MichaelAaron Flicker

How could that be that people don't follow what it is they say they're going to do?

And so academia has built this body of research and academics that helps explain how consumers actually behave rather than how they claim they will behave.

And this is a fascinating field for me.

I got involved in it about 12, 13 years ago, and it's been a passion of mine ever since.

When I was growing up and learning my first economics classes, my first business classes, we learn these models that humans are rational actors and given the choice of one good option and one bad option, they're going to choose the good option.

The challenge in my career and in my life has been that's not always proven to be the case.

They don't always choose the thing that's in their best interest.

They don't always choose the thing that seems like the best option for them.

And I think one thing that all the listeners can think about is humans are much more emotionally driven than rationally driven.

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman said, thinking is to humans

like swimming is to cats.

They can do it, they just prefer not to.

And so there's something about the human experience that if we can take a mental shortcut, if we can not have to work as hard to get to that outcome, we're not going to.

Fascinating fact, the human brain

is only 2% weight of your whole body, but consumes 20% of all your calories.

So literally over hundreds of thousands of years, the development of humans has been a survival of the fittest to use as few calories as possible.

And we're going to use these mental powers we have to make these shortcuts.

Your question, Shannon, is how do we teach people to stay the course?

How do we teach them to invest in the long game rather than the short game?

The first thing is to understand that the rational, logical argument may not be the most compelling one.