I can't say I've ever had a problem trying something so easy as a new soda. In fact, I've switched sodas a lot for various reasons including taste, often trying new ones when they come out.<p>I thought this article would be about learning new skills like art or programming, which I actually <i>do</i> find hard to get into.<p>For those, I know why it's so hard: I'm so good at the things I do daily that new things are quite painful to see how much I fail at them. I end up just going back to the stuff I'm good at instead.
"Like most people, I conduct relatively few experiments in my personal life, in both small and big things."<p>...<p>"Habits are powerful. We persist with many of them because we tend to give undue emphasis to the present. Trying something new can be painful: I might not like what I get and must forgo something I already enjoy."<p>I'm drawn to a quote written by Sir Terry Pratchett every time I read this sort of article. So tl;dr,<p>>"They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today."
My feeling: The author does not understand the human psyche well enough. People don’t buy coke because of the taste only. They buy coke because the way they feel, whenever they drink coke. A branded coke gives a whole different feeling than a generic one, which depends on several factors like brand image, price, peers, etc. Works even with pain drugs.<p>See “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely for several examples of this effect.
> Yet I’m clearly making an error, one that reveals a deeper decision-making bias whose cumulative cost is sizable: Like most people, I conduct relatively few experiments in my personal life, in both small and big things.<p>I think this is related to learning. Once you've learned a particular task (say, writing a unit test) you don't "relearn" it every time you want to execute the task again. Instead you "reenact" it - it's more automatic and can be done more quickly and with less focus and concentration. Each unit test is unique - but the tooling and concepts that surround it are already there.<p>Reenacting vs. learning may be one reason behind brand loyalty and habit. It simply takes more mental effort to re-evaluate and re-learn than to coast off a previous decision. It's more work, even if it's something minor like trying a different brand of soda. We can only "spend" so much attention and care during our waking hours.<p>The value of a habit is that you make a decision once and project it into the future as an automatic response. The notion that these automatic responses are somehow flawed or need to be optimized away, or optimized to produce some economic advantage, is suspect.<p>What _is_ valuable is understanding that these automatic responses are as much a part of human cognition as our deliberative attention. We should be re-evaluate them periodically and try to understand the effect they have on the trajectory of our lives.
To try new things and experience success in new areas, here is step 1:<p>MAKE IT SAFE TO FAIL<p>That's right. Spend time and energy thinking about opportunities to practice and fail over and over while minimizing the fallout.<p>For example, are you afraid to launch that app on the store until you've done all your beta testing and your metrics show high engagement?<p>Don't be afraid. Launch it and simply DON'T PUBLICIZE IT. Who knows, Apple might approve it and you may get 5-10 organic new beta testers a day. You lose nothing for trying.<p>That's the mindset that will get you far :)
Yet another clickbait headline. From a Harvard professor, no less, assuming the title is the author's.<p>The article explores the consequences of our reluctance to break from habit, rather than explaining <i>why</i> we find this hard to do.<p>More accurately, it explores why we so rarely do it. If we were discussing it being truly 'hard to do', we'd need to first establish that we consciously want to break from habit, but then fail to follow through with action. The article doesn't take this route.<p>The closest it gets to delivering on the title is <i>Yet the fact that many people needed a strike to force them to experiment reveals the deep roots of a common reluctance to experiment.</i> This is not then expanded upon.
I’ve never really done it but I’ve always thought that adding some randomness to my choices would make my life much more balanced. In a way, also experiments can be biased.