Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
August 2018
- When This Executive Was Fired, He Took Charge
- Obeying The Speed Limit Has Never Been More Fun
- London Black Cabs Helped Uber Grow
- Bette Graham Created A Product To Fix Her Mistakes
- Flamin' Hot Cheetos Had An Interesting Start
July 2018
- Fear This Instead Of Failure
- Re-Releasing Songs Created Success
- A CEO's Purposeful Mistake
- The Tardy Student And The Unsolvable Problem
- Fixing Potholes Through Graffiti
June 2018
- A Surprising Mistake In The Oxford English Dictionary
- US Army Embraces Mistakes
- Blocking A Hymn
- Eddie Shore Was Truly A Tough Guy
- [Video] Elon Musk Didn't "Pivot" He Failed
May 2018
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness Part 2
- Necessity Turned Accessory: Allen Iverson's Sleeve
- This Doctor Has Continued To Fail
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness
- MIT Accidentally Creates New Smelting Process
April 2018
- Johnny Cash Quit Singing Lessons
- Cruise Control Came Out of Frustration
- Time Spent Gaming Pays Off In The Navy
- Rock Around The Clock Was a Commercial Failure
- Sigmund Freud Should Have Been Discouraged
March 2018
Self Checkout: Not Faster
In the last few years, countless retail stores have installed self-checkout machines. It turns out that scanning and bagging your purchases actually takes more time. So why do we do it?
Photo © Flickr User San José Library
To understand this particular cognitive error, we should look at a problem that has fascinated psychologists for over a hundred years: time perception. Back in the late 19th century, scientists first discovered that we are consistently bad at estimating duration. In individual examples we tend to be way off in predictable ways.
For example, consider the experience of traveling. The return trip virtually always seems shorter than the initial journey, even when we cover the same ground in the same time. Our guesses, too, are usually skewed. We tend to overestimate the amount of time required to travel a short distance, but underestimate the time needed for a longer journey. Our sense of time is surprisingly and consistently inaccurate.
This is probably something you’ve experienced. Sitting in a motionless passenger jet for five minutes seems like agony, yet an hour at cruising speed goes by in the blink of an eye. Watch a fantastic movie in a dark theater and you’ll probably be shocked by how much time has passed. A terrible film, however, seems far longer than its actual running time. Why is this, and what does it have to do with self-checkout machines?
Current scientific thinking is that time perception has some link to our sense of comfort and control. The trip home is familiar, so it seems to go faster. A great movie is enjoyable, so the minutes race by. Waiting on the tarmac could be interminable, but zooming at altitude is just steady progress. We feel better and thus time flies.
A self-checkout machine actually takes longer to use than having trained staff process your merchandise. But it feels faster to do it yourself. Hence, stores are putting up kiosks that cost less to operate even though they actually delay customers. Human failure to judge time is the secret to their success.
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