Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

One of the most important ideas in this book is that it is only by deviating from a narrow, short-term self-interest that we can generate anything more than cheap talk.

Business people and politicians do not quite understand this and tend to evaluate decisions by the rigour of the process that produces them, rather than by the rigour with which you evaluate their consequences.

meaning is conveyed by the things we do that are not in our own short-term self-interest – by the costs that we incur and the risks we take.

The models that dominate all human decision-making today are duly heavy on simplistic logic, and light on magic – a spreadsheet leaves no room for miracles.

it’s easy to achieve massive improvements in perception at a fraction of the cost of equivalent improvements in reality.

In general, people are impressed by any visible extra effort that goes into a product:

problems, technology may have equipped us with a rational straitjacket that limits our freedom to solve them.

For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel.

But it also comes from our urge to depict our behaviour in as high-minded a way as we can manage, hiding our unconscious motivations beneath a rational facade.