Oh, I really slice that. Oh, that's ugly. It's way deep in the trees. That's going to be tricky to get out of. Yeah, you know, if it's all right with you, I'm going to take a mulligan and just give that one another try. Okay. I won't add that swing. But listen.

Don't overdo it on the mulligan, it's all right. Don't worry.

Now that's looking better.

If you're a golfer, you may have found yourself taking the occasional mulligan or doover so that allows you shot doesn't ruin your entire game.

In this episode, we explore how intentionally giving yourself some mulligans when you're working towards a tough goal can help you achieve more than you otherwise would.

I'm Dr. Katie Milkman, and this is Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It's a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions.

We bring you true stories illuminating predictable quirks of human nature that can help or hinder you. And then we examine the latest research and behavioral science.

We do it all to help you make better judgments and avoid costly mistakes.

If you went into an arcade in the late 1970s, it'd be very loud first of all.

An arcade is dark and bright at the same time because there were 100 TVs all blaring and most of the games gave you three lives.

That was the big space invaders thing. You had three different chances to shoot all of the aliens. And then when the three lives were up, you were done.

This is Jeff. Hi, my name is Jeff Ryan. Jeff is a writer and author and a gamer from way back when video games were still mostly played in arcades.

When I was little, my dad would hold me up so I could see the screen so I could play games. And I wasn't very good at it and I kept dying.

Turns out this was by design.

The goal of game makers was to kill you as quickly as possible so that you could put another quarter in and get another three lives.

You may get a minute or two minutes of gameplay. Really good players would get three or four minutes at most five.

And that was the goal. That was the dream to be able to get five minutes of entertainment from a quarter.

People would line up behind popular games and put quarters on top of the machines or at the base of the screen to say,

this is me. I get the next game after you die because you will be dying in a matter of seconds, if not minutes.

The Golden Age of Video Arcades lasted until around 1983 when home video game consoles started to take over.

I had a video game system no one ever heard of called the TI-994A. It was made by Texas Instruments and it had a bunch of knock-off games like Munchman instead of Pac-Man.

Everyone got into the video game world in the early 80s.

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