"Commercially Lethargic"

Ayres warns as companies use super crunching to get better and better at determining the maximum price an individual customer is willing to pay, some customers will lose out. He says individuals must do research and calculations more exhaustively on their own, to learn of their maximum price point is higher than others, to avoid being ripped off. On the flip side, Ayres believes when companies use super crunching to improve product quality, then consumers win all around.

Consumers are going to have to engage in a kind of number crunching of their own, creating and comparing datasets of (quality-adjusted_ competitive prices. This is a daunting prospect for people like me who are commercially lethargic by nature. Yet the same digitalization revolution that has catalyzed seller crunching has also been a boon to buy-side analysis. Firms like Farecast.com, E-loan, Priceline, and Realrate.com allow customers to comparison shop more easily . . . For consumers worried about the impace of Super Crunching on price, it is both the best of times and the worst of times (pp 173-174).

Immediately, his "commercially lethargic" phrase resonated with me. It's frustrating to feel like giving up on a transaction because it's "too hard" to complete. Part of it may be perfectionism paralysis. There may also be psychological reasons personal finance is a major procrastination center for me. I hope to alleviate this by:

• being clear on personal objectives for the task
• recognizing when perfectionism appears
  
• giving "permission to be human" when the commercial lethargy sets in and not beating myself up over it or considering myself a bad person because I have those thoughts.

Well, although Ayres describes himself as "commerically lethargic," his books seem to be a commercial success! Also, he did randomized testing to select the more successful title for his work, using Google AdWords, so that seems pretty commercially savvy!