Look Again The Power of Noticing What Was Always There

by Sharot, Tali; Sunstein, Cass R.

• ISBN13: 9781668008201
• ISBN10: 1668008203
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781668008225
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-02-27
• Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
• More Book Details
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Summary

This “smart and fun read, and a valuable way to revitalize your life” (Walter Isaacson) deftly explains how disrupting our well-worn routines, both good and bad, can rejuvenate and reset our brains for the better.

Have you ever noticed that what is exciting on Monday tends to become boring on Friday? Even passionate relationships, stimulating jobs, and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after a while. As easy as it is to stop noticing what is most wonderful in our lives, it’s also possible to stop noticing what is terrible. People get used to dirty air. They become unconcerned by their own misconduct, blind to inequality, and are more liable to believe misinformation than ever before.

Now, neuroscience professor Tali Sharot and Harvard law professor (and presidential advisor) Cass R. Sunstein investigate why we stop noticing both the great and not-so-great things around us and how to “dishabituate” at the office, in the bedroom, at the store, on social media, and in the voting booth.

This groundbreaking and “sensational guide to a more psychological rich life” (Angela Duckworth, New York Times bestselling author), based on decades of research, illuminates how we can reignite the sparks of joy, innovate, and recognize where improvements urgently need to be made. The key to this disruption—to seeing, feeling, and noticing again—is change. By temporarily changing your environment, changing the rules, changing the people you interact with—or even just stepping back and imagining change—you regain sensitivity, allowing you to identify more clearly the bad and more deeply appreciate the good.

Author Biography

Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience in the department of experimental psychology and at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry at University College London and on the faculty of the department of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. She is the founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London. She has been featured in numerous outlets and has written for The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, and more. Before becoming a neuroscientist, Sharot worked in the financial industry and completed her national mandatory service in the Israeli air force. She is the author of The Optimism Bias and The Influential Mind. She lives in Boston and London with her husband and children.

Cass R. Sunstein is the nation’s most-cited legal scholar who, for the past fifteen years, also has been at the forefront of behavioral economics. From 2009 to 2012, he served as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. His book, Nudge, coauthored with Richard Thaler, was a national bestseller.