Michael Hyatt's Blog, page 38

Fire Drama Queens

And Other Ways to Improve Team Morale

Drama queens (and kings!) are bad for business. They disrupt your workplace by gossiping, backbiting, exaggerating every situation, justifying their bad behavior, and blaming others for their failures. Their behavior and their very presence compromises the teamwork that you and your colleagues need to succeed.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents said that they spend 3-to-6 hours a week dealing with drama queens (along with other disruptions), according to a 2012 study by workplace communications consultant Linda Swindling. The drive-bys and other issues resulting from drama queens and their enablers lead to lost productivity for everyone.

You can’t always keep wannabe soap opera stars off your team. But there are two steps that leaders can take to neutralize them.

Set ground rules for behavior

You’ve probably seen this happen more than once: The team has to meet a deadline on a big project. On the day everything has to be wrapped up, George comes to your office to complain about some slight from a coworker that isn’t even related to the project. You have to spend precious time dealing with the complaint instead of finishing the project.

Odds are, this isn’t the only time George has wrought havoc. There’s the time he told Jack about some gossip, which led to a week’s worth of discord. The day when George was angry that Hakim gave the company-wide presentation that he thought he was supposed to handle. The moment George instigated a minor dispute between Becky and Paul over software. You get the picture.

“

You have to hold them accountable for their behavior at every step.

—RISHAWN BIDDLE

One reason why drama kings and queens like George can cause so much workplace discord is because teams and their leaders haven’t laid down ground rules that say they can’t. The lack of standards for behavior and teamwork allow them to cause chaos and thereby exercise power over everyone else.

The way to neutralize George’s drama is to lay down some ground rules for behavior. This starts with the employee handbook, which likely already has some rules in place about matters such as gossiping and backbiting. The human resources department can be helpful on that front.

But you have to go further than that. Convening a team meeting in which you lay out what behavior will not be tolerated is a critical step. This includes telling staff that you also won’t tolerate them engaging the gossiping and backbiting – and will hold them accountable, too. A “swear jar” in which the drama queen and her colleagues must put in a buck or two for complaining, gossiping, and other acts of chaos, would be helpful in this case.

One more step lies in telling team members to follow what is called the Vegas rule: What is discussed with the team stays with the team. Encourage colleagues to first discuss their issues with each other, and then taking it to the team if they cannot resolved it on their own. Then they mush leave the dispute behind them once it is resolved.

This allows for the kind of open communication that makes it difficult for drama queens to cause chaos.

Apply pressure, fire as necessary

Setting ground rules is only one step in tamping down on drama queens. You have to hold them accountable for their behavior at every step. Drama queens, driven as much by their own insecurity as by the need to control those around them, will always seek out ways to cause chaos.

It all starts with you. It is your responsibility to be intolerant of drama queen behavior. Asking for “just the facts please” when they complain, as management consultant John Murphy [suggests[(https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurp...), forces the drama queens to stop and contemplate.

Requiring drama queens to hold all complaints until your regularly-scheduled weekly office hours may also stop them in their tracks.

Another step lies with the performance review. One of the few positives of a performance review is that you can document employee behavior and use the prospect of lost bonuses or worse to adjust behavior.

To make the review useful for dealing with drama queens, you must take the time to document everything that they do. This includes writing down the moments when their behavior caused headaches for the team and cost you precious time. Make sure that the drama queen understands that you are reading from this documentation. It serves legal notice that the company may cleanly terminate the relationship if the behavior doesn’t change, and fast.

That’s the stick, but it’s good to hold out a carrot as well. Much drama queen behavior stems from insecurity. So offer some security in exchange for – no pun intended here – dramatically improved behavior. Giving drama queens a new challenge with the prospect of praise and advancement if they accomplish it well just might help to dial down that workplace drama, so that everyone can breathe easier.

Don’t Yank the Chain of Command

Why It's Necessary for Organizations, and When to Make Exceptions

A chain of command, or command hierarchy, is the relationship between personnel in terms of responsibility and authority. It’s a ready-made structure for delegation of authority to accomplish the organization’s mission. That’s true in most large organizations and broadly applicable, though examples here will be drawn from my experience in the military.

In the military’s chain of command, a commander will have a series of subordinate commanders and staff who report directly to him/her, and each of those commanders will have subordinate commanders who have the same relationship to them. It is this structure that allows a commander to issue orders that will be executed by each leader in the chain, all the way down to the smallest unit.

Coordination of operations requires that each person in the chain have a senior officer to answer to, and subordinates to delegate tasks to. Without it, imagine a general trying to give orders to 20,000 people simultaneously. He’d go hoarse pretty quickly.

The same is true of most private sector companies above a certain size. The chain of command facilitates command and control and maintains unity of command by eliminating conflicting orders from above.

Yes, Drill Sergeant!

In the military, the chain of command is drummed into us from the moment we join. Basic trainees are taught to identify every officer and Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) in their chain of command, from the President on down through their platoon sergeant.

It’s not as hard as it sounds, since there are only so many echelons between the President and that platoon, which is one of the advantages of the chain of command. You only have to remember a few people who have direct authority over you.

This chain simplifies giving and taking orders. The primary duty of each Soldier is to follow the orders of those in his chain of command, as they have what is known as “command authority,” that is, authority derived from a command position.

General authority

Then there is what is known as “general military authority,” by which any superior can step in to correct a breech of good order and discipline, especially if the situation is time sensitive. The Manual of Courts-Martial puts it this way: “Commissioned officers, warrant officers, petty officers, and noncommissioned officers have authority to quell quarrels, frays and disorders among persons subject to this chapter.”

For example, when I was a second lieutenant, I saw a Soldier in our motor pool remove his sidearm from his holster and jokingly point it at another Soldier. I directed him to holster his weapon. He did so, but he wasn’t happy about it and went to get his platoon leader.

When they came back, I pointed to a full colonel who was looking around the motor pool, and explained that he was the division safety officer, and that if he’d corrected the action before I did, we’d all have had a problem and his Soldier would probably have gotten a lot more than a spot correction.

Don’t jump!

There are also situations when someone will skip their immediate supervisor or subordinate, known as “jumping the chain of command,” and it’s usually a very bad idea.

A brigade commander who issues orders directly to company commanders risks putting them a situation where they may have conflicting orders. He also communicates a lack of confidence in the battalion commander who is his immediate subordinate.

It ends up neutering the battalion commander. Company commanders will begin to take their feedback directly to the brigade commander, bypassing their boss to put it in civilian-speak.

This also puts the brigade commander in the position of having to manage four company commanders instead of one battalion commander, which means more work for him and his staff. The higher up you go with this, the more chaotic it can get for the entire chain of command.

Not-so-bright idea

When I was a major, one of my duty assignments was as the operations officer of the mayor’s cell of the largest US base in Iraq (the mayor’s cell conducts all of the base operations tasks, like the mayor of a city). I reported to our operations and training (S3) officer, who reported to our commander, a colonel. His commander was a two-star general who was responsible for logistics support for all of Iraq.

During my tour, the two-star had what staff officers refer to as a “GOBI,” or General Officer Bright Idea. He directed that his staff set up an email hotline that allowed any Soldier in the command to put questions directly to him.

While this sounded good in theory, in practice it meant that any trooper could now jump the chain of command and get an answer to a question that would otherwise have been handled at the lowest level.

Of course, being a Major General, he wasn’t about to answer the questions himself. That was his staff’s job, and since many of the questions referred to quality of life issues around the base, they were directed to the mayor’s cell’s operations officer, which meant that they were directed to me.

“

Remember that jumping the chain implies a lack of trust in the subordinate or superior personnel that you are jumping over.

—MIKE HARRIS

This program rapidly became the bane of my existence, since it meant that I had to drop everything that I was doing when one of these questions arrived in order to answer it. And, because the answers were supposed to come from the general, each response had to be fully researched and diplomatically worded.

I spent days researching trivial issues that a platoon sergeant would have dismissed out of hand, while my actual workload in support of our mission increased.

This had all the downsides of jumping the chain. The subordinates took questions over the heads of their immediate leaders, the people between the general and the troops were marginalized, and the staff and the general ended up doing more work. Eventually, the general’s staff complained to the Chief of Staff, who quietly killed the program.

When to jump

When should you jump the chain? Rarely. Remember that jumping the chain implies a lack of trust in the subordinate or superior personnel that you are jumping over. Usually, it involves reporting of serious legal or ethical breeches, or emergency situations where the normal communication channels are too slow.

Does the chain of command always work? No, but the consequences of jumping the chain are usually worse than the consequences of acting under it in dumb situations.

Though your organization may not call it the chain of command or emphasize command structure as much as the military, you probably have one. And you may have been wondering why it matters: It’s a tool for getting things done and an antidote to organizational chaos.

Allow for Pushback

When You Want Your Team to Disagree

We’ve all been there: a project manager or supervisor asks you to do something you disagree with for some reason. Perhaps the assignment in question takes up too much time or maybe the proposed strategy doesn’t work with the overall mission. In any scenario where employee and supervisor are in disagreement, the situation is ripe for office drama.

As an employee, this can cause a lot of anxiety. No one likes having to step out of their comfort zone to challenge someone who is in a position of power. When your livelihood depends on your paycheck, sometimes it’s easier to just sit back and go with the flow even when you vehemently disagree with something, for good reasons.

The other side of the desk

For the supervisor, these types of disagreements present a whole different set of obstacles and opportunities. Being a leader means being being confident in your ability to make decisions for your entire team. But this responsibility does not mean that every choice you make is perfect.

“

Fostering a collaborative environment where everyone has a voice doesn’t have to mean losing respect.

—BRITTANY HUNTER

In fact, if you are a good leader with hiring authority, you will have assembled a team where each individual was carefully selected based on their own unique skill set. Since each person has something different to bring to the table, it would be foolish for a supervisor to refuse to acknowledge the opinions of their employees.

After all, even if you are at the head of a ship or department, you cannot possibly know everything. It is for that very reason that leaders have staffed their teams with able workers.

How can leaders allow for pushback?

It is absolutely important that employees respect their supervisors. Yet fostering a collaborative environment where everyone has a voice doesn’t have to mean losing respect. As with most things in life, there is a right and a wrong way to go about it.

There is a major difference between constructive criticism and disrespect. If, for example, an employee responds to a disagreement by simply shouting, “you’re wrong,” this obviously does not help create a an environment of respect.

If instead, disagreements and concerns are met with substantial evidence as to why this plan may not work, then any leader would be wise to consider what is being said. An employee may say, “I really appreciate your ideas, but I do have some data that possibly contradicts with the goals of this project.” This is much easier to work with.

As a leader, paying attention to how concerns are worded will help you gauge how to respond. A hostile employee may be carrying baggage from elsewhere into your meeting, meaning you may have to read between the lines of what is being said in order to get to the bottom of their concerns.

But employees who come prepared and armed with helpful data should absolutely be taken seriously and listened to by superiors. In fact, you may be surprised at how much insight they are able to offer.

What pushback makes possible

No one likes being met with resistance, but sometimes it is necessary both for the leader’s professional growth, as well as the employee’s.

Think of it this way: You hired each person for a reason. Allowing them to voice respectful dissent shows that you trust your own hiring decision. If you let your employee voice their concerns, it helps to foster an environment where passive agreement is discouraged.

You are saying, It is okay not to agree with everything. That is a good thing because friction during the collaborative process forces more creative thinking and better end results. A team full of “yes men” accomplishes very little that is also new. A team of “let’s think this through” men will bring new ideas to the table.

Take a beat

Disagreements do not have to result in office gossip and they most certainly do not have to result in a sit-down with human resources. More often than not, those things represent a failure to truly communicate.

So when you find yourself in disagreement with someone you work with, especially one of your employees, maybe take a beat. In that time, think of the best way to allow for pushback in the spirit of collaboration. If you can turn this into an opportunity to boost mutual respect, there’s no telling how much you can accomplish together.

How to Conquer a Chaotic Calendar

3 Steps to Protect Time for Your Biggest Priorities

As leaders—especially leaders who have busy families—the calendar can spiral out of control very quickly. It doesn’t take long before you’re dropping important personal or family events. As a top executive and mother of four, Meg has mastered the art of taming a chaotic calendar. In this episode, captured live at the Achieve Conference, she shares three steps for protecting your highest priorities. When we’re done, you’ll have the confidence to know that you not missing out on what’s most important. And you’ll have the freedom to be fully present wherever you are.

How I Got My Life Back

Michael Hyatt & Co. Helped Lasso My Calendar

In 2016, I left the office work-setting to embark on a completely different career in a new field. I was no longer an employee with supervisors assessing my performance and productivity, but rather working from home as my own boss.

It was great, but I didn’t foresee how much I relied on the rhythm of an office to keep me focused and from being overwhelmed by work. Or how easy it was to slip into essentially working at all waking hours and not giving full attention to my family during down time. I always considered myself an organized person, and by nature a “planner,” so how could my days fall so quickly into overwhelming disarray?

“

I see there are free seminars available online as well as Free to Focus Live happening this November.

—ANDREA RUTH

Over the next two years, I struggled with feeling constantly overwhelmed by work and separating it from family time. As someone with a history of diagnosed anxiety disorders, the disarray and lack of a schedule was often debilitating.

Writing down To-Do lists on various notepads with no prioritization of daily versus weekly or farther out tasks didn’t cut it. This jerry-rigged approach meant missing deadlines or saying “just forget it” to things I really wanted to accomplish.

A time for calendaring

It honestly seemed like I needed to accept all of that as my life now or call it quits and go back to working for someone else in an office.

As I was struggling with this, my fiancé, who had seen me over the years go from organized office worker to stressed out and often tearful contractor, showed me a planner he had watched videos about from Michael Hyatt & Co. This looked promising. We looked at some of the videos together and decided to order a second Full Focus Planner for me so we could start and learn to use the planner together.

In the first two quarters I’ve used the planner, work and downtime have become far more manageable and enjoyable. Productivity with my work has trended steadily upward, which in my case means more income. Stress and anxiety levels are far more manageable compared to before I started using the planner, which is better for both my work and my relationships.

“

In the first two quarters I’ve used the planner, work and downtime have become far more manageable and enjoyable.

—ANDREA RUTH

I’ve identified three major aspects of focus that have made these changes possible with no pain and nothing more than the will to create a new habit of using the planner.

1. It helps me get organized

Writing things down on pieces of paper or in various, undedicated notebooks was nearly worthless. The journal is for organizing and planning my day, from an overall “Big 3” picture down to hourly or even half-hour blocks of time to get certain tasks done, or to do the opposite and give myself a respite from answering emails or other work.

If I happen to get sidetracked or off-task, something that would usually send me into a spiral of overwhelmed frustration, I simply need to look at what I wrote down in the morning – possibly adjust for time lost and reprioritize one or two things – and I’m back on track with where I want and need to be by the end of the day.

2. It helps with work-life balance and delegation

We are truly blessed and cursed by the electronics we have constantly near-to-hand. While my smartphone makes seeing my fiancé when we’re not in the same state possible, it also makes working at anytime from anywhere possible. The pull for many American workers these days, especially if you’re self-employed, is to be always plugged in and available. This business availability works to the detriment of our personal health and well-being, as well as that of our partners and children.

One of my biggest flaws is that I am delegation averse. Sending tasks to someone else when I can do it from my phone is hard. That means I’m essentially always on the clock, whether I’m sitting in a plane on the tarmac heading on what’s supposed to be a vacation or spending time with my 10-year-old daughter shopping at the mall. That’s simply not healthy or conducive to avoiding burnout.

The planner helps me to get over this. I can look ahead, delegate, and notify my remote colleagues I won’t be available for a while.

3. It helps me reflect on the day

One of the surprising aspects of what the Full Focus journal has done for me and my fiancé is that it’s become a point of discussion at the beginning and end of each day. What was going on with our respective “Big 3” in the morning? What were we successful in completing and what needs to get done the next day? Did we need to be more realistic on timing? Should this be a goal for the week, rather than just one day?

When either of us falls short of where we want to be or gets frustrated over goal follow-through, we’re able to talk about it and encourage each other. Having the planner as something we both use as a couple means we understand how the other is operating and sometimes hand off personal tasks.

More focus?

We are responsible for our own success, but the reduction of stress that the planner made possible has helped greatly. It makes me wonder what other insights I might glean from Michael Hyatt & Co. I see there are free seminars available online as well as Free to Focus Live happening this November. Hmm.

The Very Best Way to Motivate Your Team

When leaders are driven to succeed, it’s easy to resort to power tactics to drive the team forward. While high achievers always thrive on a challenge, they also need more subtle encouragements to keep them energized. In this episode, we’ll show you the very best way to call forth the very best from your team.

George Washington vs. Workplace Drama

10 Ways to Dial It Down from America’s Founding CEO

When George Washington was a teenager, he both copied out by hand and tweaked 110 “rules of civility and decent behavior.” These rules had been compiled by Jesuits in late 16th century France and made the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

Manners were up in the air in this new world when Washington put quill to paper. You see, manners were designed for men of high standing, determined by birth. “Court”-liness literally referred to a king or nobleman’s court and how one should act in that context.

What was expected of most commoners was not really manners but deference. You can see this in some of the rules that Washington copied out.

For instance, rule 26 began, “In pulling off your hat to persons of distinction, as noblemen, justices, churchmen, and company, make a reverence bowing more or less according to the custom of the better bred…”

Manners for everyone

But you can also see a break from hard caste in the very next sentence with “but among your equals…” Washington would oversee the rise of a new nation in which most men were equals (with the unforgettable exception of slaves).

These new people believed that the democratization of power called for not less but more widespread observance of manners. Washington sought to model these manners in his life, on the battlefield, as a farmer-businessman, and as president.

“

Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust

—GEORGE WASHINGTON

10 rules plus one more

Many of Washington’s rules are still relevant today. For this issue on how to motivate your team in the workplace, I offer a curated list 10 rules on how to behave that will help today’s leaders to command respect, capped off with a bonus rule that we all would do well to head.

Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.

Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another though he were your enemy.

Let your discourse with men of business be short and comprehensive.

When a man does all he can, though it succeed not well, blame not him that did it.

Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any.

Speak not injurious words neither in jest nor earnest; scoff at none although they give occasion.

Be not forward but friendly and courteous, the first to salute, hear, and answer; and be not pensive when it’s a time to converse.

Detract not from others, neither be excessive in commanding.

When your superiors talk to anybody neither speak nor laugh.

Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.

Bonus: Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

Money Isn’t Everything

5 Other Currencies to Motivate People

A surprising number of people are not primarily motivated by money. In fact, some studies have found that there is only a weak connection between job satisfaction and salary level.

And yet, the primary way that we attempt to motivate employees in the white-collar world is through extrinsic means: bonuses, stock awards, and benefits packages.

While these rewards may entice an employee to seek you out for a job, they are not necessarily what will make people stay, and prosper.

So what does work? Here are 5 strategies that I have found to motivate team members that don’t involve money. The gains to your team, however, are very real.

“

Your first job as a manager of new people is to find out what your employees’ intrinsic triggers are

—HEATHER ROSCOE

1. Identify their intrinsic motivators

Your first job as a manager of new people is to find out what your employees’ intrinsic triggers are. These could be the feeling of closure when you check something off your list; the glow that you feel when upper management praises your work; the feeling of warmth and well-being that results from helping solve someone’s problem or making their day; or something else.

Skills gaps in employees are can be fixed through training and on-the-job experience. They are teachable. However, a love for the work is not easily passed on to a person who is not interested. In journalism school we were told by our professor, “I can teach anyone how to write – I can’t teach someone how to ask the right questions.” The same goes for just about any type of work.

The trick as a leader is to find out how their passions and hobbies can be an asset to your team first and focus on skills later. Then, like a jujitsu master, use the their intrinsic triggers to pull them towards the work that will give them those rewards on the job.

2. Spend time with them

Nothing is more demotivating than a manager who never has time for the staff. Managers who don’t take time to meet with their employees send a message that the staff are unimportant, whether or not that was what they intended to say.

So, set aside time to meet with your direct reports every week for a one-on-one discussion and never cancel that meeting unless it is completely unavoidable.

If you have a very busy schedule, your team members may be waiting all week to talk to you about issues that could be blocking their work or agitating them. That means that you not only demotivate if you continually cancel these discussions, but you are also hurting yourself by making it harder for them to do their jobs effectively.

3. Recognition is often its own reward

A common complaint with employees is “no one ever acknowledged how hard I worked on that!” That’s easy enough to fix.

If you are middle management, take a few minutes to send an email to your own manager about the good work that your employee is doing, and CC that worker on the email. It’s a small gesture that can make the different for an employee between staying in a company and leaving for more encouraging pastures.

If this doesn’t come naturally to you, then I recommend setting aside 30 minutes every 2 weeks to spend on recognizing your employees. Successes are good to praise, but it’s also wise to praise them when they take risks or fail in a way that results in a valuable lesson.

The principle is simple: Praise them for good work, and they will continue to try and earn more praise.

4. Treat them like they matter (because they do)

I work in a company that employs many contract, consultant, and vendor staff. It can be tempting for the full-time employees to treat the vendor staff like disposable utensils. Tempting but costly. I don’t have the time to replace vendors who leave the job because they are not engaged with their work, so when a new vendor joins my team the first thing that we do is sit down for coffee and a career discussion.

These talks reveal to me what they are fully capable of and give hints about what truly gets them out of bed in the morning. For the vendor, knowing that someone takes an interest in them creates a stronger bond of loyalty between us and reduces my vendor turnover.

It’s not necessary or advisable to be deeply involved in the lives of your employees, but people are motivated to work hard for managers who show that they care. Remember two things: 1. They are the ones who can make you successful. 2. True progress is a lot more likely if you make them successful first.

5. Challenge, trust, and forgive

We all know that a little challenge is good for people. Equally valuable, however, is letting your employees know that you trust them.

Dreaded micromanagers, take note: You hired this person because they convinced you that they have the knowledge and experience that you were looking for. Now let them go and do their job without constant correcting and commentary from you.

If you have taken an interest in their lives and consistently meet with them one-on-one, they will feel comfortable coming to you if they encounter problems. Trust is motivating.

On paper this all sounds easy. In real life however the work day is filled with stress, some of your team members may have personalities that annoy you, and you don’t have time to meet with your 10 direct reports every week.

This is not easy. I don’t want to pretend that it is. But what it all boils down to is this: If you approach your employees with compassion and trust, they will respond with loyalty and motivation – quite apart from the money.

The Science of Motivation

6 Ways to Soldier On

The United States Military Academy is an elite, selective institution with an acceptance rate of less than 10 percent. Despite this, not everyone who matriculates graduates.

Psychologists Amy Wrzesniewski and Barry Schwartz decided to find out why. Drawing on 14 years of data detailing the motivations and outcomes of over 10,000 cadets, they found intrinsic motivation to be the driving force of success.

External motivators, even when found in parallel to strong indications of intrinsic motivation, increased the probability of dropping out. This is one of many studies that point to an important shift in how we understand motivation.

Limitations of extrinsic motivation

All activities have consequences, some natural and others manipulated. Work earns money, things we do might make our parents proud, and sometimes we get ourselves to the gym with a promise of deliciousness afterwards. These external consequences can easily become our motivation for doing things, but current research indicates this could do more harm than good.

Dr. Kou Murayama has looked extensively at the outcome differences between intrinsically and extrinsically motivated work.

In a 2011 study, he assigned a problem-solving task to two groups of participants. One group was instructed to master the material while the others were told to outperform their peers. The later scored better on a surprise memory test that day, but the former performed better a week later.

“

Though immediate knowledge can be bolstered by rewards, mastery requires intrinsic motivation

—ERIN WILDERMUTH

Longitudinal data comparing motivation responses to short and long-term test scores of school children revealed a similar trend. Though immediate knowledge can be bolstered by rewards, mastery requires intrinsic motivation.

Murayama also found that though rewards can help us learn when other forms of motivation is lacking, such as memorizing boring trivia, they may undermine more powerful intrinsic motivations. The behavioral findings from his 2010 study had been seen before: participants were less likely to voluntarily engage in activities, even objectively enjoyable activities, if they had previously been paid to do them.

The neurobiology, however, was new.

The study showed that “activity in the anterior striatum and the prefrontal areas decreased along with this behavioral undermining effect.” These are the structures in the brain thought to be responsible for motivation.

This finding explains our West Point results: even when intrinsic motivations were present, the existence of strong external motivations negatively impacted cadets’ outcomes.

Tapping into intrinsic motivation

The most effective motivational strategy is to tap into your own intrinsic motivation. Though easier said than done, Murayama and other experts have several tricks of the trade to share.

1. Don’t underestimate your ability to become intrinsically motivated

Your ability to self-motivate is stronger than you think. In a 2018 study, Murayama assigned a repetitive, long task to study participants. When asked how motivated they would be to complete the task, participants across the board underestimated their ability to self-motivate. You might be surprised by the things you’re able to intrinsically motivate yourself to do.

2. Use psychological principles to motivate yourself

“The essence of human motivation,” psychologist Tory Higgins explains, “is that we want to be effective. It’s what makes us feel alive.” As the director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia Business school, Higgins knows a thing or two about motivation. He pinpoints three avenues to feeling effective: achieving a goal, influencing events and identifying truth. If you can tie a given task into one of these avenues, you might trigger a source of intrinsic motivation.

3. Surround yourself with motivated and engaged people

One of Murayama’s current research goals is a better understanding of “motivation contagion.” The idea is that being around motivated people can help us to become motivated ourselves. When we see people we respect actively engaged in activities we might have written off as boring, we take a closer look.

4. Share your progress

Sharing your goals and progress is all about accountability. In a Dominican University study, researchers recruited participants with New Year’s Resolutions. Some participants shared weekly progress reports with a friend, while others kept their goals and progress to themselves. 70 percent of the first group stuck with their goals, while only 35 percent of those who had kept to themselves persevered.

5. Set incremental, specific, and challenging goals

90 percent of studies related to task setting and performance between 1969 and 1980 reported increased levels of performance when goals were specific and challenging. It’s also a good idea to keep victory posts close together. The feeling of accomplishment is incredibly motivating.

6. Train your brain

Though it may sound more science fiction than science, you may be able to train your brain to become more motivated. Using a neurofeedback reader that indicated when they were successful, participants of a recent study were able to consciously activate motivation-related parts of their brain.

Half of the battle

Rewards are a commonplace motivator. We offer our kids rewards for good behavior, give our pups treats when they follow commands and often use the same motivational strategies on ourselves. Many people believe that extrinsically-oriented motivation works just as well as intrinsic motivation. Today, however, we know that this is not the case.

As tough as it is to change how we think about motivation, challenge yourself to remember the true science. Knowing what really works is half the battle. The other half is up to you.

The Science of Decision Fatigue

4 Ways to Make Fewer, Better Choices

Think back to the last decision you made. What were your options? How did you choose what to do? Most importantly, was the outcome of this decision instrumental in building your life, productivity, or happiness? Unless I caught you at a particularly productive or essential moment, probably not.

Most of the decisions we make are inherently unimportant: pants or shorts, walk or bike, read or retire.

It isn’t that we don’t make important decisions, we just make so many unimportant ones. You likely skipped clear past a number of these inconsequential choices when I asked you to think of the last decision you made, but ignoring them is a mistake. The act of decision making, even when small, contributes to decision fatigue.

Defining decision fatigue

Dr. Jean Twenge, who is now well known for her work on generational differences, wasn’t always a sought after psychologist and influential speaker. Years ago, she was a new bride and postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Roy F. Baumeister at Case Western Reserve University.

“

Not every decision needs to be made now. In fact, some never need to be made again.

—ERIN WILDERMUTH

The lab’s work centered on ego depletion, the idea that people have limited mental resources that are depleted with use. Baumeister was especially interested in willpower. In his seminal ego-depletion study, from which the term was coined, he found that participants who had recently resisted freshly baked cookies were less able to persevere through a puzzle than their peers.

Twenge brought a new perspective to the research. Recalling the mental exhaustion of putting together her wedding registry, she wondered if simple decision making might draw from the same limited reserve of mental energy. The team developed an experiment where one group of students made a series of shopping-related decisions, while a second only considered choices. Afterward, both groups took a willpower test. The decision-makers scored significantly lower.

This preliminary exploration led to further experiments and a literature of research firmly in support of the decision fatigue hypothesis.

Decision fatigue outside the lab

Decision fatigue isn’t limited to the lab. Perhaps the most compelling real-world study found that judges were significantly more likely to grant parole in the morning than afternoon. Morning cases were released 70 percent of the time, while those in the late afternoon saw a release rate of less than 10 percent. There was a significant difference even among similar cases.

One might argue that these decisions are particularly weighty, but less important decisions are subject to the same effect. In a study of business analysis, for example, forecasters became less accurate as the day wore on. This dip in accuracy was accompanied by a greater proportion of choices made according to heuristic decision-making methods.

When running low on mental energy, both judges and analysts made safer choice.

Both choices, keeping inmates in jail and employing heuristics, can almost be thought of as not making a choice. Knowing that their decision making resources are depleted, these professionals choose to avoid the potential pitfalls of making a poor choice by choosing the safest option.

Judges chose to keep prisoners locked up, knowing that the decision will not result in preventable crimes and that the inmates can be released later. Analysts followed the crowd or relied on past decisions as a guide, using heuristic techniques that they could easily defend instead of making bold, innovative decisions.

Chances are you and I fall prey to the same phenomenon. Luckily, there are strategies to keep decision fatigue at bay:

1. Limit unnecessary or unimportant decision making

The most straightforward way to avoid decision fatigue is to make fewer unimportant decisions. Many successful men and women, for example, wear the same outfits each day. Eliminating or automating some decisions will help you save mental energy for other decisions.

2. Make important decisions first thing in the morning

Make important decisions in the morning. When possible, sleep on those decisions that pop up unexpectedly. A good decision one day later is usually better than a poor decision made right away.

3. Indulge in sugary snacks

Your body needs energy to function, and your brain is no exception. A 2007 study found that self-control requires glucose to function unimpaired. As decision making relies on the same resources, a sugar boost is likely to help in this category as well.

4. Be self-aware

Self-awareness, though not a solution to decision fatigue, is an important step to ensuring you aren’t making poor decisions later in the day. Check in with yourself. Take a moment to question whether you would address a decision differently if you felt more refreshed. Not every decision needs to be made now. In fact, some never need to be made again.