How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

POSE A QUESTION
So we want to signal to our brain that we want it to go explore, rather than

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rehash the same old thinking. Surprisingly, doing that can be as simple as
framing our knotty task as a question rather than a weary statement.
In one odd little study, psychologist Ibrahim Senay and colleagues at the
University of Illinois demonstrated the benefits of this approach.
2
Their
volunteers were first told that they were doing a handwriting test, and were
asked to write some words on a piece of paper. Certain people were asked to
write “Will I,” while the others were asked to write “I Will.” Then they were all
asked to solve ten anagrams. Those who had written “Will I” (with its subtle
suggestion of the question “Will I solve these anagrams?”) went on to solve
nearly twice as many anagrams as those who wrote “I Will.” The Illinois
researchers connected this result to wider research findings which suggest that
being asked a question (rather than being told to do something) leaves us feeling
more in control, less defensive, and consequently more open to new ideas.
3
Questions seem to encourage our brains into discovery mode, by piquing our
curiosity and instilling a feeling of “Ooh, I wonder what the answer might be,”
rather than “I must crack this darned thing.”
How can we apply this to tricky tasks at work? It can be as simple as framing
the task as an open question—simply pausing and asking, “What’s the right way
to solve this, ideally?” When I feel frustrated by a lack of progress, I often find
that’s enough to put me in a more exploratory mindset.
I also like rhetorical questions that invite us to set aside barriers that might be
narrowing our thinking. For example: “If you knew the answer, what would it
be?” Or “If you had no constraints, what would you do?” Questions like these
usually make my clients do a double take. They push back, chuckling and telling
me, “That makes no sense at all” or “But I 
do
have constraints, that’s precisely
the problem.” But then they try it, and discover that these sorts of questions
loosen up their thinking. They seem to help us think more creatively by helping
our brains feel less threatened by the challenge.
On a recent project, Peggy, our freelance art director, was looking for ideas on
how to market a new air freshener, one that not only smelled good but had the
added benefit of killing germs. All the ideas that she and her colleagues had
proposed seemed a little stale, like the air the product was supposed to freshen.
So Peggy started asking questions to open up their thinking. “One question I like
to ask is ‘How does this product fit into people’s lives?’ It encourages
exploratory thinking even when the product doesn’t seem that exciting.” Peggy
also has some crazier questions in her kit bag. “I also asked everyone: ‘Let’s say

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the product knocked on our door and we opened it. What would we see?’
” She
says the immediate answers were a little weird: “It’s sort of big, and green, and
speaking German.” Silly, of course. But, she says, “asking such an obviously
nonthreatening question shifted something in the way we were thinking.” It got
Peggy and her colleagues out of their narrow “gotta fix this” mentality and into a
more creative frame of mind, where better ideas started to flow.
So when you feel as if you’re banging your head against the wall, don’t just
exhort yourself to bang harder. Instead, try leading your brain into a more
exploratory state with an expansive question, like:
“What would be a totally different approach to this?”
“What would be a great way of going about solving this?”
“If I knew the answer, what would it be?”
(And sure, by all means: “If the solution knocked on the door, what would it
look like?”)