Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be
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One of the unappreciated benefits of Daily Questions is that they force us to quantify an unfamiliar data point: our level of trying. We rarely do that. We treat effort as a second-class citizen. It’s the condolence message we send ourselves when we fail. We say, “I gave it my best shot,” or “I get an A for effort.” But after a few days, quantifying effort rather than outcome reveals patterns that we’d otherwise miss.
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They reinforce our commitment. Daily Questions are what behavioral economists refer to as a “commitment device.” The questions announce our intention to do something and, at the risk of private disappointment or public humiliation, they commit us to doing it.
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Self-discipline refers to achieving desirable behavior. Self-control refers to avoiding undesirable behavior.
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Daily Questions, by definition, compel us to take things one day at a time. In doing so they shrink our objectives into manageable twenty-four-hour increments. By focusing on effort, they distract us from our obsession with results (because that’s not what we’re measuring). In turn, we are free to appreciate the process of change and our role in making it happen. We’re no longer frustrated by the languid pace of visible progress—because we’re looking in another direction. Daily Questions remind us that: • Change doesn’t happen overnight. • Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in ...more
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For some people the “coach” is little more than a scorekeeper—someone we report to each evening without having to endure any judgment or interference. For others the coach is a referee, someone keeping score but also blowing the whistle when we commit an egregious foul (for example, pressing us to explain several days of low scores). For others the coach is a full-blown adviser, engaging us in a dialogue about what we’re doing and why.
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It’s the same in corporate life, where the best leaders function like our favorite high school coach: teaching, supporting, inspiring us, and occasionally instilling some healthy paranoia to keep us surging ahead.
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Then there’s the successful person’s unshakable self-sufficiency: we think we can do it all on our own. Quite often we can, of course. But what’s the virtue of saying no to help? It’s a needless vanity, a failure to recognize change’s degree of difficulty.
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They don’t ask me to help them become better strategists, budgeters, negotiators, public speakers, proposal writers, or programmers. I help them become better role models in their relationships with the people who matter most to them—their family, their friends, their colleagues, their customers.
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Be grateful for what you have. No matter the disappointment or supposed tribulation, do not whine or complain, do not get angry, do not lash out at another person to express your entitlement. You are no better than these African children. Their terrible fate, undeserved and tragic, could have been your fate. Never forget this day.
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Every endeavor comes with a first principle that dramatically improves our chances of success at that endeavor.
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Follow it and it will shrink your daily volume of stress, conflict, unpleasant debate, and wasted time. It is phrased in the form of a question you should be asking yourself whenever you must choose to either engage or “let it go.” Am I willing,
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at this time, to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?
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Like the physician’s principle, First, do no harm, it doesn’t require you to do anything, merely avoid doing something foolish.
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We behave one way when we believe that there is another person at the helm. We can blame that stupid, uncaring person for our misfortune. This blaming permits us to get angry, act out, assign blame, and play the victim. We behave more calmly when we learn that it’s an empty boat. With no available scapegoat, we can’t get upset. We make peace with the fact that our misfortune was the result of fate or bad luck. We may even laugh at the absurdity of a random unmanned boat finding a way to collide with us in a vast body of water.
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If there’s a person who drives you crazy, you don’t have to like, agree with, or respect him, just accept him for being who he is.
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AIWATT is the delaying mechanism we should be deploying in the interval between trigger and behavior—after a trigger creates an impulse and before behavior we may regret. AIWATT creates a split-second delay in our prideful, cynical, judgmental, argumentative, and selfish responses to our triggering environment. The delay gives us time to consider a more positive response. The nineteen-word text deserves close parsing: Am I willing implies that we are exercising volition—taking responsibility—rather than surfing along the waves of inertia that otherwise rule our day. We are asking, “Do I really ...more
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If you’ve ever broken up badly with a boyfriend or girlfriend and regretted your clumsy, hurtful explanations for parting ways, you can remember the difference between honesty and disclosure. Honesty is stating enough truth to satisfy the other person’s need to know. Too much disclosure has a more ambitious reach—often to a point where the other person suffers and feels ashamed.
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“Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.”
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we go through life grumbling about what should be at the expense of accepting what is. Within that bubble of delusion, we grant ourselves an autonomy and superiority we have not earned. We imagine how much better the world would be if we had the power to make the decisions. We don’t.
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When we regret our own decisions—and do nothing about it—we are no better than a whining employee complaining about his superiors. We are yelling at an empty boat, except it’s our boat.
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And we can do something about it—by doing nothing.
Sonia
sophie email 3mo ago
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Alan Mulally.
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the Business Plan Review (BPR) process that he has developed is the most effective use of organizational structure that I have ever observed. In my years of coaching and research on change, I have learned one key lesson, which has near-universal applicability: We do not get better without structure.
Sonia
GOOGLE
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Each leader had a mission to help—not judge—the other people in the room.
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But Alan was serious. Structure was imperative at a thriving organization, even more so at a struggling one. What better way to get his team communicating properly than by showing them step by step how great teams communicate?
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They weren’t allowed to digress or stonewall or try end runs around painful subjects. They had to face the reality of Ford’s dire situation.
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This is how the executives discussed the only metric that mattered during Ford’s turnaround: How can we help one another more?
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Or we hold ourselves blameless for any interpersonal friction; it’s always someone else’s fault, not ours. The other guy has to change. I shouldn’t have to. Or we’re so satisfied with how far our behavior has already taken us in life that we smugly reject any reason to change. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is the payoff built into the core structural element of this book—the Daily Questions. Asking ourselves, “Did I do my best…” is another way of admitting, “In this area I need help.” Answering the questions every day without fail is how we instill the rigor and discipline that have ...more
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Robert’s challenge, as I saw it, was twofold: he had to change himself and his environment simultaneously—which meant aligning his team’s behavior with his own. I had a simple off-the-shelf structure for him that had worked with clients many times before. It took the form of six basic questions. The questions weren’t a big surprise to Robert—except for the fact that he’d never created the time or circumstance to pose them to himself and his people.
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Where are we going?
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Where are you going? • What is going well? • Where can we improve? • How can I help you? • How can you help me?
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“If you were your own coach, what would you suggest for yourself?”
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How can I help? This is the most welcome phrase in any leader’s repertoire.
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When we offer our help, we are nudging people to admit they need help. We are adding needed value, not interfering or imposing. That’s what Robert was going for: building alignment between everyone’s interests.
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That’s an added value of matching structure with our desire to change. Structure not only increases our chance of success, it makes us more efficient at it.
Sonia
puerto rico
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The social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister coined the term ego depletion in the 1990s to describe this phenomenon. He contended that we possess a limited conceptual resource called ego strength, which is depleted through the day by our various efforts at self-regulation—resisting temptations, making trade-offs, inhibiting our desires, controlling our thoughts and statements, adhering to other people’s rules. People in this state, said Baumeister, are ego depleted.
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Like fuel in a gas tank, our self-control is finite and runs down with steady use. By the end of the day, we’re worn down and vulnerable to foolish choices. Depletion isn’t limited to self-control. It applies to many forms of self-regulated behavior.
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decision fatigue, a state that leaves us with two courses of action: 1) we make careless choices or 2) we surrender to the status quo and do nothing.
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You had the option of being happy to see your family or making everyone miserable. Running low on willpower, you made the wrong choice. Structure is how we overcome depletion. In an almost magical way, structure slows down how fast our discipline and self-control disappear. When we have structure, we don’t have to make as many choices; we just follow the plan. And the net result is we’re not being depleted as quickly.
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They chafe at the imposition of any rule or routine, as if their self-generated discipline is morally and aesthetically superior to externally generated discipline. I get it. We like our freedom. But when I consider the behavioral edge that structure provides, my only question is “Why would anyone say no to a little more structure?”
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It should be a simple structure that (a) anticipates that our environment will take a shot at us and (b) triggers a smart, productive response rather than foolish behavior. I suggest that simple structure is a variation on the Daily Questions, a process that requires us to score our effort and reminds us to be self-vigilant. It’s a structure that alters our awareness profoundly.
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Did I do my best to be happy? 2. Did I do my best to find meaning? 3. Did I do my best to build positive relationships? 4. Did I do my best to be fully engaged?
Sonia
ozso's blog studies about joy
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scoring well on happiness, meaning, engagement, and relationship building. Achieving misery falls by the wayside, exposed as the folly it is.
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