Transforming Your Life with Nudges: Improve Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

People make decisions, sometimes good and at other times, not what is best for the long-term. But a slight nudge can help you in making good decisions and transforming your life. A nudge though, doesn’t tell you how to make the right decision. It is a subtle change which helps you in avoiding wrong choices.

Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, in their book – Nudge – explain how the human mind makes decisions. Sometimes it goes with gut feelings and sometimes it gives up on temptation. But, can we risk making life-changing decisions that way? Probably not.

Richard is a professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago and Cass is a professor at Harvard Law School. They explain how nudges can help you discipline your mind, undertake healthy lifestyle habits and in the process, transforming your life.

Listen to the summary at Blinkist or listen to the book at Audible.

Unintentional bad decision making

Complex situations where we can choose more than one choice often end up with a wrong choice.
Complex situations where we can choose more than one choice often end up with a wrong choice.

You make bad decisions more often than you think you do. We know what’s right and what’s bad for us, but when it comes to food, money or health decisions, we ignore the red flags. From eating habits to making difficult decisions in life, our actions aren’t always good for the long-term.

Complex situations or little information also lead us toward making bad choices. To make good decisions, you need to process not a lot of information but the right information. To decide what to eat is easy as you know what something tastes like but to choose your insurance plan is quite some headache.

Read more: Follow Your Gut During a Career Shift

Incomplete information or lack of experience in such times, contribute to us making bad decisions. And there also is the gut feeling. Instead of considering reality, we decide what’s right for us, depending on our experiences and emotions. For example, if someone hasn’t seen a lot of accidents, he/she will think their life isn’t at risk. And thus, some unwise decision follows.

The effect of temptation

One of the most common life temptations is smoking.
One of the most common life temptations is smoking.

Temptations are another reason which stop you from transforming your life. Even when you know how to start living a healthy lifestyle, the lack of will doesn’t let you do so. Someone who knows smoking is bad for them, won’t be able to quit if they keep getting chances to smoke. It’s the temptation to smoke… one last time.

Read more: Think Smart with Mindware Tools

Also, many times people will end up eating more, even if they don’t like the taste. Why? It’s simply because they’re seeing the food in front of them and can’t resist themselves. And you would be glad to know that companies exploit this inability to resist temptation. How?

Well, making things available for free is one of the many tactics. People fall prey to it and take the trial subscription. And until you opt out, the service providers continue the subscription even if the trial period ends. Of course, you get the subscribed services, which you won’t have taken if it hasn’t been available for free.

How to change your life?

Healthy lifestyle is just one of the life changing habits that you can make to improve your well-being.
Healthy lifestyle is just one of the life changing habits that you can make to improve your well-being.

Well, those were a few of the reasons behind your wrong decisions, and here’s how to avoid them. And it’s easy. All you need is a little push in the right direction. That’s what nudges do.

Putting healthy things like fruits in the visible area and the junk ones in the less accessible area is a type of nudge. This particular arrangement subtly forces us to go for the fruit instead of the candy bars. Nudges aren’t drastic changes but subtle ones to shape your decision making competency. The supermarkets, however, use nudges to their benefit.

Read more: Find Your Flow and Optimal Experience

Keeping expensive things at the eye level is one such trick to nudge off your decision-making skills.

When the future is at stake

Nudges will greatly help you with choices you will have to make in the future.
Nudges will greatly help you with choices you will have to make in the future.

Nudges are quite helpful when you’re stuck among choices. Say, you have to choose a company for your insurance. You hear about a few from your friends and relatives and pick one which you think would be good. But when it comes to choosing the appropriate plan, most of us are clueless.

For such situations, there are default choices. A default choice is the best choice you can have when you don’t know what to do. So, the company nudges you in with a plan which covers most of your treatments, and you take it.

Nudges, however, aren’t only for individuals. Apart from transforming your life, they can change society too. One such notable nudge is to make carbon footprint data of the companies public. People will compare and judge a company based on their carbon emissions, and thus, the companies undertake measures to level it down.

Money also is a powerful nudge to influence your decisions. So, what is that habit that you aren’t able to change? See if involving money in the game helps you in a way. You can use nudges in –

  • Achieving your goals
  • Making wiser decisions
  • Changing habits
  • And… Saving some money

Now you know that a nudge can be a huge influencer in transforming your life!

Nudges can greatly help you in the path of transforming your life.
Nudges can greatly help you in the path of transforming your life.

Which one is your aim? Whether you want to be healthy or successful, a slight nudge can do wonders. Give it a try!

Abhijeet Kumar a freelance content writer for aSabbatical.com
We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.