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How to Have a Good Day Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life - PDF Room

TRY THE “FIVE WHYS”
Sometimes we find ourselves returning to a task repeatedly, but we still seem
unable to take the first step. Perhaps we mean to set our intentions every
morning, but somehow never find the time. Or we’d like to stop multitasking,
but find we never go offline for longer than a couple of minutes. We hear a little
voice in our head saying, “Yeah, good idea, but…no.” In these situations, unless
we get to the bottom of the “but,” it’s hard to make progress.


What can we do? The first thing is to acknowledge the “but” rather than brush
it aside. So much of our daily behavior is driven by our brain’s automatic
system. Deeply coded needs and fears drive our choices in a way that’s largely
invisible to our conscious mind. If we get stuck in a behavioral loop that we
don’t like—such as avoiding tasks we genuinely want to get done—it’s a good
cue for us to pause and reflect. By definition, we can’t know all the inner
workings of our automatic system, otherwise it wouldn’t be doing a good job of
being automatic. But we can ask some nonjudgmental questions to try to
understand what the real blockage might be.
For a quick way to do this, I like the technique of the “five whys,” where you
patiently ask yourself a series of “why” questions to unearth the roots of your
reticence; the name of the exercise refers to the fact that the true cause of your
issue generally surfaces by the time you ask the fifth “why” question (and in my
experience, you often hit gold by the time you reach your third or fourth “why”).
The technique originated in the auto manufacturing sector, where it’s used to
work out why a production process has gone wrong. It’s certainly not a
substitute for psychotherapy. But it’s always striking to me how quickly the
“five whys” can help to uncover the root causes of many day-to-day difficulties.
This approach worked for Elta when she still found it hard to knuckle down to
preparing presentations. “I stopped and asked myself a few questions,” she says,
“starting with ‘
Why
do I feel reluctant to do this?’ Then ‘
Why
do I say that?’ and

Why
is that a problem for me?’ and so on.”
First she discovered a quiet voice in her head saying: “The reason I can’t be
bothered to prepare is that I’m always going to screw up my presentations—so
why bother?” She wondered where on earth that was coming from. “I pushed
myself to articulate 
why
I thought I was going to screw up. I finally realized it
was because I was afraid I didn’t have anything to say, that I wasn’t good at
what I professed to be good at.” But where was that feeling of inadequacy
coming from? After another “why,” she realized it was a legacy of her unusual
career path. “I had always felt like I didn’t match a traditional job category. I
wasn’t a quant analyst. I don’t have consulting experience. I was just an
academic who got interested in public policy. And I was interested in food,
which was peripheral to what my company does. So I didn’t know where I fit in.
That’s where my anxiety was coming from.”
Once Elta discovered the real reason behind her avoidance of the task, she had
a way forward. She could challenge the concern she’d unearthed, and then—if


needed—do something to address it. “I asked myself, ‘Is it realistic that I’d be
seen as incompetent?’ And the answer is no, not really. I can talk to you all day
about food policy. I reminded myself that I’d won projects for my company, and
that colleagues are asking me to join their projects. There’s plenty of evidence
that I know my stuff.” To reinforce this further in her mind, she decided to have
a conversation with her bosses to discuss her contributions to the company’s
work. After that, Elta hit the procrastination buffers a lot less often.
The blockages you uncover with the “five whys” aren’t always as existential
as Elta’s; they can be quite practical, arising from competing commitments or
routines in your life. For example, suppose you were indeed finding it hard to set
daily intentions in the morning. A few “why” questions might highlight that the
challenge really stems from your commitment to eating breakfast with the
family. Once you’ve made that conflict more explicit in your mind, it’s more
likely you’ll find a way to overcome it—perhaps experimenting with setting
your intentions the night before or during your commute to work. As Elta says,
“If you don’t work out what the real blockage is, you can go round in circles
feeling bad about yourself. But once you do work it out, you can deal with it and
get things done.” And getting things done generally leaves us feeling very good
about our day.

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