[How About This Book] Choices Are Momentary, Regret Becomes a Habit

We usually want to say, "It was the best I could do at the time." But on some days, that line sounds particularly flimsy. It is when the credit card bill arrives, the account balance shrinks, and a choice that once seemed reasonable now puts us in a difficult position. Only in that moment do we finally realize this: a choice happens once, but regret repeats. And that repetition follows a fairly consistent pattern.

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Kang Minwook's "The Economist's Decision-Making Method" is a book that traces precisely that pattern. It turns the question, "Why do I keep making similar choices and regretting them at similar points?" from the language of emotion into the language of structure. Laziness, present bias, loss aversion, herd behavior, framing effect... The concepts that appear in this book may already be familiar. But familiarity is not the same as understanding. The author does not stop at explaining the concepts; he persistently draws out how they actually operate in our daily lives. He reconstructs, one by one, the reasons we skip a workout today, the reasons we still cram right before an exam, and the reasons our calculations get blurry in front of the word "discount."

What makes this book particularly interesting is that it does not turn the reader into a "strange case." There are few stories of extreme failure or mythic success here. Instead, it repeats scenes that almost everyone has experienced at least once. In episodes like professors saying they "just followed the direction other people were going" in the subway, it becomes clear that neither intellectual ability nor expertise protects us from these errors. People who know behavioral economics, and even those who teach it, end up falling into the same traps. At this point, the reader feels a peculiar sense of relief. It comes from the realization that the problem lies not in personal willpower, but in the very design of being human.

At the center of the book lies the conflict between "my present self" and "my future self." My present self does not recognize my future self as the same person. My current self behaves like a power holder with money, time, and the right to choose, while my future self pays the price. The passage that describes the national pension as "a device in which the state's public authority intervenes between my present self and my future self" most clearly reveals the book's core concern. When it is read not as an issue of welfare or ethics, but as a system that adjusts failures in intertemporal decision-making, the reader's perspective on both institutions and individuals begins to shift. This is why the book does not remain a simple self-help guide.

Kang Minwook does not scold the reader. He does not ask, "Why are you so bad at this?" but rather, "Why is it that you can hardly do otherwise?" Thanks to this attitude, the book has the power to keep the reader engaged to the end. Yet this kindness does not always work solely as a strength. The explanation that "it is not just me, everyone is like this" can be comforting, but at the same time it can become a sentence that dilutes responsibility. The moment we understand a structure, we often surrender ourselves to it. We end up creating an escape hatch with the words "there is no other choice." The author clearly talks about "how to fight well with yourself," but he does not push the reader all the way to the point of actually starting that fight.

We believe we choose every time, but in fact we repeat the same choices. "How Economists Make Decisions" asks where that repetition begins. Image generated by Google Gemini

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Even so, the usefulness of this book is evident. We often talk about rational choice, yet we use rationality only as a tool for evaluating outcomes. When things go wrong, we say, "I was irrational back then," and when things go well, we console ourselves by saying, "At least the choice was right." "The Economist's Decision-Making Method" brings that ex post judgment to a halt. It takes regret as the starting point of analysis and dismantles, one by one, the conditions that produced that regret. In this way, the reader stops framing their choices as a moral issue and begins to see them as mechanisms that can be adjusted.

What this book promises is not a "perfect choice." Such a choice does not exist in the first place. Instead, the author seems to be saying this: it is possible to make choices you regret a little less. It is possible to live a life in which you repeat the same mistake a bit less often. That possibility does not begin with some grand resolution, but with the ability to step back and observe your own behavior. Asking what cost today's comfort is passing on to tomorrow's self; checking whether you are following others' movements just because everyone else is moving; recalculating whether the phrase "half price" is truly beneficial to you. As those questions accumulate, the shape of your choices gradually changes.

When you close the book, questions remain. How often have I sacrificed my future self for the sake of my present self? And how naturally have I wrapped that sacrifice in the phrase "realistic judgment"? The book does not claim that it will change your life. It simply shifts the angle from which you look at life. Once that angle changes, choices remain difficult, but regret hurts a little less. Perhaps that alone is enough for this book to fully do its part.

The Economist's Decision-Making Method | Kang Minwook | Ort | 288 pages | 20,000 won

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