The Ikea Effect

It’s named after a Swedish company that makes cheaply constructed furniture components and sells them in pieces, along with wordless cartoon instructions for assembly, packaged with a mixed bag of hardware, often including several wrong pieces and usually missing one critical component. (Has that ever been your experience?)

In real estate “The Ikea Effect” is often evident when you’ve seen a home that is noticeably overpriced for its size, location, and amenities. The owners had the home built themselves with all the unique customized features that represented their creative energy and labor and thus it was their masterpiece.

And you, unfortunately, saw a house like any other but with paint colors you would never choose at a price you’d never be willing to pay!

The seller had experienced the negative side of “The Ikea Effect”-a psychological phenomenon that explains how we come to love and value the things we put effort into. This cognitive bias was originally identified by three researchers from Harvard Business School, Yale University, and Duke University.

When your project is in a box, it’s just a pile of parts. But once you assemble it it’s your pile of parts! The furniture now represents more than just a chair, a box, or a 17-drawer organizer with specialty hinges. It represents your time, your attention, and your skill in creation.

You really do love what you create yourself more than anything else, and that’s why you would pay so much more to knit a sweater for yourself than to get one on sale at Macys! (speaking for myself, of course!)

How to Profit from the Ikea Effect: Just knowing you’ll enjoy and appreciate the things you sweat for more that the things you don’t, will pay huge dividends in life. Rather than opting for ready-made solutions, you’ll find happiness in the struggle of creating your own.

Remember when your youngster refused your gift of help because they wanted to do it themselves?

Remember how satisfying it was to come up with a plan, a solution, and implement it yourself?

So…don’t buy pre-built furniture, but get out your tools and put it together yourself. .Research how to solve your problem and take joy in your success.

The gist: if you want to be happier, do things for yourself. If you want to make people happy, help them do the same!

One piece at a time…

How do we solve a jigsaw puzzle? We start with one piece at a time, and each one makes adding the next piece a little easier until we complete the puzzle. Puzzles have a lot of components just like our lives. It is hard to focus on everything at once-relationships, personal development, work, school, and […]

What we can’t see…

Just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Our breath exists, keeping us alive, even though we can’t see it. The wind exists, too, but we only know this because we feel it on our skin and hear it moving the leaves on the trees. All around us and within us are […]

4 wimpy words!

Most of us will agree that words have power-the power to inspire, the power to hurt, the power to compel, the power to enrage. And I think we would agree that some words are wimpy! Try: Try implies failure. If you say, “I’ll try to call you tomorrow,” the person hears “I’ll call you tomorrow.” […]

What makes you happy?

I read about an experiment involving elementary school students who were asked to itemize a list of their wants. No one wrote that he or she wanted to be happy or more loving. Their wants were things and events. And the same was true when high school and college students were asked. When the researchers […]

Stuff you didn’t know you didn’t know…

Food for thought? Food for amazement? I checked these out before including them. See what you think! The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this…) the percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and life rafts have in common? All were invented by […]

Appreciate: Two Meanings

The first meaning is “to be thankful,” the opposite of taking something for granted. The second meaning is “to increase in value” (as money appreciates in the bank). Combined, these two meanings point to a truth that has been proven repeatedly in research on gratitude: when we appreciate the good in our lives, the good […]

Want to change your habits?

I read about a surprising way to form good habits and break bad ones. The article said to change your habits, change your identity. The concept was a reminder that how we see ourselves can dramatically affect our habits. A paper published in 2011 by a team of Harvard and Stanford researchers found that people […]

Why ugly and slow is okay!

My sister is a lot better at knitting than I am. It is painfully obvious when she tackles a complex pattern, makes changes in it, and then finishes it before I’ve figured out how to get my project going. She’s a regular wizard at it! And by comparison I’m slow and my projects are, if […]

Luggage or Baggage?

It’s vacation time! Are you carrying luggage or your baggage with you? (And in case you’re wondering, I don’t mean the physical stuff!) Though near-perfect synonyms of each other, baggage has several additional meanings which luggage doesn’t share. We don’t know for sure whether the “bag” of baggage is the same as the English and […]