Substack

Sunday, July 18, 2010

A nudge to decide!

Even as Goerge Loewenstein and Peter Ubel urge caution, Dan Ariely has more of nudge-based solutions to everyday real-life problems. Procrastinator is an iPhone application, developed by the Duke Center for Behavioral Economics, that "aims to help take the pain out of making big decisions in your life"!



As all of us know, "when choosing between two or more very similar options, we tend not to take into account the consequences of not deciding" and experience a "decision paralysis". This is where Procrastinator steps in. It allows you to set deadlines for your hard decisions so that when time is up, if you haven’t chosen an option, Procrastinator chooses for you, much like Octopus Paul! And he seems to have gotten it right always!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Like a situation where u leave the decision making to somebody else. Only, in this case it is left to a randomizer algorithm.