When lessons learned make sense

A few weeks back I wrote a blog titled "Breadth vs. Depth" talking about the importance of having depth and how it helps you accomplish more.

I've been reading a book called "Predictably Irrational" By Dan Ariely talking about how we make irrational decisions. There's a couple of things he talked about which I could relate to, and other concepts were new to me.

I am normally not an impulsive buyer. I used to be but I came up with a 3 day rule. Basically, if I feel like buying anything over $50, I wait 3 days and if I still feel like buying it, I go ahead and get it. This helps me filter out 99% of impulsive decisions. Interestingly, Dan Ariely talked about a similar concept, called the "ice-glass method". The idea is to put your credit card in a glass of water and put that in the freezer. And whenever you impulsively decide to make a purchase, you must wait for the card to thaw and by then your compulsion to make the purchase dies away.

Secondly, he talked about an experiment with MIT students who were asked to play with a program that had three doors, one red, one blue, and one green. The participants could enter any of the rooms by clicking on the door and when in the room, each subsequent click would earn them a certain amount of money. However, moving from one room to another required a click and there were a total of 100 clicks. Furthermore, one of the doors would permanently close if not used for 12 clicks. In the end, Dan observed that most students tried to keep each door open, even though they were better of staying in one room and clicking as fast as they could. The parallel of this to life is how we like to keep our options open instead of just picking one option, staying with it, and accomplishing something. It was a good reconfirmation for me after having written my "Breadth vs. Depth" blog.

It also got me thinking about theory vs. practice. There are some things you learn from experience and they tend to stick with you for longer. Even though a lot of times you realize it took you months to learn something so simple like "Don’t make assumptions", the general sayings foolhardies repeat without really knowing what it means.


I want to get an MBA eventually. When I think about it, I begin to appreciate why it's recommended to wait a few years, get some solid life experiences and then do your MBA. Just like reading Dan Ariely's book made more sense after I had already had already learned some of the lessons in the book, and the remaining concepts that were new to me made much more sense, an MBA is similar. Also, if the book has 10 lessons and I am able to relate to 2 of them, the remaining 8 lessons will make much more sense. Similarly, an MBA will make more sense when I have accumulated enough interesting life experiences.