7 Up, 7 Down

irst drafts of seven children's books in seven days are complete. The books are
based on the findings of a cognitive psychology study (previously cited) that I believe has the potential to improve financial decision making through better awareness of common biases we unconsciously employ daily.

The findings I chose to focus on pertain to biases of availability (the ease with which examples of the event come to mind), hindsight biases after Black Swans (eg, banning box-cutters on planes after 9/11), motivation to prevent Black Swans, the conjunction fallacy (people tend to think a story more probable with each bit of additional detail it has than less probable), and "anchoring, adjustment and contamination" (eg, deciding to buy one item at the store not ten of that item because there's a special or the store is about to close) - among others.

The seven books will sit on ice for a month then I'll look at them again with fresh eyes and work them over a second time. And then a third before submitting them to peer review and the harshest critics - kids.

Writing these books as 16 rhyming couplets forced me to keep them lean and to keep the action up. Originally, I thought writing in this fashion would lead to more dumbed down material with a watered-down story, but I think I've avoided that by keeping the stories in line.

On Deck: While I prefer writing about baseball during the off-season, I've challenged myself to finish a draft of The Boston Squeeze by the end of this calendar year. Batter up.

And now for my next trick...

ears ago friends introduced me to the work of German painter Gerhard Richter. Richter often layers paint which he then scrapes away at giving the piece a third dimension. What I like about Richter's approach is how he literally digs deeper.

In carving up my tome of a children's book on financial education, I settled on a single story that transcends financial education. This made me wonder - have I dug deep enough or have I just scratched the surface?

The depth of my exploration of this topic became particularly clear as I read Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. Make that the book's afterword. For as good as the book is, the afterword is even better because of Ferguson's discussion of cognitive psychology - particularly our ability to avoid biases such as overestimating success and underestimating risk and failure - and its impact on our ability to make good financial decisions on a daily basis. 

Question is, how many of us will ever read Ferguson's afterword? How many will read the 26 page study by Eliezer Yudkowsky that the afterword is based on? 10% of the population? 1%? How many of us have read all our email? Exactly.

In the last few years Rockabye Baby! started putting out albums called "Lullaby Renditions of..." various musical artists. They've done Radiohead, Bob Marley, Adele, Journey, Kanye West and many more. In each case they replace vocals with xylophones and other kid-friendly instrumentals. These renditions did for pop music what Baby Einstein did for classical music.

Yudkowsky's study discusses eight points in particular that are just as interesting as the findings of the marshmallow test. In a series I'm simply calling, "Big Ideas, Little Books," I will now for my next trick write a 32 page children's book for each of the eight ideas discussed in the study. And I will write them all in the next eight days. If DiMaggio can get a hit in 56 straight, I can write 16 rhyming couplets for eight days straight.

Knock-Knock

ertain events come with time stamps. Off-hand, I recall three: 9/11, the death of J.D. Salinger, and the first knock-knock joke by Syd, aged 2.

Master Syd's delivery of the joke is particularly notable because till then he preferred to stop after the initial "Who's there?" response and break out in laughter as if holding the punchline hostage was joke enough.

Just when he had conditioned us to expect his premature guffaws, he surprised us with the whole joke:

Syd: "Knock-knock."
Audience: "Who's there?"

Syd: "Syd."
Audience: "Syd who?"

Syd: "Syd down, you're rockin' the boat!"

The delivery of the punchline - on time and with gusto - brought the house down.

The knock-knock joke has made us laugh or roll our eyes since at least 1936. It survives as a corny hand-me-down from one generation to the next thanks to its tight five line formula; a formula that is so rote and delivered so quickly that the only bit in question is the last few words which we run up to like a cliff only to fall over like a lemming every time.

How did I get onto knock-knock jokes? Good question. After working on the marshmallow test story, I learned the importance of distraction from temptation. Writing knock-knock jokes is a good distraction. Telling them is even better.

Distractions are particularly important in "hot" times, that is, times when folks are apt to make poor decisions based on emotion (arguing balls and strikes after getting rung up only to get tossed) rather than better decisions during "cool" times (returning after a long walk following a disagreement).

Chapter after chapter and situation after situation, be they in the marshmallow test story of Cookie-Wise Pablo or an additional series of Pablo stories I'm outlining based on cognitive psychology studies regarding heuristics and biases, the hot/cold dichotomy appears frequently. Often it seems that will power and intelligence aren't so much required to make good decisions as the ability to distract oneself from temptation or "hot" scenarios.

So, in one story Pablo distracts himself by going for a walk. In another, he writes and tells knock-knock jokes. What do you do to cool down?