dalts.net Kind Acts of Randomness

I've just started reading a rather cool book - I got it on a tip from Obie Fernandez in his now famous Do The Hustle talk at Ruby Fringe. It's called Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely - it basically explores why we make the decisions we make - the journey is fabulously interesting and often (as the author puts it) delicious!

Anyway, ironically, just this morning there was an example of this in my street.

I live in a small dead-end/cul-de-sac street of about 12 houses - we have 2 bins - a regular bin (green lid) and a recycling bin (yellow) lid. The green bin is collected every week and the yellow one every 2 weeks. Anyway - this week is NOT a recycling week, but we often get one person in the street accidentally putting their bins out. However, this week 2 people put their yellow bins out. By the time I went to put my bins out late last night everyone in the street had the yellow bins out! At this point I even put my yellow bin out as I thought maybe the others knew something!

As I rode out of the street on my bike this morning into the next street I of course saw of course that no-one else in the neighbourhood had the yellows out... herd mentality at it's best!

Sorry for the lack of blog posts here by the way. I have excuses; Birth of my 2nd child, Setting up our new company Refactor with Lee and Rob, and just the fact that I am tweeting a lot more these days instead of blogging.