jeff-kreisler.mp3 Jeff Kreisler: [00:00:00] You're never saving any amount of money. That 40 dollars doesn't exist because you've got a sweater marked down, you can't pay your rent with the money, you save shopping, you're still spending sixty dollars. But retailers know that, like, we're going to feel good getting that saving. But there's no savings. You're just spending. You know, you might spend a little less, but you're still spending. And the question you should be asking is, do I need this and do I want to spend this amount for it? But we often don't. Harpreet Sahota: [00:00:38] What's up, everybody? Welcome to the artists of Data Science podcast, the only self development podcast for Data scientists. You're going to learn from and be inspired by the people, ideas and conversations that'll encourage creativity and innovation in yourself so that you can do the same for others. I also host Open Office Hours. You can register to attend by going to bitly.com/adsoh. I look forward to seeing you all there. Let's ride this beat out into another awesome episode and don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave a five star review. Harpreet Sahota: [00:01:32] Our guest today is behavioral science, real life and humor to understand, explain and change the world. He's the editor in chief of People Science Dotcom and you thought leadership platform for applying behavioral science to the modern marketplace. Harpreet Sahota: [00:01:48] He's coauthored Dollars and Sense with Dan Ariely, a book that was lauded as a brilliant and accessible look at behavioral economics. And it was dubbed the Best Business Book of the Year by The Business Insider, Huffington Post article in The Washington Post. He's also a comedian who has taught most of this planet and even won the Bill Hicks Spirit Award for thought provoking comedy. He's pretty much your friendly, typical Princeton educated lawyer turned award winning comedian, best selling author and champion for behavioral economics. So please help me in welcoming our guest today, the man New York Times describes as delectable Jeff Kreisler death. Thank you so much for taking time out of schedule to be here today. Man, I really appreciate you coming on to the show. Jeff Kreisler: [00:02:37] Thank you for having me and for putting together that very flattering introduction. Harpreet Sahota: [00:02:42] It is my absolute pleasure to have. So talk to us a bit about where you grew up and what was it like there? Jeff Kreisler: [00:02:50] Sure. So I grew up in New England, Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass. Where there are five colleges right around there, Amherst College, University of Massachusetts and a few others, Hampshire, Smith and Mount Holyoke. Jeff Kreisler: [00:03:04] My dad was a physics professor at the University of Massachusetts. So I grew up sort of kind of an egghead in a family that really valued education on the youngest of three, my brother and sister, both very smart, very highly accomplished in their fields. And it was a rural town - it wasn't like living in the city. And we studied and we played and it was fun. And, you know, in my family, high, high academic achievement, like I said, was always expected, which I guess I kind of did. But then after that, I decided to get a little bit off the treadmill. It was my would you call it my not what the spacing out on the word. My privilege. Thank you for it was my privilege to have the chance to you know, I went to a great prep school called Exeter Academy that I went to Princeton and then I went to law school. And it is my privilege that I could still go through all that and sort of try something different with all that as a safety net behind me. Harpreet Sahota: [00:04:03] So what kind of kid were you in high school and what did you imagine that your future would look like? Jeff Kreisler: [00:04:10] High school was interesting, was sort of a bit of a pivot point for me because I was at this very prep school, Exeter, where everyone was really smart and everyone worked really hard. And for a while I was just really grinding really hard. And I realized I was getting really stressed out about my grades and performance in high school while also like playing sports and having fun. But at some point I just I stopped stressing about it. And I and I sort of I wouldn't say it consciously became Zen, but I said, I'll work as much as I can. I'm not going to worry because I. I pictured a future of myself alcoholic and divorced and full of ulcers in my thirties. And I didn't really want that. And I and I believe and still believe in hard work and learning from others, but that that excessive stress and worry about little things can only get in the way. And I think that's helped guide me. Since then, I didn't really have a clear picture of what the future was except for one potential future, that sort of rough one that I described. Harpreet Sahota: [00:05:09] So how did you go from from prep school through this battery of education, becoming a lawyer and then going into stand up comedy? Like, how did that happen? Jeff Kreisler: [00:05:24] Some of it was being the youngest child. I mean, there are anecdotal studies and maybe some others that youngest children often need attention. And so they developed sort of that entertainment tick. Some of it was having the privilege to know that I could take risks because I had these sort of fall back. You know, I had a good I had tools, I had a law degree - a Princeton degree. I was never going to live on the street. And some of it was, you know, I think I have a developed sort of a very active mind. I think probably most of your listeners as Data scientists are similar. That sort of never rested. And at some point I sort of pointed that at what I thought was something more challenging. Like, to me, I it sounds a little conceited, but like I always could get good grades if I worked hard, if I studied. And it almost seemed like it was an easy path for me to go to these schools like I had. I had a road laid out for me. I don't deny that it was privileged. Right. If I went to Exeter and I could study at great Princeton, get grades, law school get grades, and I had these job opportunities to be a big corporate lawyer, I took a bunch of money and be on the corporate. Track and the future laid out for me, and I just felt like I never really earned it and I kind of wanted to challenge myself. It seemed I don't want to easy. But it seemed like that all I had to do was just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Jeff Kreisler: [00:06:41] And at some point I'm like, you know, I want to do something different, some special, something that's hard. And I was just drawn by the power of words, whether that's like in a constitution, there's a limited number of words in a constitution that creates a whole society. A contract is a number of words between parties that creates a relationship. Or poetry and in music or comedy and how that creates feelings and emotions and other connections and comedy drama. Because it was a unique challenge that when you see comedians perform even the most famous, they get on stage. Like I've seen Robin Williams perform many times. He gets on stage and for the first few minutes he can do no wrong. But then he still has to be funny. It doesn't matter who you are and where you come from, you have to perform. And that was a huge challenge for me to just be completely reliant upon my skills. And the fun thing about comedies, you can talk about anything. The only rule is you have to make people laugh. But you can talk about and you can talk about your life. You can talk about politics, economics and Data science. You just have to be able to connect that emotion. And and that, to me, seem really freeing was just one rule to follow. You could dress however you want. You could show up whenever you want. And I love that idea of the potential to talk about big ideas as really profound. Harpreet Sahota: [00:08:00] You just like let me pick something hard to do that - Jeff Kreisler: [00:08:03] It was stupid. Harpreet Sahota: [00:08:06] I think I really love that. So talking about words, talking about comedy. So let's start here how has comedy taught you more about behavioral science or economics and from there from doing the comedy, how did you end up linking up with Dan Ariely to write this amazing book? Jeff Kreisler: [00:08:29] Those are great questions. You know, a comedian typically is sort of an observer of human behavior and then a reporter on that human behavior and a scientist and behavioral scientist is someone that studies human behavior and tries to understand why things happen. I often describe it sort of a yin yang relationship like the comedian says, hey, you ever notice that people do the stupid thing? Jeff Kreisler: [00:08:50] And the behavioral scientist says, yeah, and this is why. So to me, there's a great fit. Now, I didn't I didn't come to that from I didn't approach that in a linear way. Like, I didn't know and say, oh, there's behavioral science. It's a perfect fit. That's this is my perspective. Looking back on my journey, I see the connection more specifically, sort of the actual path that I was looking forward was I did a lot of comedy, a lot of political comedy starting out, and someone approached me with the opportunity to write a business column for Jim Cramer's website. Jim Cramer does the mad money, that crazy guy like Hong Kong. So the morning radio guy, anyway, he has a website called The Street Dot Com. And a friend of mine was like, hey, do you want to write about the news in the week and make jokes about the business news? I said no. He said it pays. I said yes. So I did that. And I had an economics degree and so I could understand what was happening through that column. I got notice I got an opportunity to write my first book, which was a satire satire called Get Rich Cheating, which was all about Enron and Lance Armstrong taking steroids and steroids in baseball. And Donald Trump was in there ten plus years ago. And it was about a culture of cheating. And it was the satirical voice was, you know, you should do this. Everyone is doing it. You can to write. But it was really had a different perspective on morals and ethics. And so that opens the door for me. And one of the doors and one this proved the most fruitful is meeting Dan Ariely, who is your listeners may know. He's the author of Predictably Irrational. His big book is one of the leaders in the field of behavioral science, behavioral economics. He invited me to lecture at his class at Duke University in character, like my character is sort of a Stephen Colbert tongue in cheek. Jeff Kreisler: [00:10:45] And I would go and I would tell his Duke students, I did this several times, hey, you know, you guys should cheat cost benefit analysis. No one gets caught. There's no cost. And the benefits are you make millions. All you have to do is throw all your ethics. I would do my whole routine. And it wasn't he didn't always he didn't introduce me as a comedian. He didn't say it was a joke. And it was fascinating to me to watch these students interact with me and have different reactions. And the first time I did it and then talked with Dan, who I didn't really know much about, was what I call my light bulb moment, right where I was like, aha. Because that I learned about behavioral science. I learned that behavioral economics was a real science, a lot of different terms for it. And there are differences. But let's not get in the weeds. It basically looks at why we make the decisions that we do. It doesn't abandon traditional economics, but traditional economics says everything's cost benefit analysis. Reality is that that's not how it works. We are busy people. We have a lot of stress and we don't always make the rational choice. And that's one reason why I sort of rejected doing work as in traditional business and economics or in the law, because all the all the rules in the ways that the science, the economic science, which isn't really science I know said people would act. Jeff Kreisler: [00:11:58] That didn't prove true because people are human. So anyway, I'm sort of rambling here and getting farther ahead of us. But I connected with Dan. I saw his work and the work of his peers, and it was like, oh, it was a crystallizing moment. I was like, oh, now I know why I rejected all this other stuff. Now I know I am. I'm drawn to obsessing how people do stupid things. And I just sort of dug in and we did some projects and we came out with a book together on financial decision making in twenty seventeen. Since then, I've been trying to find ways to advocate for behavioral science as a you know, it's not a silver bullet, but it's an additional tool for people to have in their tool belt, for their personal lives, for their relationships, for organizations, businesses, for societies and governments. And it's just another way to approach things. I don't think any one approaches is accurate for everything. Jeff Kreisler: [00:12:49] But it's a it's a fresh perspective that I think is useful. Harpreet Sahota: [00:12:53] What's up artists? I would love to hear from. You feel free to send me an email to theartistsofDataScience@Gmail.com. Let me know what you love about the show. Let me know what you don't love about the show and let me know what you would like to see in the future. I absolutely would love to hear from you. I've also got open office hours that I will be hosting and you can register by going to bitly.com/adsoh. I look forward to hearing from you all and look forward to seeing you in the office hours. Let's get back to the episode. Harpreet Sahota: [00:13:37] Right. Oh man. I'm ready to get into the book. So by the time this airs, it'll probably be right around Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday time, and probably a good time for people to start thinking about their financial decisions and what they do with their money. Harpreet Sahota: [00:13:54] When it comes to money, we really don't have as great of an understanding of it as we might think that we do. So let's kind of get some Econ 101 type of stuff out of the way, starting with a seemingly easy question. What is money? Jeff Kreisler: [00:14:10] Money? Jeff Kreisler: [00:14:10] Money is something that I would like more of money is is a way that we measure value. It's a way that we decide when we're when we're weighing our choices, what are the value of our choices. And and money is one measure for that. It's become sort of a predominant measure, which is its own issues. And money is it's really like I'm not an anti money or anticapitalism guy by any stretch. I think money has done some incredible things and money allowed society to blossom. Money is just really complex. I like money. It is what we call fungible. Any ten dollars you have the same as any other ten dollars, whether it's a ten dollar bill or a bunch of quarters or a check or a promise to get ten dollars. And that allows us to do a lot of things and be flexible with that. Money is storable. You can save money and invest it. You couldn't do that in the barter days. If you raise chickens, you can store them for forty years. Money is general. You can use it for anything. It's divisible. You can break it up into different amounts. There's all these cool features of money as a as a measure of value and as a tool for trading that has allowed us to do so much, started to specialize and and focus and not just all be farmers and hunter gatherers. Jeff Kreisler: [00:15:26] What's great about money, all that complexity is also one of the reasons why it's so hard to think about. Because there are so many things you could do with money that it becomes overwhelming for most people to process the potential. There's a there's a concept called opportunity costs, which again is sort of Econ 101. We often forget the opportunity costs. When you make a financial decision, you're supposed to weigh the opportunity cost, which is what else could you do with that money you're about to spend now or any time in the future? That's a lot to think about. What else could you do with like five dollars? Like five dollars you're about to spend on a coffee. It could be a couple of newspapers. It could be invested and have compound interest that it could be a bunch of bubblegum. There's just so many potential uses for that that we don't think about that we don't even come close. And it's because it's so hard to think about. And I guess I should pause for a second and say there's one thing I want everyone to take away from this. And almost every time I talk about money is that money is hard to think about and it's hard for. Everyone I talked to, financial advisers, I talked to bankers and professionals, money people, and everyone has trouble with money, even the most experienced at the top of their game, because it is complex, because we deal with uncertainty and stress and a lot of unknowns and ultimately we deal with our emotions. The there's no clear right or wrong choice with money that we all always know. There's always some uncertainty. And when uncertainty is in any decision, it gets that that gap gets filled by the emotional needs that we have the need to feel like we're making the right choice, need to feel like we've done the right thing. Jeff Kreisler: [00:17:03] The need to feel good. And that's when we can be prone to make irrational decisions because we go by our feelings and emotions. And, you know, I'll wrap up this current diatribe in a second. But for most of my life and I think most of what I had studied, I always thought of money as being very cold, heartless and emotionless as its numbers on a spreadsheet. It's Data, it's graphs. It's it's plotting out calculations. But emotion is the hidden variable in the equation of financial decisions that we just often forget about. And what I love about the field of behavioral science is that's what it's about. It's about the emotion that drives human decisions, doesn't toss out all the traditional economics. It doesn't toss out all the data and Data analysis. It just layers on top of that, like people's reality. And I think that's important. Right? I mean, you've got data science and data science fans listening. And I think that like data science, that's it's amazing what's happened in the last decade or so that we know so much about people and the decisions that they make and where they go. I feel like marrying the Data science with the people science is going to be like an incredible combination to not just know where they're going and what buttons to push, buttons to push, but why why are people doing this? Then we can step back and get this holistic view of the Data and the humanity and hopefully get people to a better place for themselves and their their partners and teams and the world and everybody. Harpreet Sahota: [00:18:34] That's that's awesome. And thank you so much for that. I really appreciate that. And I really agree with you about taking the Data Science Cloud and give the people science and doing some interesting stuff. A couple of things I wanted to touch on here. Harpreet Sahota: [00:18:46] When it comes to money, why is it that we can't think or we sometimes we don't think about these decisions the way that we should be thinking about them? We ended up falling back on these mental shortcuts. Why is it that we do that? And what are a couple of a couple of mental shortcuts that we can kind of catch ourselves in so that we can correct? Jeff Kreisler: [00:19:08] Sure. Well, it goes back to this idea of wanting to feel good, these mental shortcuts that we fall for and sometimes we fall for them. And sometimes marketers and salespeople like lay traps for us to walk into. We fall for them because we don't know what to do when it comes to a financial decision. We don't weigh that opportunity cost. Right. No one looks at a cup of coffee and thinks, oh, what else could I do with this $2.50 [inaudible]. So instead of doing that, we were open to other things. Other nudges is the term of art that's often used to get us to make a certain decision. And that's our real problem. And I should say that's not the end of the world. Jeff Kreisler: [00:19:47] Like, I don't I don't advocate for people to become these computers that do weigh the opportunity cost that's not realistic or that you can't change human nature. But if we understand our human nature, we understand what we falsely understand the mistakes we make. Then we can start to create systems and environments and and products and services. So we use our human nature for our own benefit instead of having it be used against us. And for me, what I believe is first understanding these different biases, these principles or heuristics or traps, there's a lot of terms for which are the different sort of emotional triggers that make us make a decision one way or another. You know, there there are a ton out there. One of my favorites to talk about is something called the pain of paying, which is just this idea, this fact, I guess, that when we pay for something, it stimulates the same region of our brain as physical pain. Jeff Kreisler: [00:20:34] And that pain should serve a purpose. It should make us stop and think about what we're doing, why you put your hand on a stove that burn, that sensation, that pain makes you look at your head and move it away. So the pain of paying should make a stop and go, oh, am I making the right choice right now by humans? We don't act that way. Instead of like feeling that pain, we numb the pain. All of these financial tools that we developed from credit cards to Apple Pay and all this excuse me, they all numb the pain of paying. So we don't feel the payment. We don't feel that pain, that burden. We don't think about it. And therefore we overspend. And as we spend automatically and I love talking about the pain of pain because it's a great example of it's something that once you're aware of it, you'll notice the fact that you start spending maybe like you're in a casino with casino chips, but also like you can dial it up or dial it down to. Upon miracles, I introduced this as a negative, right, the idea that we reduce the pain of paying AIs a bad thing, because I think that makes us spend more. And it does credit cards, Apple pay, all these things make us all spend more. But you can know that and you can use it for your own benefit. You can do automatic deductions from your paycheck into a 401k for retirement or into a savings account or use one of the many apps that helps you save for a goal automatically. And when it's something automatic, you don't feel it and therefore you're working towards a good goal. There's default options do that. There's the potential to use this for good. And a lot of interventions around the world have done just that. Jeff Kreisler: [00:22:09] But coming from an American consumer perspective, I see that sort of reduction in friction being used to make people spend more. That's one I feel like. There's a ton more. I know. I know. We sort of preach out in email some of your favorites. Harpreet Sahota: [00:22:24] I'll stop at that yet. So, yeah, definitely getting some of these these biases and and stuff a little bit later. But this idea of opportunity cost is interesting to talk about it in the book. There's an experiment where he has went to a car dealership and people were ready to buy a car and go up to them and ask, what else could you spend this money on? Right. Why is it that people get so surprised or maybe just stuck on this one thing that they could do with their money? Jeff Kreisler: [00:22:55] So so that that experiment they mentioned was my coauthor Dan Ariely and some of his colleagues when they went to a car dealership, Honda dealership, and they asked people, if you don't spend 30 grand on a Honda, what else could you spend it on? Essentially the opportunity costs of 30 grand on Honda. And no one would answer, no one could answer that press and press them. Finally, the best they could do is people would say, well, if I don't spend thirty thousand dollars on a Honda, I can spend it on a Toyota. That's not a different choice and that's just a different brand of cards. Jeff Kreisler: [00:23:26] Still the same thing. And what that sort of shows is that it's not that when the opportunity costs in that calculation comes up, we don't get it right. It's that we don't even really try. And I think the reason why among the reasons why those people couldn't get outside of buying a thirty thousand dollar car and why we have the same thing we can't think of our alternatives is none of us want to think of ourselves as being wrong. I mean, we make a decision and however much time we put into it, and it's often very little, sometimes it's a lot. We don't want to question ourselves. You can look no further than politics as a news item. I guess by the time this airs, who knows what else is going on. We'll be living in caves with fire raining down on us. But people are stuck in their ways. I mean, there's something called confirmation bias. Jeff Kreisler: [00:24:14] I'm sure many of your listeners have heard of it where you get stuck at us with a certain opinion and every new piece of news, even if it contradicts it, you find a way to make it support your worldview. You may say, oh, that's fake news, or you say that's not accurately sourced or you say, well, it actually support you find a way to do it. And the same is true for all of us in our in our lives and our spending decisions. And I'm sure many of you have heard the story like that. Older generations say, well, that's how it's always been. Like I always give I have a financial adviser who I give a ten thousand dollar check to at the end of the year. That's just always how much did that mindset is hard to change in us collectively or individually is super interesting that that they get thirty thousand for a Honda. Harpreet Sahota: [00:25:00] What else can you use it on? I could think of a few different things, but the book is full of so many interesting experiments. I really enjoyed going through those. In one part of the book I want to dig into now is the part about relativity. With the holiday season coming up, that's deals galore. Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So many ways for us to spend money. Right? But I guess it turns out that we're not actually as good as we think we are when it comes to valuing stuff, are we? Harpreet Sahota: [00:25:24] So talk to us about this concept of relativity and how it affects our decision making when it comes to money. Jeff Kreisler: [00:25:31] I would ask your listeners, this is something that I ask people when I give talks at times, what's an easier question to answer? What would you like for dinner or would you like chicken or pasta for dinner? Most people say the easier question to answer is chicken or pasta. That's true. What would you like for dinner? Is is sort of like what's the opportunity cost? So it could be anything, right? I'm not eating tonight. It could be nothing. It could be like a bowl of us. It could be rocks. The whole world is open. That's a hard thing to think about. What would you like for dinner? Anyone out there that has kids like I do and congratulations is if you don't ask that question because they can't answer that. But if you ask would you like A or B, people know if they like A better than B or be better than that, they can compare the two. And so they might not know the absolute value of A or B, but they know the comparative value. And that's what relativity is about when you compare the relative value of things. Jeff Kreisler: [00:26:26] How that comes about, it comes out a lot of ways in financial decision making. One is, again, as we approach these holidays in sales, sale prices are basically using relativity to make us feel like we're making the right choice. People will buy a sweater that was one hundred dollars but is marked down to sixty dollars a lot more often. They'll just buy a sixty dollar sweater because you approach sixty dollar sweater. You've got to think, oh, this is a big deal. Like what else could it be? Some sort of opportunity cost? About the sweaters, you look at a sweater that was one hundred and marked down. Jeff Kreisler: [00:26:57] You're like, oh, well, I know a sixty dollars sweater is better than one hundred dollars a sweater. Like I know that for sure. And suddenly feel smart. You fall for that relativity. Relativity also comes up in percentages. I'm sure that your Data sites folks probably run this all the time explaining to people like how the numbers play out. Again, another thing I'll ask folks is if you go shopping and you're buying something for twenty five dollars and you go to the front, the clerk says it's next door for only five dollars, would you go next door? Most people say, yes, I would. The next day you go to a different store, you're buying a thousand dollar mattress and the clerk says, Oh, what's available next door for nine hundred eighty dollars? Would you go to door? Most people would say no. I really ask the same question twice. Would you go next door for 20 dollars? But people mentally get caught up in the percent. They're saving. They're saving nothing of the percent rate. The first case, it's 80 percent off the second it's, I don't know, two percent off. And it just shows how like we're stuck in this comparing things, this sense of relativity that doesn't serve us when it comes to financial decisions all the time. Our our choice, our thought should be what is the amount of money that is leaving or entering my wallet or my account. Jeff Kreisler: [00:28:09] But things like percentages can throw us off, like investing professionals. They may present to someone, hey, if you do this now, you're going to save one percent more per year. And a lot of people are going to say that's nothing, but they know point one percent compounded, etc. and how it plays out over time, that's huge, depending on how much of your investing, that can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. But people don't easily get that because of the relativity and the percentages. It's a fascinating thing. And one of the things I've loved about this field is is also applying it to the rest of life, because I think it's not just in financial decisions that when we don't know how to value something, we compare it right to this concept of somo fear of missing out is really about relativity, right? We on social media, we look at people posting their beautiful lives and compared to our lives that we know well, that seems like relatively great. And that can cause people to be press and it causes problems. And studies show like teenagers, it's harmful. And that's about how we value things, in this case, our lives, by comparing the relative value to others. Oftentimes others like pretend and fake lives. So there's my deep moment. Harpreet Sahota: [00:29:21] Is, is there like the do we know like in terms of brain science, like neurology or whatever? Like why is it that we do this kind of comparison? Is there something way back from ancient days of running on the savannah? Jeff Kreisler: [00:29:38] I am confident that probably is. I'm not confident that could give you the answer. There's there is this concept of system one versus a system two thinking which some of your listeners may be familiar with, pioneered by Kahneman, Don, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Jeff Kreisler: [00:29:57] They presented it in their book based on the name Right now, it's horrible. Is it Thinking Fast and Slow? The idea being like in our brains, we have a system, one way of thinking and system, two way of thinking. System one is the sort of fast like act. Now, you might think of a fight or flight like rapid response and a sort of intuitive and it's often unconscious, like we're not even always aware that we're making decisions based on system one. System two is the more thoughtful, deep, reflective thing that we like to think. We all engage in system to slow, deep thinking like the book thinking fast and slow. Is that a great way to present that this on a on a brain? I don't remember how much neuroscience there is in there, but the idea of us how we sometimes think slow and calm. But in the moment of stress and pressure, we often act on that system to excuse me on the system. One rapid response, if you will, is sort of the underpinning a lot of its behavioral science when it comes down to a decision moment. We often are making that based upon unseen forces and invisible sort of nudges that guide us. Even if we think we're doing some deep thinking. It tends to be momentary feelings and intuitions rather than I think next time you're buying something and you whipping out your credit card, like, did you really like weigh the pros and cons and know what else you could spend the money on or do? You just kind of have an intuitive sense that you're doing the right thing. That's not always bad. I don't want people to freak out, become freaks about money, but that's what happens to us. Harpreet Sahota: [00:31:33] So when it comes to, like shopping, I one thing I do, I consider myself to be a pretty good shopper. But what I'll do is I'll set up in advance, like in my mind, like I'm going to go buy a a sweatshirt. And most I want to spend on a sweatshirt, 40 bucks, like that's the most I want to spend on one and have that framework in place and then use that to guide whatever purchasing decisions I make. Is that a good way to kind of overcome that negative aspect of relativity? Jeff Kreisler: [00:32:00] Well, it's a good way to maintain some self-control in general and and to like to shop in general. So set limits. I mean, one thing overarching issue that we have above all else, is sometimes we lack self-control even when we know there's relativity on sale prices that might trick us or paint a pay or anything else that we might fall for, we still might make the bad decisions. So by setting up systems for shopping and spending, whether their budgets or their that are broad, like this week, I'm going only spend this much or at this trip or on this item in your case, a sweatshirt. That is a way to help us overcome. It's a way essentially to make us check ourselves. Because what might happen is say you say you spend 40 dollars on a sweatshirt, you might see a fifty dollar a sweatshirt, and maybe in the end you buy it. But because you set up that limit, you're going to stop and think about it. You're going to stop and say, OK, this is worth fifty dollars and you still might be prone to other mistakes, but it's even that small moment of stopping to think can make a big difference over time. And maybe you won't buy it because you're like, no, I said I said a dollar limit for a reason. I don't remember what it is right now. The sweater, it's cool. I want it, but it'll still be there tomorrow if I change my setting up any sort of system. Sometimes it's shopping with a buddy. Sometimes it's going over your monthly spending and sort of criticizing yourself. There are a lot of different ways to start to overcome or at least recognize the patterns that you're falling into. Harpreet Sahota: [00:33:22] And when we're shopping right, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals coming up and we'll see stuff on sale and maybe just buy it because it's reduced price right now are some ways that you've seen, like retailers and companies trick us with this relativity thing. Jeff Kreisler: [00:33:40] Sure. Well, just even having the sale price, there is a way we get anchored as another term to that high price. You think of a sweater or this is it's got to be one hundred dollars. But I'm getting a deal here. I'm saving forty dollars like you're never saving any amount of money. That forty dollars doesn't exist just because you've got a sweater down. Jeff Kreisler: [00:34:01] You can't pay your rent with the money, you save shopping. You're still spending sixty dollars. But retailers know that like we're going to feel good getting that savings. I mean there there's a lot of commercials that'll come out during the holidays to talk about how much savings you can get if you shop at Best Buy or Lowes or whatever it may be. But there's no savings. You're just spending you know, you might spend a little less, but you're still spending. And the question you should be asking is, do I need this and do I want to spend this amount for it? But we often don't. You know, the holidays are particularly treacherous for so many reasons. One is because all the sales, another is a holiday themselves. They create this like emotional pull. I mean, you know, I don't want to get to two quasi philosophical, but it's hard to how do you express love to people and the holidays and the commercialization of the holiday say you do it by buying gifts. Jeff Kreisler: [00:34:56] And so all of a sudden, just a mere like the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday shopping, it's a month where it's going right at your emotions and your emotional need to be loved and express love and be part of what everyone else is doing. Go for social proof and follow the herd. And there's so many things even before the price tag is put up, this sense that you have to buy this stuff. Now, look, there's a benefit to it. I'm not again, I'm not saying don't buy holiday gifts for your loved ones, but understand that like you're being swept up in this emotional tide that can carry you too far. And, you know, if you're if you're someone that has the tends to overspend, you need to know that if you have it under control, then enjoy the spending. Jeff Kreisler: [00:35:44] Go and listen to the jingles and see the Santa and look at the smiling, happy, cherubic faces that. Harpreet Sahota: [00:35:52] And this anchoring effect is really interesting to me. I was watching a show with I think it was Adam Grant. It was like these little shorts on on Amazon Prime called Why are we so stupid? They do this. It's great they did this one of the anchoring effect where they had like this jar full of jelly beans and the people are there more or less than 6000 jellybeans in this jar. And then they another group of people are there, more or less than one thousand jelly beans in this chart. Is that the same number of jelly beans each time? And then the anchoring effect is natural. The polls that that estimate higher, it's also a good technique when it comes to negotiating salaries, too, right? Jeff Kreisler: [00:36:33] Yeah, I mean, that's it is they often say the person puts out the first number has an advantage. And this is a classic example of me not practicing what I preach. I hate as much as I'm here as an expert in money. I hate negotiating for a fee or anything. Jeff Kreisler: [00:36:49] But, you know, just the idea, it's like an anchor. It's what it sounds like. The first number that's out there tends to be have a really a stronger pull than any other numbers. Like, it works with this idea of relativity. What you see a car that's priced at thirty five thousand dollars and you think it's worth thirty five thousand dollars. So whatever it might be marked down to, you're still sort of drawn to that thirty five thousand dollar anchor as an idea of what it should be worth. That's why like a thirty two thousand dollar car seems like it's on it's thirty three thousand dollars off because you started it. If you started at twenty five thousand and it was thirty two, you feel very differently. But the anchor is set that way and negotiations. Right. You come in and you say I want one hundred thousand dollar salary as opposed to them saying I'm offering you a sixty thousand dollar salary. You might end up at 80 in the middle anyway. But first person, that's a very different feeling, depending on how it's set up. Jeff Kreisler: [00:37:50] And the draws is a remarkably strong. The jellybean things are also I mean, there's a related to anchoring in what I what I think is really awesome is the idea called arbitrary coherence, which is actually Dan, my coauthor of the study showing that anchoring is arbitrary. It's in many ways the study he did. I forget which one. I so many variations of it. But essentially that idea you presented, are there more or less than however many jellybeans you can you can get in people's head different what you can say to them, put a bar jelly beans and say, okay, what's your phone number? What are the last three digits of your phone number? Which is totally random. Right. And illustrative just for your phone number are two seven five. Do you think that there are more or less than two seven five jelly beans in this jar? And then how many jelly beans in the jar do you think? And what they find is that people that have a low last three digits right. To three hundred and less tend to estimate that final question, much lower than people that have a high like seven, eight hundred at the end because of this anchoring, because of this arbitrary quadrants and the fact that it's totally random. Jeff Kreisler: [00:39:02] It's not like you're walking in there and someone's saying, I'm a jelly bean expert and I think there's eight hundred jelly beans here. What do you think it's like? What's your phone number? What's your social? It's the suggested power of numbers. Jeff Kreisler: [00:39:13] And our need to feel like we're on the right track is just so strong. It's I wish I wish I was genuinely evil. Like I wrote the satire Get Rich Cheating, but like as I can never actually be a bad person. Because marketers man. Harpreet Sahota: [00:39:33] It's super interesting because I've been going down this rabbit hole of studying behavioral science people economics for the last month or two. Harpreet Sahota: [00:39:40] Just it's a tend to study things like go to go down rabbit hole for like a month or two at a time. And this is where I've been recently. And it's been super fascinating, just super interesting. And like I'm looking for ways to to do this to my kid as he's grown up, manipulate his behavior using some of these techniques. Jeff Kreisler: [00:40:02] Well, I mean, look, in a good way right now, you joke. But in some ways, isn't that what setting an example for your child is like? We don't lie now. We do lie like some of us lie about Santa Claus on holiday. Some of us lie about like why mommy and daddy are yelling at each other like there are little AIs we say we don't lie as a standard. Jeff Kreisler: [00:40:24] And then that's the anchor from which things might stretch a little bit, you know, setting an example for how hard you work and are you healthy and exercise. In many ways, it's it's anchor. There's nothing wrong with it. I mean, again, I go back to what I said earlier, you can't change human nature. Like, my goal is not to make people change you. They are so recognizing these things play a role in our day to day lives and decision making, whether it's financial or otherwise. Harpreet Sahota: [00:40:51] Talking about financial decision making, earlier you touched on this idea of the fungibility of money, right? The dollar should be a dollar, should be a dollar. Right. But we don't always think of like that do. Right. And we're were talking a little bit earlier about the opportunity cost of not getting a Honda. I'm wondering what's the opportunity cost, how that play with like the mental accounting. Harpreet Sahota: [00:41:16] I guess, first of all, let's talk about what mental accounting is. And then could it be that these people who opted to get a straight ask where you can do the thirty thousand? Harpreet Sahota: [00:41:27] Was that because they had called that their Honda Civic dollard, or whatever, Jeff Kreisler: [00:41:32] So mental accounting is a fascinating bias or behavioral principle. And briefly, what it is, is that when we think about money and other things, but this case money, we are thinking about it very differently, depending on the source of that money or the use of that money, for instance, people will you know, if you give someone a a twelve thousand dollar bonus at the end of the year, as opposed to a one thousand dollars a month raise, it's treated very differently than one thousand dollars a month race. Feels like this is serious money. The source is my work. It's my job that thousand dollars is spent in a more responsible way. A twelve thousand dollar bonus feels like it's a bonus. It's a surprise. It's fun, right? It's a one time payment. And people spend that much less responsibly or responsibles of this elsewhere, but just they don't spend it on like bills and everything. They spend it on something fun or frivolous or they carve off five thousand dollars to spend it. You're still getting twelve thousand dollars for the year, but because of the source of it, in the framing of it, you think it differently. Or another way of looking at is money from your job is treated very different than maybe like inheritance or a lottery winning now or twelve thousand dollars. Jeff Kreisler: [00:42:47] Whether we get it from a bonus or a salary or we get it from a lottery winning or going to casino or whatever, it may be that twelve thousand dollars is our total. It's fungible, right. It should be the same money no matter where we get it should be no matter where we get it from. Right. You find one hundred dollar bill on the floor ground. The street is the same as one hundred dollars. You got all that goes all into your account, if you will. But we treat it very differently. And that also goes for how the destination of the money, if you will, like we treat fund things and discretionary spending and pleasure is very different and we treat important stuff like insurance and rent and health care. And this is the mistake we make. And I use the term mistake compared to what a rational economic actor does or a perfect economic human. They shouldn't do that because of fungibility. Right. They should recognize that our money is the same. However, mental accounting is one of these things where it does serve a purpose. It would be too much for us to think of. All of our money is all the same until accounting essentially leads us to be able to budget and time to move forward again. If you were to go to dinner and think should I spend one hundred dollars on dinner, this is the same hundred dollars I have to pay my health insurance with and plan for my retirement, that's too much. Jeff Kreisler: [00:44:06] So if we can create accounts, mental or otherwise, where this is my discretionary spending, this is my shopping money, this is my saving for the future money, that can be a healthy thing to do to help us make our decisions less cumbersome unless overwhelming. So to answer your question about the Honda thing, I mean, it is entirely conceivable what these folks have made a mental look. They have a car buying mental account. Right. I've got I'm going to do I need a car for whatever reason. And so I put thirty thousand dollars in my car buying account and it just gets hard to literally move money from account to account. When you've done a moment of thinking and you decided this is the best thing to do, it's hard to then tell yourself, wait, Jeff, I made a mistake and go back and change that. So it's another reason why it's hard to get people off. That is because they've said this is what I'm this is what I'm going to spend. So mental accounting is both irrational but potentially helpful as long as it's sort of not taken to extremes and done in a stubborn way. Harpreet Sahota: [00:45:06] What would be like an extreme example of mental accounting? Would that be the example in your book where you just take actual physical dollar bills and just split it up among envelopes? Would that be like the most extreme case? Jeff Kreisler: [00:45:20] I think, yeah. I mean, I think budgeting to the penny and to an obsessive level, it's just not healthy. Now, look, everyone has different moments in their lives where they need to do that, right? You're you're having you lost a job. You're having a tough time. You need to, like, pinch every penny. But there are also folks that are that are relatively well off that that say, you know, I'm going to put one hundred dollars here and I'm not going to spend a single penny more. And then if they have an emergency or they have someone's birthday and they want to buy a gift, that they they beat themselves up over spending ten extra dollars. And that's just not the healthy way to live. We don't want everyone to be these machines. We just want them to have some more control there, folks to take that to to the extreme of sometimes literally putting their money and the hopes and other times just sort of limiting their own options, money. So money supposed to help us blossom to provide a little bit of freedom to us, to have choices, as I said, to decide what we want to do and focus. When we spend it irresponsibly, we can get in trouble, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's meant to be a tool of advancement for us. Harpreet Sahota: [00:46:34] I'm starting to feel like I can't trust myself. Jeff Kreisler: [00:46:38] No you can't - give me your money. I'll take care of it, it's fine. Harpreet Sahota: [00:46:42] That's an interesting thing. Give give you my money. You'll take care of it. Do we have the same cognitive biases for other people's money as we do for our own? Jeff Kreisler: [00:46:51] Yes, but it's less extreme. Functionally, no. we treat each very different like we all have. We're all prone to the same biases. It's just a question of in what context and how strong those are. And what I found is when you think about what I'm going to what I would tell you to do if I was your financial adviser, what I would tell you to do with your money for your pay, your school bills and retirement and save for your kid's future like that tends to be me going back in the cold, looking at this like the graphs and the numbers and not being emotional. But when I start thinking about my money, that's my college, that's my retirement and my kids, I'm like, I'm emotional about that. Those things are connected to me in a way that that no one else can understand. So the biases do impact me differently. Now, it's why having a financial advisor is, for the most part, like a great idea, someone who can take money, which is so emotionally charged and it's not you and your partner or spouse to have there. There's a whole other layer of emotions there that someone separated who can look at it like with those numbers and help you think about what to do. Now, of course, there's also the issue of like financial advisers, like you have to get a reputable one and trustworthy, etc. But if you're in a position to get advice from someone who doesn't have that emotional connection, I can just look and hear what you want to do and think about what would be best for you based upon those numbers and charts. That is a help. Jeff Kreisler: [00:48:21] You don't have to do what he or he or she says, but it would be great to. I'm not that person. I'm I'm not a financial adviser. I'm not like he put your money in these stocks or anything. I'm like, this is why you so crazy, man. Come on. Harpreet Sahota: [00:48:34] Thanks very much for man. Jeff Kreisler: [00:48:38] You can still send me your money. Harpreet Sahota: [00:48:39] You can send it to me, you guys, if you want. You talked about the last section of the book. Dollars and Sense is all about how we could kind of ward off these negative. I don't know. Are they negative cognitive biases? I don't know. They might serve some good purposes, but we talked about and we talked about arbitrary coherence and confirmation bias. Another one you talk about is this concept of herding and self-herding. Can you talk to us about that. Jeff Kreisler: [00:49:12] Sure. Herding you may have people may have heard of like a social proof, a social pressure. Just the idea that we tend to go along with the crowd. You know, a lot of people hear this referred to when it comes to investing in stocks. Right. Like everybody's buying Apple, I got to do it. Or the stock market is falling because everyone's selling. I should sell it to or, you know, it happens. You know, when you see people sort of I don't know, there's a new shoe that's really hot and everyone's wearing the new shoe. Jeff Kreisler: [00:49:40] You got to go by the new shoe or new car or whatever it is when we when we go along with what others are doing, because we don't have we haven't figured out if it's the right choice or not. And it's particularly powerful with our peer group, a more focused peer group. Like if I go on TV and I see everybody's hoarding toilet paper, maybe I'm a little drawn to that. But I like the idea of hurting. But like, if everybody if I go on TV and I see, you know, everybody in my neighborhood that's just like me and has a young family and lives on my street is doing that, then I'm like, oh, I got to do it. In both cases, I haven't really decided if it's the right choice. I'm just being guided by the herd. Now, if you take that idea of, like, it being a peer group, your father really to its ultimate end point. I am a peer group of my for myself. I am the only peer in the world for me. And so if I am in a world could see that I was doing something and all of the Jeff Chryslers were doing something, I would of course think that that's the right thing to do. And how this tends to play out is when we look at our past decisions and again, we don't want to question ourselves, we want to say we're wrong and we sail that past decision that Jeff made. Jeff Kreisler: [00:50:46] I know Jeff. Jeff is smart, just just like me. He probably made the right choice. And we tend to just go along with the decision we made in the past. The easy example is going to buy a five dollar latte right now, I guess. I guess avocado toast has replaced five dollar potatoes. The evil overspend. But OK, fine. Say you go buy a ten dollar avocado toast. If I go on Monday to buy that ten dollar avocados and it's my first time, like, yeah, let's give it a try. I'll have it. It'll be good. If I go back on Wednesday, I'm probably not going to really think about it. I might think, oh, you know, I remember on Monday I said it was a good idea. I'll do it again by Friday. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm definitely getting the avocado toast. I always get the. It's tough, it's how it's always been and so on and so on, and it builds and we tend to like follow our own herd, which can lead us down sort of this confirmation bias and reinforcing path for decision. So it's an easy phrase, but you better check yourself now and then before you want to finish the phrase reckless. I'm get a little punchy at the end of a long day. Harpreet Sahota: [00:51:49] I dig it. This concept itself. It is interesting because I if memory came to mind when I was very early in my career of a study by an actuary and every morning I have to study for actuarial exams and that's at this cafe. And I'd get the apple fritter on Monday and say, oh, it was a good idea on Monday that's going to get on Tuesday. And they think it's like three months. Harpreet Sahota: [00:52:14] And I've been eating apple fritters for breakfast for three months straight. Jeff Kreisler: [00:52:18] Which isn't just bad financially, but I know it's not great for the waistline. Definitely. Definitely lost everything in moderation. Right. There's another famous phrase for you. Harpreet Sahota: [00:52:28] So, I mean, officially, it's official. We suck at making decisions. So what are your top three favorite tips for taking our flawed financial thinking and maybe helping ourselves? Jeff Kreisler: [00:52:44] I'd say, broadly speaking, to just stop and think about the big picture, like when you can't like, why are you making this? It's not like we tend to get caught up in the mechanics of like how we're paying. I mean, like why like how does this choice connect to who you are as a person and what you want to be about. And that sounds very flighty, but there are studies showing in the moments of stress and uncertainty and pressure, if we stop and think about the big picture and our goals and our values, that can just help settle us into a moment or think, oh, do I really is this really about who I am? And what that tends to do is it helps us think about the future a little bit more, because our biggest issue of self-control is oftentimes we don't think about the future. We just act upon the emotional feelings of right now. So if you find a way to stop and think about the choice, that's a big picture. Great thing to do every time. Now, my next item sort of refines that every time. Things like don't stress about the little spends, we tend to worry about the little spends like a cup of coffee and whether I should tip 50 cents or not and get overwhelmed and not worry so much about the big spends. Right. Like a car, college, the house, when we think about those, but like within within those spending is like a car. There may be like a thousand dollar add on that. We're like, oh, fine, whatever. Modest spending. Thirty thousand dollars or a house. Jeff Kreisler: [00:54:04] Right. There might be like a renovation. That's an extra ten thousand dollars or whatever. I'm spending three hundred thousand dollars. That's more money than you're ever going to make up for tipping a barista. But we tend to like stress about the little things and not the big ones. And my advice would be this whole idea, like stop and thinking about it. Like if you have to choose, always stop and send as much time as you can on big number the the actual amount of money that's being spent. Right. Not the percent, but the actual amount like stop and think about those because that impacts your future and your potential and your freedom. Don't stress about the little ones. I'm not saying just spend Willy thousands of one dollar bills throwing them out the street of people like don't worry about that. Like live your life, the ones that are in the middle, the sort of like recurrent medium sized spending. Those you should think about now on that like like paying for cable, paying one hundred fifty dollars a month for cable. Think about that when you first sign up. But then don't worry about it every night but every for six months or whatever. But every now and then check it and say, am I watching cable, is it worth one hundred fifty dollars. Know any sort of like recurring automatic bill payment you have. Like it's nice to not worry about your payments, your cell phone, et cetera. So let it go. Don't worry about it all the time, but every now and then check in on it. Jeff Kreisler: [00:55:17] So it sort of flips what we tend to do on its head. Again, we tend to stress about the little ones and not the big ones. Let's just flip that on our head. The third thing, piece of advice, I have a ton of them, but I would say like finding a trusted person to talk about with your money, even if it's not a financial adviser, but just someone who you can talk about your money that is not like emotionally connected to you. It's not your partner. It's just someone who can give you another perspective, whether that's like, do you think I should spend money on this to buy this car or this house or, you know, you're going shopping or you go shopping with friends sometimes like know it's hard because we tend not to share a lot of financial details with everyone. We like to think act like we know what we're doing, but like find a trusted friend or someone who you can be yourself with again, nobody knows what they're doing with money. We all pretend we do and find someone who you can be honest about that this is a lot easier said than done. It's a big challenge, as I said, and had some people listening who is like, I can't think of anybody. I have friends, but I'm talking about money. It's. Try to find some place where you can talk about money, maybe it's not a person, maybe it's the forum, maybe it's a book, maybe it's something. But find a place where you can be honest with yourself about how hard this thing about money. Harpreet Sahota: [00:56:37] Thank you very much for those tips, man. I really appreciate that. You want to leave us with any other cognitive biases that we might find ourselves on victim to this season when it comes to anything with the money, that's a big one. Jeff Kreisler: [00:56:54] I would say that broadly speaking, the bias that I that I'm most interested in exploring comes from an idea where money is not as powerful as we think it is. More studies are showing that as a matter of incentives and motivation and engagement in the workplace, money is you have to get a certain level of money like after that, like that doesn't really engage us. It doesn't engage our our sense of purpose and our identity and professional motivation. I think that's true throughout our lives. Like money is is a is a substitute we often fall back on again for how do you measure love and these other things. But just remember that, that it's not the be all and end all. It's our most common way of measuring value. I know from my own life I talked about the education and the opportunities that I passed up to be a corporate lawyer and everything. And my family didn't understand. And every little accomplishment had, like I got on a comedy show or as on TV or I went over and worked with somebody. The question was, how much does it pay? That isn't how it was measured in value to me. But I came to understand that's just like how they could measure something that they didn't understand the value of. And that's OK. Right. But but recognize that money isn't the only way to measure things, whether it's your own value, your relationship value or even your work and your purpose in life. And when we do that, we'll start to find the other things that matter to us and we'll start to be able to make our financial decisions without as much pressure, without feeling like every financial decision impacts our value as people. They're just decisions that help us move along. Jeff Kreisler: [00:58:26] Through the day's. Harpreet Sahota: [00:58:27] Last formal question before we jump into a quick random round. Oh, no, it's one hundred years in the future. What do you want to be remembered for? Jeff Kreisler: [00:58:36] Saving the planet from an asteroid that can't you know, I, I would like to make critical thinking cool. I would just like in whatever realm finances, politics, personal lives. Jeff Kreisler: [00:58:50] Like, I would like to make the idea that we think about stuff to to be the default. And I feel like our culture has really walked away from critical thought for thinking soon more than one step thinking about the future realm of just really deeply thinking about stuff. I feel like we've walked away from that as a leading value. And I would love to return to to that. Not that we're all going to sit around and top hats and and pontificate about stuff. We can find a way to fold that into our hectic lives. But let's find that way. Harpreet Sahota: [00:59:23] Dig it, man. So first question here in the random roundabout. What are you currently most excited about or currently exploring? Jeff Kreisler: [00:59:33] The most excited about the idea of rapid covid tests or that? Know, I as I mentioned to young kids and I'm really just getting into being with them and they're there in different stages of their education. And I've come to try to embrace the fact that I am a home school teacher a lot of times. And I'm I'm sort of learning the art and the craft of teaching and then helping them learn. I've always been involved, but more so now, and I'm loving that. Harpreet Sahota: [01:00:02] What are you inspired by right now? Jeff Kreisler: [01:00:05] I'm currently on, I guess, a science kick in a weird way, like I'm just sort of tooling around and looking at new studies and things that are out there. They might be a reaction to people rejecting science so aggressively in the corporate world, or might be my dad's voice echoing in my head as a scientist. But just, I don't know, geeking out a little bit on that stuff. Harpreet Sahota: [01:00:28] What do you believe that other people think is crazy? Jeff Kreisler: [01:00:33] There's a lot I believe I believe that I my spirituality is a is a and a physics based spirituality. I believe in the power of the universe. I don't believe that's an omnipotent being. But I believe that there's a beauty and an art to all of the forces in the universe and how they can play a role in us. And I think that there is so much power and we haven't yet learned about ourselves and the universe that connects us that I'm excited for every little marginal breakthrough to see what else we can do as people in this crazy spinning. Harpreet Sahota: [01:01:13] That's pretty interesting. I've got kind of a physics based spirituality twist on reincarnation that is grounded in the laws of physics because, you know, energy can't be created or just. We transferred, so if you think about the electrical impulses, energize your body, but I love it now. Jeff Kreisler: [01:01:32] Is this it? Yeah. Validus I know going up to clouds and playing around a Harp, you know. Yeah. Harpreet Sahota: [01:01:39] I mean, I was in high school when I made that up. I was definitely on some clouds and 4:20 rpm. Understood. Harpreet Sahota: [01:01:48] What would you do if you're the last person on earth? Jeff Kreisler: [01:01:51] I don't know man. I always think about that Twilight Zone episode where the guy he really wanted to read and kind of get time to read and there was an apocalypse and suddenly had all the time in the world to read. And then he broke his reading glasses and asked, man, I can't. So I don't want to put anything out there. But I don't know. I think I would just I would walk I like I like motion. I'd walk and I'd I probably would I probably wouldn't worry so much about writing down all the crazy ideas that I have because I just let them go back to you. Harpreet Sahota: [01:02:25] Speaking of reading, What are, What currently reading? Jeff Kreisler: [01:02:28] I'm currently reading two books. Jeff Kreisler: [01:02:30] One is one of the Harry Potter books I'm reading with my son, and another is a book called Wanting That a friend of mine gave me that I only just started. I don't read nearly enough books. I tend to read short form things, magazines and Internet crap that I'm trying to do some more reading. Harpreet Sahota: [01:02:49] What do you have on repeat in terms of a song? Jeff Kreisler: [01:02:53] So as any good middle aged white boy, I'm listening to Billy Bad Boy a lot lately. I listened to right before this podcast. Harpreet Sahota: [01:03:03] All right, that's awesome. And I'll open up the random question generator. Oh, God, I'm scared. And so they're all safe. What's your favorite book? Jeff Kreisler: [01:03:14] Welcome to The Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut. It's a collection of short stories I'm sure your listeners would gather. Jeff Kreisler: [01:03:20] A lot of Vonnegut fans love. Harpreet Sahota: [01:03:23] Vonnegut is awesome. You can have any superpower. What would it be and why? Jeff Kreisler: [01:03:30] Oh, man, I've gone. I've done a lot of thinking, like I've gone around a lot of circles in this. And so I would say stopping time has been a consistent one as well as sort of telekinesis. Jeff Kreisler: [01:03:45] I don't want to control other people, but being able to sort of use the force essentially on objects Harpreet Sahota: [01:03:51] What incredibly strong opinion do you have that is completely unimportant in the grand scheme of things? Jeff Kreisler: [01:04:00] You should load the dishwasher in a way that is conscious of how you're going to have to unload it later. Harpreet Sahota: [01:04:06] Well, that's a good one to do. The last one here, what's the best thing you've got from one of your parents? Jeff Kreisler: [01:04:13] I just think like a value in education and learning. Harpreet Sahota: [01:04:18] Yeah. Yeah. So what's next on the agenda for you? Working on any new books, anything? Jeff Kreisler: [01:04:23] I am always still in different projects. Speaking right now, peoplescience.com Jeff Kreisler: [01:04:29] Has been a baby of mine. That'll be about that time it comes out because the three years looking at some other opportunities, just looking at ways again to spread the gospel of behavioral science as a tool, people can track that down people science dot com or track me down a JeffKreisler.com And Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and all that and see what's happened. I'd love to hear from your listeners what they think. Harpreet Sahota: [01:04:52] Jeff, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be here. I really appreciate you at the end of a very long day for you to come here, young man. Appreciate it. Thank you. Jeff Kreisler: [01:05:00] Thank you.