Book Brief: "Sidetracked"

We really do need to get over ourselves. The premise of Francesca Gino's Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan is that no human or natural force can destroy our plans nearly as decisively as our own nature. Armed with personal studies and exhaustive research on the inexact decision-making process of people from a wide range of endeavors, Gino insists that our failure to think rationally will invariably undo our best-laid plans.

Gino's remedies, which include checking our emotions, scrutinizing our relationships, and deploying our highest standards, will overcome the false allegiances, unsound criteria, and blind faith that shroud our judgment.

One might question the reliability of the author's studies and the validity of her references, but we have seen enough of flawed human judgment to find her summation indisputable: our greatest enemy is ourselves.