Monthly Archives: August 2010

Change Wears People Out

Why Change Is So Hard: Self-Control Is Exhaustible | Fast Company:

Psychologists have discovered that self-control is an exhaustible resource. And I don’t mean self-control only in the sense of turning down cookies or alcohol, I mean a broader sense of self-supervision — any time you’re paying close attention to your actions, like when you’re having a tough conversation or trying to stay focused on a paper you’re writing. This helps to explain why, after a long hard day at the office, we’re more likely to snap at our spouses or have one drink too many — we’ve depleted our self-control.

And here’s why this matters for change: In almost all change situations, you’re substituting new, unfamiliar behaviors for old, comfortable ones, and that burns self-control. Let’s say I present a new morning routine to you that specifies how you’ll shower and brush your teeth. You’ll understand it and you might even agree with my process. But to pull it off, you’ll have to supervise yourself very carefully. Every fiber of your being will want to go back to the old way of doing things. Inevitably, you’ll slip. And if I were uncharitable, I’d see you going back to the old way and I’d say, You’re so lazy. Why can’t you just change?

This brings us back to the point I promised I’d make: That what looks like laziness is often exhaustion. Change wears people out — even well-intentioned people will simply run out of fuel.

(Via lifehacker.com.)

Be Simple in Your Request

Sweet simplicity – Bobulate:

Every day, we must ask for things. We know what we need, ideas based on our own tastes — good, bad, but our own — and we find ourselves in a position of reaching out to others to ask for things. Important people. Busy people. People with their own values and tastes that differ from our own. And whenever you reach out to people, to strangers, to friends, to ask for things, the simple fact is: no matter how well you know them, you don’t know their context…

When we request value from another, we often make assumptions that impose another story on the individual. You know your own context, your own taste. Nothing more. Instead, be simple in your request. Just ask without assumptions.

We Can Be Sure We’re Avoiding Error

An Error Worse Than Error | First Things:

The great French mathematician Blaise Pascal made [an] observation, which I formulate in the following way: The certainty with which we can know a truth is inversely proportional to its importance…

In my experience, although the modern university is full of trite, politically correct pieties, for the most part its educational culture is cautious to a fault. Students are trained — I was trained — to believe as little as possible so that the mind can be spared the ignominy of error. The consequences: an impoverished intellectual life. The contemporary mind very often lives on a starvation diet of small, inconsequential truths, because those are the only points on which we can be sure we’re avoiding error.

(Via Things that were not immediately obvious to me.)

What Wine is So Sparkling

Existential Primer: Søren Kierkegaard:

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!” Either/Or, vol. 1, “Diapsalmata” (1843)

(Via bobulate.com.)

Build on the Foundation

Influencer – The Power to Change Anything – Exclusive Interview with Joseph Grenny « Blog – Just Ask Leadership, Executive Coaching – CO2Partners:

There are three powerful sources that influence motivation: personal, social, and structural. Rather than relying simply on incentives or verbal persuasion, it’s best to implement strategies that affect each of these three motivational forces. Never use incentives to compensate for your failure to engage personal, social and structural motivation. The most powerful, predictable, and effective incentives build on the foundation of personal motivation and social support.

Personal Motivation is an individual’s intrinsic satisfaction. Ask yourself if your employees want to do what is required? Do they think it’s worth doing? Do they choose to do it and do it well?

Social Motivation is the powerful influence others exert on an individual’s motivation to do what leaders want done. This source of influence comes from peers, bosses, friends — everyone in a person’s social network. It includes the power of praise and ridicule, approval and disapproval, acceptance and rejection. How does their interactions with others affect their desire to do what is being asked of them?

Structural Motivation is the non-human, motivating factors. These are extrinsic motivators like rewards, punishments, appraisals, ratings, rankings, incentives, etc… For example, how does their performance appraisal criteria affect their motivation to do what leaders want done? How are they disciplined if they don’t?

Many Sources of Influence

Influencer – The Power to Change Anything – Exclusive Interview with Joseph Grenny « Blog – Just Ask Leadership, Executive Coaching – CO2Partners:

The biggest barrier to change is that people are blind and outnumbered to the many sources of influence that dictate their behavior.

There’s not a single cause for our profound and persistent problems — there’s a conspiracy. We have to address all the reasons people are doing what they’re doing — all six sources of influence — or we’ll never succeed.

People’s behavior is shaped by six sources: values, skills, support, teamwork, incentives and environment. If you try to pile on incentives when people lack skills, you’ll fail. If you try to tap into their values when the environment is pulling against them, you’ll find them discouraged and cynical. If you put them through training when they just don’t care — you’ll waste your time.

Downright Bad

iPhone Development: Time Moves On…:

Basically, we don’t know how to use new concepts “properly” until they’ve been used a lot, in a lot of different ways, by a lot of different people. There’s nothing to guide the use of the novel. There’s no way to find what works and what doesn’t except by trying. And sometimes the things we try won’t work, or won’t work for all people. Sometimes they’ll be downright bad.

(Via Jeff LaMarche.)

We Are Constantly Interrupting

Clive Thompson on the Death of the Phone Call | Magazine:

If I suddenly decide I want to dial you up, I have no way of knowing whether you’re busy, and you have no idea why I’m calling. We have to open Schrödinger’s box every time, having a conversation to figure out whether it’s OK to have a conversation. Plus, voice calls are emotionally high-bandwidth, which is why it’s so weirdly exhausting to be interrupted by one. (We apparently find voicemail even more excruciating: Studies show that more than a fifth of all voice messages are never listened to.)

The telephone, in other words, doesn’t provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another. The other tools at our disposal are more polite. Instant messaging lets us detect whether our friends are busy without our bugging them, and texting lets us ping one another asynchronously. (Plus, we can spend more time thinking about what we want to say.) For all the hue and cry about becoming an “always on” society, we’re actually moving away from the demand that everyone be available immediately.

(Via bobulate.com.)

You’re Doing It Wrong

Scott Adams Blog: Conversation 07/20/2010:

Consider conversation. How many times have you been in a restaurant and victimized by the loud guy at the next table dominating the conversation without the benefit of being entertaining? It seems somewhat common that people who are neither alien nor Asperger syndrome types have no conversation skills. Indeed, it appears that many so-called normal people don’t even understand the concept of a conversation.

A conversation, like dancing, has some rules, although I’ve never seen them stated anywhere. The objective of conversation is to entertain or inform the other person while not using up all of the talking time. A big part of how you entertain another person is by listening and giving your attention. Ideally, your own enjoyment from conversation comes from the other person doing his or her job of being interesting. If you are entertaining yourself at the other person’s expense, you’re doing it wrong…

Prior to the Dale Carnegie course I believed that conversation was a process by which I could demonstrate my cleverness, complain about what was bugging me, and argue with people in order to teach them how dumb they were. To me, listening was the same thing as being bored. I figured it was the other person’s responsibility to find some entertainment in the conversation. That wasn’t my job.

(Via Things that were not immediately obvious to me.)