20. If you are like most people today, you have too much to do and too little time. As you struggle to catch up, new tasks and responsibilities just keep coming, like the waves of the ocean. Because of this, you will never be able to do everything you have to do. You will always be behind in some of your tasks and responsibilities. For this reason, and perhaps more than ever before, your ability to select your most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop. Therefore, you need to develop the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed first.

21. Globally, urban areas cover just 3 per cent of the land, while farmland covers a far larger area at about 40 per cent (with much of the rest comprised of the frozen lands of the polar regions). Most of us seem to have accepted that industrial farming is the only way we can 'feed the world', and we also implicitly seem to accept that wildlife declines are unavoidable collateral damage. In a sense, it is a choice between nature and us; and of course we will always choose us. But is this really the choice? Is it impossible to grow food and support nature at the same time? I would argue that we can do both: that we can have our cake (or carrot) and eat it. If we keep pursuing ever more intensive, industrial farming, with a focus on maximizing yields, we will wipe out not just nature bu ultimately ourselves, for our very survival depends upon healthy environment.

33. It is hardly surprising that people prefer to say yes to those they know and like Consider, for example, the remarkable success of a kitchenware brand and its "home party" presentation concept The presentation party for the brand is hosted by an individual who invites to their home an array of friends, neighbors, and relatives, all of whom know that their host or hostess receives a percentage of the profits from every piece sold. In this way, the kitchenware brand arranges for its customers to buy from and for a friend (a liked other) rather than from an unknown salesperson. One study found that, in a home party setting, strength of social ties between a guest and the hostess accounted for twice as much variance in purchase likelihood as did preference for the product. . So favorable has been the effect on profits that the kitchenware brand has wholly abandoned its early retail outlets, and according to company literature, a home party begins somewhere in the world every 2.7 seconds.

36. j. Every time we surf the Web, the search engines are recording what we do and what information we provide about ourselves. It's not evil. It's not spying or an attempt to control our behavior. The machines are simply trying to provide us with the most relevant information. However, Eli Pariser thinks this is a big problem. In his book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, he explains why search engines are potentially dangerous. Try this out for yourself. Log on to a search engine and search for information about "Egypt." Then call up a relative or friend in a different part of the country and ask him or her to do exactly the same thing. What Eli Pariser noted was that his friends received totally different lists of links. This difference is important because most people only look at the first page of links. In other words, they are not being allowed to see the full picture. The reason for this discrepancy is that the search engine produces a personalized search result tailored for each user by using a filter.

38. In the mid-1950s, the sociologist Robert Francis Winch argued that, when it comes to our personalities, what matters is not similarity but complementarity. Based on his studies of spouses, he suggested that individuals would be attracted to others who possess personality traits that they lack. An assertive woman, for example, would be attracted to a submissive man while an extroverted man would be attracted to an introverted woman. Nevertheless, there is almost no evidence to support this hypothesis. Studies of friends and spouses consistently find that two individuals are more likely to be friends and spouses if they are similar in terms of their personalities. This includes a new study which looked at digital footprints of more than 45,000 individuals, rather than self-reported data about personality. The results of this study showed that people with similar personalities, based on likes and word choices in posts, were more likely to be friends. The association was even stronger between romantic partners.

[41~42] It is very difficult to get around the human limitations of making choices, but a few strategies help minimize these concerns. One important discovery is that decisions tend to have a higher failure rate when leaders are decisive rather than contemplative about the available options. Of course, decisions can also be ineffective when leaders take too long to make a choice, but research indicates that a lack of logical evaluation of alternatives is a greater concern. By systematically assessing alternatives against relevant factors, decision makers minimize the implicit favorite and satisfying problems that occur when they rely on general subjective judgments. This recommendation does not suggest that we (b) ignore intuition; rather, it suggests that we use it in combination with careful analysis of relevant information. A second piece of advice is to remember that decisions are influenced by both rational and emotional processes. Therefore, some decision makers deliberately revisit important issues later when their initial emotions have eased and they can look at the information in a different mood. For example, if you sense that your team is feeling somewhat too self-confident when making an important competitive decision, you might decide to have the team members revisit the decision a few days later when they are thinking more critically. Another strategy is scenario planning, which is a disciplined method for imagining possible futures. Scenario planning is a useful vehicle for choosing the best solutions under possible scenarios long before they occur, because alternative courses of action are evaluated without the pressure and emotions that occur during real emergencies.