Cass Sunstein: commitment

Transcript context

…Last question, before Q&A — this is in a way about nudges. But even in the last two years, you’ve published quite a few books. I’ve lost track, myself. And normally when we have someone in for one of these chats, we pile up all of the papers they’ve written. But today we’re in Washington, DC, there are height restrictions on the buildings. [laughter] So, in lieu of those papers, we have Yoda, Darth, and an Imperial walker. Those legs on the walker the were not properly regulated — that’s why they fell over so easily. So, you’ve done all this. It’s obvious from reading your book, you spend a lot of time with your children. Time management — how do you do it, and what’s your advice? How do you nudge yourself, or who nudges you? If — well, I have a four-year-old daughter, she just turned four. And if I don’t deliver pages to her at night — she goes to bed around 8:30 — she’s really mad. She says, “Daddy, what did you write?” And this is completely false; I’m making it up. She doesn’t have any need that I write pages. But I guess I feel every day that if I haven’t written at least something or had an idea, then I haven’t quite done my job. Most days I feel that. I have to write something. And if I have a week or two weeks where I haven’t made a little progress on something that is potentially an academic article or a book, I feel, “Pedal-to-the-metal time. You’ve got to produce something.” So, I have kind of an internal superego or something about writing. I also really enjoy it. I have no writer’s block, but I will write a lot of stuff that no one will ever see because it’s too terrible. So we only get the tip of the iceberg?…

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