> For example, what you eat is shaped far more by what you see than by what you search for.
The linked study is co-authored by the disgraced researcher/fraudster Brian Wansink. I guess this was one of the studies that didn’t get retracted, but I still wouldn’t put a lot of faith in anything with his name on it.
But is that a nit that changes nothing (e.g., there is significant other valid evidence that supports the same point) and so could be simply updated, or is it the linchpin of the entire argument, without which the entire premise and argument fails?
If it is the latter, it's good to draw our attention to it, but if the former, then this is kind of a meaningless distraction. I haven't got the time ATM to sort it out. Perhaps someone with knowledge could add the needed insight?
By no means does this little nit invalidate the entire article. But since this article is a grab-bag of separate points, we can only critique point by point.
I do think the bad cite weakens this one point—if there were better studies in support of this point, why didn’t the author cite them instead? And since there’s no reliable evidentiary backing for this point, you have to go by whether it feels right to you. Which is fine! That’s how most advice works. But we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that “studies say” this point is right without further evidence.
Digging into the study now. It was very small: the subjects were 16 office workers. They analyzed between-subjects rather than within-subjects, which seems a little suspicious given that within-subjects is more interesting and given Wansink’s history of p hacking. Finally, the results comparing visible vs non-visible food (the part alluded to in the HBR article when it says “seeing is eating”) had a p-value of 0.03, so they barely reached significance. My gut says this study is not likely to replicate.
That's interesting, thanks for taking the time to investigate this further (I lack the knowledge about this field and the statistical methods and it was an honest question).
I saw "change your friends" and noped out. Toxic mindset. That is a key to isolation and an unhealthy, sad life. Makes him sound like a LinkedIn nutter.
If you are meth addict it would be unbelievably naive to think remaining friends with and hanging out with other meth addicts would do anything but hurt your quest to stop smoking meth. Better to be friendless than hooked on meth.
Right but it solidifies a mindset that boils down to “instead of working to communicate with someone about a trait I deem problematic, it’s easier to simply replace that friend with someone else.”
> We are profoundly shaped by outside forces that manipulate, distract, arouse, and impede us.
Every time I read an article like this, I think it would be better to spend time learning to meditate so your decisions can be more rational and thoughtful in general. The best case from this article is that while other people are tricking and manipulating you, you can also trick and manipulate yourself. Not to say that people who meditate don't use these same strategies, but they are less of a necessity and used in a less underhanded way.
I learned to meditate recently, and it allowed me to quit biting my nails.
I had actually given up on meditation, thinking it wasn't doing much for me practically. But then a month later I tried to quit biting my nails, which I have tried dozens of times in the past, and this time I succeeded.
I didn't even try that hard. I just used mindfulness to separate out the desire to bite my nails from the appearance of my unbitten nails, and the urge faded.
I'll probably get back into meditation some time soon.
> For example, if you want to cultivate a more positive attitude about big changes in your company, lunch more often with those who are leading the charge and less often with those who are forming the opposition.
Sounds like very familiar best-practices advice for the stereotypical corporate boot-licking yes-person.
Speaking of framing, as the article does, the writer seems to be implicitly framing failures to being the best manipulative, sharp-elbowed status climber you can be... as "bad habits".
My initial attitude toward that section was similar. But in the spirit of doing a charitable interpretation - in every company there are those who want to do good and make a change. And there are those who just want to say No to everything. Just everything. Just no. There are always ten million reasons to not do anything new and just keep being the same. And the article is suggesting that if you spend more time with those who want to change things you will adopt their attitude by osmosis. Doesn't say anything whether any given change is a good one.
If you are an alcoholic, being around people who drink a lot is not helping you. I choose to interpret that paragraph to mean you shoild be around people with attitude you want to adopt.
More broadly I see articles main point to be adopting a systemic approach. Don't think hope or try to magically make yourself "a better person who doesn't do bad things ". Rather come up with systems and methods to enforce behaviour you want in yourself.
IMHO, charitable interpretation is for HN comments.
With HBR, it might be better to see what they're pushing today, and guessing how that affects people who read it seriously. (Though it's often just filler or brand-promotion content that's innocuous, AFAICT.)
If you can also salvage good ideas by considering the content at face value, that's a bonus, but don't let that compromise your critical thinking.
That book is life changing, if it's 'How To Win Friends'. Maybe for an older person, this stuff is trivial, but for a younger me, it taught me just how much we as a species think only of ourselves, how you can never win an argument, how you cannot browbeat someone into submission. You can at best hope to make the other person want to do something. Look at things from their perspective.
Stephen Covey seemed to hate Carnegie's book too, as if the book was written by a moustache-twirling supervillain. It's not. It's just a very lovely look into human psyche, beautifully illustrated by tonnes of examples (rather than the platitude-filled bullshit that is inside modern books by Ryan Holiday and company).
Maybe I was too biased when I skimmed through it. I understand that people all have complex psychologies and being aware of the recurrent traits is useful. But to me it lacks real warmth.. I'll try reading it again.
If I'm a lowly IC leading a project to improve code reviews, are those interested in my work "bootlickers"? Notice the article didn't say managers, you're assuming it.
I think most of the proverbs can be found in different languages in similar forms.
But with nuances. The russian saying is similar: "С кем поведёшься, от того и наберёшься" (literally: "You learn from the people you take up with").
One way to same the same thing is "a man is known by the company he keeps", but
the best english equivalent would be: "You lie with dogs, you wake up with fleas"
This has worked really well for me.
For instance, I deliberately work standing up in the garden with some fitness gear around. Every time I need to wait for something, like a build process or before the next email to write, I do a few bench presses, or push ups. Almost automatically. When I'm seated at a regular office desk, I tend to distract myself with some mindless internet browsing instead. Just creating the right environment can be enough to alter behavior.
The author actually used "soda pop." I've heard plenty of people say "soda" or "pop." But I usually associate "soda pop" with the way people talked in the 1920's - 1940's.
Wikipedia has an entire article on Names for Soft Drinks in the United States [1], but it only says "soda pop" is first attested in 1863, and "is used by some speakers, especially in the Mountain West" without a source for that specific claim.
A Merriam-Webster search [2] says Steve Forbes used it in his magazine in 2021, but his biography says he grew up in New Jersey and has mostly lived on the East Coast.
The linked study is co-authored by the disgraced researcher/fraudster Brian Wansink. I guess this was one of the studies that didn’t get retracted, but I still wouldn’t put a lot of faith in anything with his name on it.