The Idea That You Will Make The

The Retail Industry Has Its Own Headache: It Loses $16 Billion A Year To Customers Who Buy Clothes, Wear Them With The Tags Tucked In, And Return These Secondhand Clothes For A Full Refund.

In Total, By Giving People $30 Bonus, Intel Lost Almost 5 Percent Of Productivity. That's A Lot. Now, Think About It. You Give Money Because You Think This Would Increase Motivation. It Actually Decreases Motivation.

In The U.s., I Think There Is An Ideology Of Not Telling Kids What To Do. Nobody To Tell You Who To Marry, Not Tell You What Job To Pick. You're Your Own Person. You Have The Freedom To Choose, Including The Freedom To Fail In Magnificent Ways. And I Think That's The Big Difference. In Other Countries There Is Basically A Social Norm About Saving That Is Passed From Generation To Generation. In The U.s. There Isn't.

The Bad News Is That Ignoring The Performance Of People Is Almost As Bad As Shredding Their Effort In Front Of Their Eyes. Ignoring Gets You A Whole Way Out There. The Good News Is That By Simply Looking At Something That Somebody Has Done, Scanning It And Saying "uh Huh," That Seems To Be Quite Sufficient To Dramatically Improve People's Motivations.

Money Actually Becomes Even More Difficult Than Other Things Because It's Very Hard To Imagine What The Benefits Are To Saving. So, Imagine That You See A New Bicycle, A New Pair Of Shoes, Or Something Today. You Know Exactly What You Are Giving Up If You Are Not Buying It, What Are You Gaining In The Future If You Are Not Getting It. So, You Are Giving Up The Bicycle Today, What Is It In The Future? What Will Happen If You Send Another $1,000 To Your Retirement Fund? What Difference Will It Make? It Is Very, Very Hard To Figure Out.