Francesca Gino 
Sidetracked 
Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan

You may not realize it but simple, irrelevant factors can have profound consequences on your decisions and behavior, often diverting you from your original plans and desires.
Sidetracked will help you identify and avoid these influences so the decisions you make
do stick—and you finally reach your intended goals.


Psychologist and Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino has long studied the factors at play when judgment and decision making collide with the results of our choices in real life. In this book she explores inconsistent decisions played out in a wide range of circumstances—from our roles as consumers and employees (what we buy, how we manage others) to the choices that we make more broadly as human beings (who we date, how we deal with friendships). From Gino’s research, we see when a mismatch is most likely to occur between what we
want and what we end up doing. What factors are likely to sway our decisions in directions we did not initially consider? And what can we do to correct for the subtle influences that derail our decisions? The answers to these and similar questions will help you negotiate similar factors when faced with them in the real world.


For fans of Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman, this book will help you better understand the nuances of your decisions and how they get derailed—so you have more control over keeping them on track.

About the author

Francesca Gino is Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on judgment and decision making, ethics, productivity, and creativity. Her studies have been featured on CNN and NPR, as well as in leading print publications, including the
Economist, the
Financial Times, the
New York Times,
Newsweek,
Scientific American, and
Psychology Today. In 2009 the
New York Times featured Gino’s research in the 9th Annual Year in Ideas. In 2015 she was chosen by Poets & Quants as one of the “Best 40 Under 40 Professors, ” a ranking of the world’s top business school professors under the age of forty.