Chances are a deadbeat client has stiffed you out of hard-earned cash. You’re not alone – and starting today, you can do something about it.
Tell the world how much you’re owed on The World’s Longest Invoice.
It’s a tool we launched today that will allow us to come together and show the world the scope and reach of this challenge – and help solve it. Already, hundreds of freelancers have shared their stories using the Twitter hashtag#GetPaidNotPlayed.
Add the amount you’re owed at www.WorldsLongestInvoice.comor by Tweeting the amount using the hashtag#WorldsLongestInvoice(for example: “My client stiffed me $2,000. Yet another line item on the #WorldsLongestInvoice.”).
On May 22, I’ll join dozens of freelancers to deliver the invoice to lawmakers in New York, where we’re pushing a law to protect independent workers from deadbeat clients – which will hopefully be a model for the rest of the country.
The Danger in Thinking Too Much
There is a danger in thinking too much. Ideas found in “How We Decide”, by Jonah Lehrer
Rational models of decision-making suggest that the way to find the best product is to take all information into account, to carefully analyze the different features available.
But this thinking is wrong.
Timothy Wilson, Psychologist at the University of Virginia:
Wilson asked female college students to select their favorite poster. He gave them five options: a Monet landscape, a van Goh paining of some purple lilies, and three humorous cat posters. Before making their choices, the subjects were divided into two groups. The first was a non-thinking group: they were instructed to simply rate each poster on a scale of 1-9. The second group had a tougher task: before they rated the posters, they were given questionnaires that asked them why they liked or disliked each of the five posters. At the end of the experiment, each of the five students took her favorite poster home.
The two groups of women made very different choices. Ninety-five percent of the non-thinkers chose either the Monet or the van Gogh. They instinctively preferred fine art. However, subjects who thought about their poster decisions first were almost equally split between the paintings and the humorous cat posters. What accounted for the difference? “When looking at a painting by Monet,” Wilson writes, “most people generally have a positive reaction. When thinking about why they feel the way they do, however, what comes to mind and is easiest to verbalize might be that some of the colors are not very pleasing, and that the subject matter, a haystack, is rather boring.” As a result, the women ended up selecting the funny feline posters, if only because those posters gave them more grist for their explanatory mill.
Wilson conducted follow-up interviews a few weeks later to see which group had made the better decision. Sure enough, the members of the non-thinking group were much more satisfied with their choice of posters. While 75 percent of the people who had chosen cat posters regretted their selection, nobody regretted selecting the artistic poster. The women who listened to their emotions ended up making much better decisions than the women who relied on their reasoning powers. The more people thought about which posters they wanted, the more misleading their thoughts became. Self-analysis resulted in less awareness.
This provides an interesting conundrum to those searching for the best decision. Thinking too much actually causes us to focus on many variables that don’t actually matter.. The part of our brain that allows us to think more logically interferes with the part of our brain that processes how we feel.
