The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Looks like Sasha Issenberg has a book, The Victory Lab, coming out for the 2012 political season about social psychologists, et al. who work on what actually makes people do the things that political campaigns are always trying to get them to do. David Plouffe's The Audacity to Win, especially during the Iowa chapters, conveyed some of the extent to which campaigns are grasping for evidence-based best practices, but this looks like new ground. This topic is definitely one of those things that now that I hear about it am surprised hasn't been done, yet hadn't thought of before. Especially since I missed Sasha's article on same this fall.

Don't you wish you could just rent this whole apparatus of investigators and put them to work on yourself? Ask them to look into why you waste so much time online and how to stop. Also, "how come I never clean my apartment enough?". And, of course, "what will it really take for me to show up to work even five minutes early at least once a year?". And you could write a book about it too. Working title: "Lifehack: How a crack investigative team helped one man do some things around the house, and also to be somewhat more punctual." If you're looking for the next big thing, take heed. When science unlocks those secrets, and puts them in book form, I, at least, will be the cost of one Kindle purchase poorer.