Lavin Exclusive Speaker
From pre-game traditions to team-building exercises, rituals are intertwined in every facet of our lives. Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, author of the forthcoming book The Ritual Effect, proves that rituals can help us in our everyday lives: from eating healthy to building connections to staying calm before a big presentation. Named one of WIRED Magazine's 50 People Who Will Change the World, Michael helps us harness the power of rituals to build stronger teams, improve our mental health, and find meaning in every aspect of our lives.
Michael Norton is a Harvard Business School professor and author of the forthcoming book The Ritual Effect, whose work dives into the psychological effects of ritual. His groundbreaking research has proved the importance and flexibility of rituals in our everyday lives—they affect our feelings, thoughts, and even behaviors. Michael proved that rituals can calm us down before a performance, grounding us and giving us a sense of calm. They can also bind us together as a community, which makes for stronger teams who coordinate and find meaning in their work. Linking rituals to a desired habit, like eating healthy or working out, can increase our self-discipline. Michael shows us how to harness the power of ritual for our personal lives and our workplaces, giving us actionable ways to increase productivity, control, and camaraderie among teammates.
Michael has also researched personal finance and spending—specifically, how to use money to get happier. Along with fellow professor Elizabeth Dunn, he’s the co-author of the book Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending, which proved that we’re going about spending our money all wrong. With five practical principles on how to increase happiness by changing the philosophy behind spending, Happy Money is “a rare combination of informed science writing, rollicking good fun, and practical pointers for a more flourishing and compassionate life" (David G. Myers, author of The Pursuit of Happiness). His TEDx talk, which draws on this research, has been viewed over 4 million times.
Michael has appeared on National Public Radio, CBS, Fox, and MSNBC, co-hosted Talking Green, a podcast on how people really interact with money, and written op-eds for The New York Times, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. His research has been featured in publications like Psychological Science, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Marketing Research, has been covered by The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Washington Post, and has been parodied by The Onion.