Ten minutes of a smartphone in front of your nose is about the equivalent of an hour long walk in bright daylight. Imagine going for an hour long walk in bright daylight and then thinking, "Now I'll get some sleep." It ain't going to happen.

Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don't know the odds. It's a big difference.

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.

People who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it.

Doubting what you see is a very odd experience. And doubting what you remember is a little less odd than doubting what you see. But it's also a pretty odd experience, because some memories come with a very compelling sense of truth about them, and that happens to be the case even for memories that are not true.

We have associations to things. We have, you know, we have associations to tables and to - and to dogs and to cats and to Harvard professors, and that's the way the mind works. It's an association machine.