COMING SOON
The Ritual Effect
Our lives are filled with repetitive tasks meant to keep us on track—what we come to know as habits. Over time, these routines (for example, brushing your teeth or putting on your right sock first) tend to be performed automatically. But when we’re more mindful about these actions—when we focus on the precise way they are performed—they can instead become rituals. Shifting from a “habitual” mindset to a “ritual” mindset can convert ordinary acts from black and white to technicolor.
Think of the way you savor a certain beverage, the care you take with a particular outfit that gets worn only on special occasions, the unique way that your family gathers around the table during holidays, or the secret language you enjoy with your significant other. To some, these behaviors may seem quirky, but because rituals matter so deeply to us on a personal level, they imbue our lives with purpose and meaning. Drawing on a decade of original research, Norton shows that rituals play a role in healing communities experiencing a great loss, marking life’s major transitions, driving a stadium of sports fans to ecstasy, and helping us rise to challenges and realize opportunities.
Compelling, insightful, and practical, The Ritual Effect reminds us of the intention-filled acts that drive human behavior and create surprising satisfaction and enjoyment.
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Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending
Two professors combine their fascinating and cutting-edge research in behavioral science to explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow their five core principles of happier spending.
Most people recognize that they need professional advice on how to earn, save, and invest their money. When it comes to spending that money, most people just follow their intuitions. But scientific research shows that those intuitions are often wrong.
Happy Money offers a tour of research on the science of spending, explaining how you can get more happiness for your money. Authors Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton have outlined five principles—from choosing experiences over stuff to spending money on others—to guide not only individuals looking for financial security, but also companies seeking to create happier employees and provide “happier products” to their customers. Dunn and Norton show how companies from Google to Pepsi to Charmin have put these ideas into action.
Testimonials
Arthur C. Brooks, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of From Strength to Strength
If you are looking for purpose, better family dynamics, or simply a happier life, Michael Norton just might be the answer. In The Ritual Effect, Norton masterfully shows that, from the religious to the secular, rituals in your life play a central role in reaping full value from each moment.
Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators
Habits are powerful, but, as Michael Norton demonstrates in this fascinating book, there are other patterns that are essential to the well-lived life: rituals. Featuring lively storytelling and cutting-edge science, The Ritual Effect sticks with you as it shows how to build the rituals needed to perform under pressure, savor an experience, or construct a memory that will last forever.
Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit
A masterclass in ritual presented by one of my very favorite behavioral scientists! The Ritual Effect opens our eyes to the rituals we already perform—and the ones we can choose to create—which have the remarkable power to infuse the mundane with meaning and emotion.
Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret, Drive, and When
Mike Norton has crafted an endlessly fascinating exploration of the rituals all around us, and the remarkable power they have to shape our moods, identities, and performance. The Ritual Effect will stir you to see your beliefs and relationships with fresh eyes—and spur you to transform ordinary activities into sources of wonder and delight.
Laurie Santos, Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast
Norton gives the reader a witty, thought-provoking guide to some of our species' oldest and quirkiest behavior. If you want to understand and harness the psychological power of rituals to live and think better, this is the book for you.
Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness
If you think money doesn't buy happiness, then you're just not spending it right. In this lively and engaging book, Dunn and Norton use the latest scientific research to show how you can get a bigger emotional bang for your hard-earned bucks. Happy Money isn't a purchase; it's an investment—and a shrewd one at that.
Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick and Switch
Many books have been written to tell you how to make money, save money, and invest money. Now there's a book that can tell you how to spend it. Wisely.
The Economist
Packed with tips...people will come away from this book believing it was money well spent.
Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational
No one understands how to get more happiness out of our money better than Liz Dunn and Mike Norton. Their research is not only on the cutting edge—it changes where the edge is. Like stand-up comedians of science, Dunn and Norton take ordinary observations that everybody experiences and craftily distill them with a clarity that makes us laugh, and then makes us think. They have done us a great service by sharing their knowledge with us in the easy-to-apply principles they present in this book.
Kirkus Reviews
[Dunn and Norton's] infectious enthusiasm for their subject is admirable.... They provide an interesting exploration of increasing happiness by buying time, as well as ways to address budgeting.