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

CHECK THE DOWNSIDE OF INACTION
Sometimes we weigh the pros and cons of doing a task. But how about the pros
and cons of 
not
doing the task? What are the implications of letting the status
quo persist? That’s something we typically don’t evaluate at all. Known as
omission bias
, this phenomenon is another source of procrastination, since it
often makes the choice to do nothing look more attractive than it actually is.
I asked Elta how she saw the pros and cons of 
not
doing her public speaking
preparation until the last minute. On the advantages of avoiding it, all she could
come up with was the fact that she’d feel less stressed. It sounded a bit lame, and
also untrue: it would lighten her load today, but it certainly wouldn’t reduce her
anxiety in the hours leading up to her talk. Then came a moment of insight for
Elta, when she focused on the potential disadvantages of deferring her
preparation. As she played it through in her mind’s eye, she realized it was her
worst nightmare. She’d be jittery as she stood up, she’d do a bad job, and she’d
actively harm her reputation. It was oddly galvanizing for her to consider the
downside of inaction for a moment or two.
PRE-COMMIT
In case thinking about the costs of the status quo isn’t enough, research suggests
there’s an effective way of making inaction look even less appealing: by making
a public commitment to getting something done.

---

Oxford University neuroscientist Molly Crockett has shown that, even when
there’s no public pronouncement, pre-commitment works better than willpower
alone when people are trying to resist temptation; in other words, it’s easier to
resist watching cat videos when you’ve thought ahead and blocked several of
your favorite cat video sites.
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And it’s even more powerful to 
publicly
commit to getting something done,
because our brain’s threat-perception and reward systems are so highly
responsive to our social standing. It matters to us whether we’re respected by
others. So by telling people about our plans, we add social costs to not following
through; none of us much wants to look foolish or lazy to other people. That’s
why people sign up for marathons and tell all their friends; it’s why I tell my
husband that I’m going to choir practice on days when I know I’ll be tempted to
skip it. It’s even better if you can involve other people directly by making shared
plans, because then you risk 
really
annoying your colleagues and friends if you
don’t show up.
Elta confirms that she uses social pre-commitments to motivate herself. “First
of all, I’ll force myself to formally sign up to do a presentation, even though I
don’t want to.” Why? She doesn’t want to leave an audience hanging without a
speaker, or get a reputation for being flaky. Then, to add impetus to her
preparation, Elta involves a friend or colleague. “I tell them ‘I’m going to
practice my presentation on you.’ For example, when I was working at Berkeley,
I had a good friend who knew how I felt about speaking. So we’d agree to meet
in coffee shops, and she’d listen to me practice. We didn’t work together—in
fact, she was in a different field—but committing to meet her meant I had to
prepare beforehand.” So not only did Elta get to the end of the day feeling good
about her productivity and diligence, but she also got to see a friend—providing
a neat short-term reward for her social brain.