The Achievement Habit: The Achievement Habit By Bernard Roth

Reasons Are Bullshit

The Achievement Habit is a book all about taking control of your life. Bernard Roth is the author and he does a brilliant job of pointing out everyday issues about society. He points out in chapter two that Reasons Are Bullshit . Everyone uses reasons for things that we can control but we only use them when the things are not top priority. If everything we did has top priority then we would get it done and not need an excuse or reason for it. Roth says “ Many reasons are simply excuses to hide the fact that we are not willing to give something high enough priority in our lives.” ( p.41) People may argue that reasons are necessary , Roth argues that Reasons Are Bullshit. He thinks “ The problem with reasons is that they’re

His boss didn’t mind it as much as his other employees who took the time to be there on time. He knew deep down that traffic was not at fault for him being late , he was making himself late. Before work he would check his phone and respond to emails. He would leave late which meant he would arrive late. Roth was over feeling guilty so he changed and made it a point to leave early. No more last minute calls or emails , he would do them early so that they would not have to be last minute.When he changed his outlook on the meetings and how being late affected him , he changed. Everyone can connect to this because we have all used the excuse that traffic made us late. Let’s be real , we left late. We needed something to blame and that was traffic. Traffic is a “goooood” reason , he explains in chapter two that he did a study with a design group at Stanford. The class knew of he felt about reasons and if they would try and give one he would say “ that’s a goooood reason” , it would embarrass the student and would make them not want to have reasons anymore. He made the students try and not use them and the end result was that they would feel more insightful. “ Letting go of the need for reasons to justify your behavior is useful in every part of the design of thinking process” ( p. 42) How to students can relate and learn from Roth teaching is crucial to thinking reasons are

The definition from Oxford is “ result of cognitive dissonance, which leads people to seek information consonant with their beliefs and to avoid challenging information” ( D’Alessio and Allen) . Roth is talking about this but in his own way. He says that we are actively dishonest about our reasons and behavior. He uses the example of the japanese man who wants to spend more time with his family but he works late. He doesn’t have to work late , he waste time in his office and wants to show off that he has to do so much work. He is choosing to only see his side of the story and not thinking about all the other factors. He is explaining that people are selfish and will only think about themselves before thinking about others. Society will only see what they want to see. Even though Roth has made a great argument about why reasons are bullshit , he does not think about the other side of the