July 6, 2026
Stated vs Revealed Preferences
There’s an old story about Sony running a focus group to ask teenagers what they thought of a new bright yellow portable cassette player.
From Google:
During a product research study on the Walkman, Sony gathered young participants to ask what they thought of a new yellow model compared to the traditional black edition.
- What they said: Participants were unanimous in their praise, calling the yellow model “sporty” and dismissing the black as boring.
- What they did: When the study concluded, participants were told they could take home a free Walkman as a gift and were allowed to choose between a pile of black or yellow models. Every single participant selected the black version.
Here’s the thing...
We all do this to ourselves all the time.
Well, I know I do it all the time.
How do I know?
Here’s a pattern I used to fall into a lot:
I’d have an exciting idea for something cool I should do, and I’d add this exciting idea to my to-do list so I wouldn’t forget it.
I mean... who would want to forget such an exciting idea???
And then older me would see the to-do for the exciting idea, wouldn’t feel like doing it, and would snooze it.
And the next day I’d snooze it again.
And again the next day.
At some point, I’d be forced to admit to myself that the idea was not, in fact, all that exciting, and I’d archive the to-do.
(I have come to call this “putting it in the attic“ because it hurts less than deleting it and admitting it was a dumb idea in the first place LOL!)
Maybe this pattern of wishful thinking sounds familiar to you.
Maybe you beat yourself up over the gap between your stated preferences and revealed preferences.
But I think a more useful approach is to set up a system that slowly closes the gap over time.
Yours,
—J