So for decisions about happiness you essentially need at least both and probably even more than that, you probably also need to do analysis that doesn't involve yourself to get at the answer of what will make you happy in 10 years.

So gut tells you "How do I feel about this right now?" It doesn't tell me how I feel about it tomorrow or even a few minutes from now. It just tells me how I'm feeling right now.

There is a different attitude about, you know, how much differentiation there needs to be between our options and how many choices do I need to have in order to make a choice.

We also don't always know what we want. And in those cases it can actually make us worse off because it's actually easier to figure out what you want and to figure out how the options differ if you have about a handful of them than if you have a hundred of them.

This is at a time when you know most of us drank tap water, so I used to go to this store and examine all the varieties and we used to marvel at all the choices out there, but I found that I rarely bought anything and I kind of thought that was kind of curious. I mean, they had things that the other grocery stores didn't have and yet I never bought anything.

Choosing is a creative process, one through which we construct our environment, our lives, ourselves.

I've done a number of studies with speed dating and Match.com and what's interesting is that you know we still walk into a speed dating event, you know, thinking about what it is we're looking for in a mate and so you ask people, like women will say "I'm looking for somebody who is really kind and sincere and smart and funny."