Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

The resistance to interruption was a sign I had been having a good time,

In normal circumstances, however, we draw pleasure and pain from what is happening at the moment, if we attend to it.

another way to improve experience is to switch time from passive leisure, such as TV watching, to more active forms of leisure, including socializing and exercise.

Can money buy happiness? The conclusion is that being poor makes one miserable, and that being rich may enhance one’s life satisfaction, but does not (on average) improve experienced well-being.

Higher income brings with it higher satisfaction, well beyond the point at which it ceases to have any positive effect on experience.

“The easiest way to increase happiness is to control your use of time. Can you find more time to do the things you enjoy doing?”

one recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain.

Teenagers’ goals influence what happens to them, where they end up, and how satisfied they are.

We cannot hold a concept of well-being that ignores what people want.

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

Adaptation to a new situation, whether good or bad, consists in large part of thinking less and less about it.

In that sense, most long-term circumstances of life, including paraplegia and marriage, are part-time states that one inhabits only when one attends to them.

remembering self is subject to a massive focusing illusion about the life that the experiencing self endures quite comfortably.

prone to exaggerate the effect of significant purchases or changed circumstances on our future well-being.

The focusing illusion creates a bias in favor of goods and experiences that are initially exciting, even if they will eventually lose their appeal.

An objective observer making the choice for someone else would undoubtedly choose the short exposure, favoring the sufferer’s experiencing self. The choices that people made on their own behalf are fairly described as mistakes.

The remembering self is a construction of System 2.

Duration neglect and the peak-end rule originate in System 1 and do not necessarily correspond to the values of System 2.

perspective of the remembering self is not always correct.

A rational person can prefer being hated over being loved, so long as his preferences are consistent.

when we observe people acting in ways that seem odd, we should first examine the possibility that they have a good reason to do what they do. Psychological interpretations should only be invoked when the reasons become implausible—which

libertarian paternalism, in which the state and other institutions are allowed to nudge people to make decisions that serve their own long-term interests. The designation of joining a pension plan as the default option is an example of a nudge. It is difficult to argue that anyone’s freedom is diminished by being automatically enrolled in the plan, when they merely have to check a box to opt out.

The way to block errors that originate in System 1 is simple in principle: recognize the signs that you are in a cognitive minefield, slow down, and ask for reinforcement from System 2.

questioning your intuitions is unpleasant when you face the stress of a big decision.

Observers are less cognitively busy and more open to information than actors.

At least in part by providing a distinctive vocabulary, organizations can also encourage a culture in which people watch out for one another as they approach minefields.

Decision makers are sometimes better able to imagine the voices of present gossipers and future critics than to hear the hesitant voice of their own doubts.

They will make better choices when they trust their critics to be sophisticated and fair, and when they expect their decision to be judged by how it was made, not only by how it turned out.