Ideas for Impact
Time passes faster when you divide a big chunk into lots of smaller chunks. So, if you’re on an inescapably boring path, break it into units. And, for each dreaded task, ask yourself “What’s the most fun way I could do this?” Work at a coffee shop? Listen to your favorite music? Reward yourself upon its completion?
As Mary Poppins asserted, “In every task that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.”
Sure, self-discipline is an asset. Plenty of successful people evidently benefit from having truckloads of it. However, strengthening willpower may not always be easy for the rest of us.
You can increase productivity and contentment simply by altering your environment. Make it easier for you (and others in your life) to confront temptation and adopt the habits you want.
Use stimulus control to shift your behavior:
You’re more likely to start change when you put the stimulus for action into your environment.
Idea for Impact: Don’t get bogged down by thinking that lifestyle changes are entirely about willpower. In a world so heavily baited with pervasive cues and craving-inducing stimuli, the more you can tweak your environment to better condition yourself into your desired habits, the more likely you are to meet your goals.
The best way to catalyze significant change is by relying on highly specific habits and routines and making time for them amid the busyness of life.
Habit formation relies on consistency. Here’s a simple trick to prevent good intentions from slipping.
Suppose that you want to start a daily walking habit. You set a target to go for a walk for at least an hour a day. But some days, this habit might not be doable.
To prevent slipping on your daily goal and beating yourself up about it, establish two targets: one for the “good” days and one for the “tough” days.
Set the bar very low for when it’s not possible to dedicate an hour to walking. On the tough days, when you’re exhausted, hungry, feeling lazy and unmotivated, or you’re simply not in the mood to walk, you can go for a quick walk. And on good days, when you have more time and energy, go for longer walks. Average out the tough days with the good days.
Make it so easy that you can’t say no to maintaining your habit on the tough days. You’ll decrease your skipped days and sustain the habit’s consistency by lowering your expectations.
Another benefit of having easy-win targets for the tough days is that you nudge yourself into action. Let’s say you target reading an hour a day. On tough days, when you set out to read for just ten minutes, you’ll perhaps get engrossed in more of the task once you get started and find your way into the text. Action begets momentum, and you’ll find it easier to keep going at it.
Habits take a long time to create, but they develop faster when you do them more routinely and repeatedly. The more days you skip, the harder it is to get back into the habit. Set the bar low for the tough days and build deep-seated habits.
An “exercise snack” is a short little bite of physical activity you can do anywhere, anytime. You don’t even need to change your clothes. Try 10 push-ups, stair climbing, or a brisk walk or jog around the block.
Exercise snacking increases the amount of activity in your day, and breaks up sedentary time, which is increasingly being linked to chronic health risks.
It may not seem like much, but several scientific studies show that interleaving brief fitness routines a few times into your day not only encourages your body to feel better, but also contributes to meaningful gains in fitness and overall health. It improves your mood, stimulates creativity, and enhances focus, making it an all-around win for your health and productivity. Best of all, exercise snacking removes the pressure of committing to a long, once-a-day sweaty session.
Exercise snacking increases the amount of activity in your day, and breaks up sedentary time, which is increasingly being linked to chronic health risks.
It may not seem like much, but several scientific studies show that interleaving brief fitness routines a few times into your day not only encourages your body to feel better, but also contributes to meaningful gains in fitness and overall health. It improves your mood, stimulates creativity, and enhances focus, making it an all-around win for your health and productivity. Best of all, exercise snacking removes the pressure of committing to a long, once-a-day sweaty session.
Finding the middle ground between setting the bar too low and too high can challenge managers.
Sure, aggressive goals can spark great accomplishments, but they also can induce employees to bend or break the rules in pursuit of those goals, as the Wells Fargo and Volkswagen scandals illustrate.
When employees get comfortable with their usual tasks, it’s time to push them outside their comfort zones. New responsibilities can propel employees to take on new challenges and learn new things.
However, before giving employees new tasks, take away some of the older responsibilities they’ve already mastered. Many people feel they have an unrealistic amount of work to do already. If you aren’t prudent enough to keep your employees’ workloads in check, giving “stretch” assignments can lead to burnout, not growth.
Idea for Impact: Goals that are too high or low can be demotivating. Set goals that are challenging and inspiring but with extra effort, realistically attainable.
While it is helpful to be motivated and get into the right mindset to, say, exercise, it’s far easier to just show up at the gym and get started on a small quest, even when you don’t really feel like doing it. You’re likely to habituate to new behaviors in a way that circumvents your innate resistance to change.
Minor adjustments can add up and make a big difference. As Harvard psychologist Susan David writes in Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life (2016,)
Traditional self-help tends to see change in terms of lofty goals and total transformation, but research actually supports the opposite view—that small, deliberate tweaks infused with your values can make a huge difference in your life. This is especially true when we tweak the routine and habitual parts of life, which then afford tremendous leverage for change.
Idea for Impact: Waiting for the right mindset to “show up” can be a losing strategy. Taking action is often easier than controlling your mental state. Don’t overly focus on the very thing that’s harder to control. Take the next baby step forward.
Mindful eating for wellbeing isn’t just about what foods to eat but also about establishing and maintaining a healthy relationship with food.
Idea for Impact: Building wellness begins with really paying attention. Change behavior with simple nudges.
Since the dawn of time, the world has venerated early birds and propagated the notion that getting up with the lark makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise. The internet is full of references to the early-to-rise habits of Tim Cook, Michelle Obama, or some celebrity du jour. Those who struggle with mornings are slandered as slothful.
Even the wiser productivity gurus often fail to acknowledge that “4 a.m. is the most productive hour” not because of some configuration of the planets or some scientific phenomenon but simply because there are fewer distractions at that hour.
Night owls, no need to force yourself into a mold that doesn’t work for you. No need to completely adjust your life and feel weary and less productive throughout the day.
Overhauling your sleep times may not have much effect. Ultimately, productivity isn’t about the time you wake up. It’s accommodating your most challenging tasks when your brain is working at its peak.
Idea for Impact: All of us are born predisposed to function better at certain times of the day. The more you understand your chronotype and adapt your work around your naturally preferred times, the more productive you’ll be. Experiment with your sleep schedule, but don’t push too far out of your natural preference. Stick with what works.
If everyday chores feel like a drag and you don’t have the motivation to do anything but be on your phone and laze around, consider the following actions that have most benefited my clients:
News broke out that Ernst & Young revealed this week that its employees cheated on ethics exams. The accounting behemoth is being fined $100 million. That’s one of the biggest fines ever levied against an audit firm.
It’s absurd that specialists responsible for keeping things straight and steering moral enterprise cheated on ethics exams! Ernst & Young’s leadership evidently disregarded the internal reports about the cheating. Perhaps because when people identify so strongly with a group, they’re much more swayed to view the group’s actions positively and accept that group’s norms.
Research by Vanderbilt University’s Jessica Kennedy and colleagues suggests that high-flying people are sometimes more inclined than low-ranking people to adopt what their group recommends, even when it represents an ethics breach. Power sometimes provokes people to so strongly want to identify with their group that they’re willing to overlook when the group’s collective actions cross an ethical line. This affinity is, therefore, urged to sustain transgression instead of stopping its spread, especially when the odds of being caught and punished are slim.