuals." However, as she notes (Page 2), ". . .our decisions often veer off course in unexpected ways."
Among reasons for these forces affecting our decision making in unexpected ways are three factors: (1) factors within ourselves, (2) issues related to our interactions with others, and (3) elements from the outside world. On the first, for example, we tend to be much more confident in our understanding of issues and explanations than we should be.
Overall, a nicely written book, using research results nicely. But there is a bit of been there done that when compared with a variety of other works on the subject.
May 15, 2013
sin estar familiarizada con literatura similar a 'sidetracked' me ha parecido un libro compacto y agraciado en contenido. sospecho — para alguien que lleve tiempo invertido en el tema del ser humano y su conducta, motivaciones, ética, productividad y demás— que podría ser una lectura incompleta como si levantara el telón de forma muy repentina. me pareció que pudo haber habido mayor desarrollo desde una perspectiva todavía más curiosa que plantee ideas y no se sienta como un abstracto de investigaciones... prefiero los ensayos que ofrecen más que presentación de información. recomendaría leer primero 'nudge' que ofrece cómo influir en las decisiones de las personas con su 'paternalismo liberal' y entonces acompañar la lectura con esta serie de investigaciones que ofrece 'sidetracked'. estas dos lecturas en combo están en son en cuanto a materia y son lecturas profundas sin la solemnidad de ser elitistas en su estilo (convirtiéndolos en lecturas que fluyen).
en general me parece un buen libro introductorio. sobre todo para quienes tienen curiosidad por conocer y comenzar a entretejer conocimiento acerca de las motivaciones y factores que afectan nuestras acciones.
en general me parece un buen libro introductorio. sobre todo para quienes tienen curiosidad por conocer y comenzar a entretejer conocimiento acerca de las motivaciones y factores que afectan nuestras acciones.
August 14, 2014
Recognizing The Limitations Of The Human Mind Is The Best Way To Overcome Them
Rather adorably, we humans see ourselves as rational animals. Sure, we do more reasoning than a plant or a card table, but in general, research shows us to be frequently irrational -- often to our detriment. One of the best ways to act more in our rational best interest is to recognize all the ways we’re irrational. Harvard Business School’s Dr. Francesca Gino helps us do that by explaining how we actually get derailed in predictable ways, what those ways are, and best of all -- what steps we can take to help ourselves stick to our plans.
Rather adorably, we humans see ourselves as rational animals. Sure, we do more reasoning than a plant or a card table, but in general, research shows us to be frequently irrational -- often to our detriment. One of the best ways to act more in our rational best interest is to recognize all the ways we’re irrational. Harvard Business School’s Dr. Francesca Gino helps us do that by explaining how we actually get derailed in predictable ways, what those ways are, and best of all -- what steps we can take to help ourselves stick to our plans.
December 24, 2015
A collection of interesting studies that display how irrational things are likely to influence decision making, but I didn't feel like the title/drive of the book really fit. It should have been called something like 'How to Make Better Decisions in the First Place'--the studies apply more to why people do things that aren't in line with their intentions, not preexisting plans or decisions. Because of this, it usually seemed kind of awkward when the author would try to tie her conclusions back in with the theme of 'not getting derailed and sticking to the plan.' I guess from the title I was expecting something more about discipline, procrastination, and the like.
August 28, 2024
It may be that the authors style simply did not suit me. I found that this book was more of a compilation of sometimes, somewhat related research, tenuously tied to a central theme. At times I found myself looking back to the title, to see how the various studies applied, or where they would lead me to insights that would help me, or direct actions I could take. Though again, this may have been my own shortcoming rather than the authors, I had a very hard time connecting or applying the research to my own circumstance.
August 14, 2016
Most of the book is an exhaustive detail of the author's social experiments on students/colleagues. The author goes on and on, page after page describing every angle of the "clever" experiment, mentioning almost every minuscule detail except the sizes of the participants underwear. the Author wastes pages on describing the experiment and very few lines on the "lessons learned". Do not waste your time with this book.
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June 24, 2013I love Francesca (as a co-worker and as a person), but I don't think she's fully made the transition from academic audience to lay audience in this book.
I understand her desire to explain the set up of the experiments she talks about, and in fact I sometimes wanted more details, but I also often skimmed over that information, wanting the results.
I understand her desire to explain the set up of the experiments she talks about, and in fact I sometimes wanted more details, but I also often skimmed over that information, wanting the results.
August 11, 2016
I really enjoyed this book, and it is one that I will reread. It was thought provoking and piqued my interest, and I am plan to read some of the works cited (if I am not sidetracked by a stack of other books already on my reading list).The book was not what I expected, based on the title. I found the book to be less about being sidetracked, and more about the factors that influence our decisions.
April 16, 2014
Il titolo in italiano è "La scelta giusta" ma è (volutamente?) fuorviante. il libro è una sequenza di esperimenti su studenti con tanto di spiegazioni e percentuali che in sé potrebbero essere interessanti per qualcuno che desidera sapere come si eseguono. Se cercate un libro che dia consigli pratici e teorici su come effettuare le scelte cercate un altro libro.
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