He had set the thermostat to sixty on a hundred and four degree day, and he genuinely believed that would make it cool faster.

Mid July, a two story on the east side of Kingfisher, the kind with the big west windows nobody thinks about when they buy the house. He met me at the door with a glass of tea and an apology, which is how you can tell somebody has been fighting with something for a while.

He said, I have had it on sixty since noon and it is still seventy nine in here.

I asked him what time he set it to sixty.

Noon, he said. And then he said, and I bumped it down twice more since.

Now, a thermostat is a switch. It is not a throttle. Setting it to sixty does not make the system work harder than setting it to seventy four. It just tells the system to keep running until it gets to sixty, which on a hundred and four degree afternoon in a house with west glass it is never going to do. All he had done was guarantee the equipment ran without stopping for six straight hours.

But that is the mechanical half, and it is the less interesting half.

The interesting half is that pushing the button felt like doing something.

There is a paper from 1975 by a Harvard psychologist named Ellen Langer, called The Illusion of Control. She ran a set of studies on lotteries, which is about as pure a game of chance as you can build. In one of them she sold lottery tickets to office workers. Some people got handed a ticket. Others got to pick their own ticket out of a box.

Same odds. Identical. A ticket is a ticket.

Then she came back and offered to buy the tickets back. The people who had been handed a ticket would sell it for about a dollar ninety. The people who had chosen their own wanted almost nine dollars.

Core line: "When I am chasing an intermittent fault, something that only misbehaves once a day and never while I am standing there, I catch myself checking things I have already checked."

Give Us A Shout

Thanks for tuning in to Hartzell's Heat & Air, HVAC in Kingfisher and central Oklahoma. From Kingfisher to coast-to-coast consulting, we design, install, and maintain smart, efficient systems that deliver year-round comfort.

We're family-run and powered by 47 years of experience. Whether it's AI-powered thermostats, geothermal systems, or classic tune-ups, we deliver upfront pricing, expert care, and warranties that back it all up.

🛠️ Book Online:
https://book.housecallpro.com/book/Hartzells-Heat--Air/4a569038b3dc460daf2d5f6497b18351?v2=true
🌐 www.hartzellsheatair.com
📞 (405) 375-4822

🚛 Trane Comfort Specialist • Mitsubishi Diamond Dealer • ClimateMaster Elite
🛡️ VIP Comfort Club • Remote Monitoring • Extended Warranties

📲 Follow us for tips, updates, and real-world installs:
YouTube: @hartzellsheatair6003
X: https://x.com/HartzellsHVAC
Facebook: facebook.com/hartzellsheatair
LinkedIn: Dave Hartzell

Built on trust. Backed by warranty. Designed for comfort.