Living Archives - Page 18 of 51

U Is for Urgency

March 22, 2017 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

According to the gospel of Dr. J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University, paraphrased by Dwight D. Eisenhower in a speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, and subsequently adopted by Stephen R. Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:

What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.

You’ve probably seen—or at least heard of—the Eisenhower Box or Covey’s time-management matrix. Maybe you’ve used it. In any case, it has gained traction to the point where it’s generally accepted as a viable operating principle by nearly everyone who’s trying to be more productive, effective, or successful.

The four quadrants in the matrix are:

#1: Urgent and Important
#2: Important but not Urgent
#3: Urgent but not Important
#4: not Urgent and not Important

Although I understand the concept, this matrix has never seemed useful to me so I haven’t paid much attention to it. But the wide acceptance of it has had a profound effect, one that I encounter repeatedly when I talk to my clients about change: it has turned urgent into a dirty word.

Gentlemen, Define your Terms!

The definition of important is: of great significance or value; likely to have a profound effect on success, survival, or well-being.

The definition of urgent is: compelling or requiring immediate action or attention; imperative; of pressing importance.

According to proponents of the matrix:

Important tasks contribute to your long-term personal or professional goals or mission. Sometimes important tasks are also urgent, but typically they’re not. Focusing on important tasks puts you in a responsive mode, which keeps you calm, collected, and inventive.
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Urgent tasks, however, require immediate attention, which puts you in a reactive mode. You become defensive, negative, hurried, and narrowly-focused. Furthermore, urgent responsibilities require immediate attention. These activities are often tightly linked to the accomplishment of someone else’s goal, and not dealing with them will cause immediate consequences. Urgent tasks are characterized as: crises, pressing problems, deadlines, emergencies, last-minute preparations, and (my favorite) fire-fighting.

This is a whole lot of hooey for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this post. The most annoying aspect of the matrix is the seeming conflation of urgency with emergency.

An emergency is defined as: a serious situation or occurrence that happens unexpectedly and demands immediate action.

While both urgent tasks and emergencies require action or a response now, not everything that’s urgent is an emergency. And there is nothing inherently negative in the definition of urgent, which begins with compelling: evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully irresistible way.

If It Feels Good, Don’t Do It?

According to the matrix, or interpretations of it, pleasurable activities are neither urgent nor important, so they should get the lowest priority in terms of how you spend your time. Try telling that to the part of your brain that runs you, and which is not remotely interested in all that stuff in box #2.

The unconscious part of your brain (System 1) is interested in immediate gratification, not long-term satisfaction. That’s why (I’m guessing…) you don’t always do what’s in your own best interest, even when you’re clear about the benefits of doing those things or the consequences of not doing them.

Why are pleasurable activities banished to the bottom of the heap, anyway? That seems somewhat puritanical. Pleasurable activities are rewarding to the brain, so you naturally want to experience them—and, one way or the other, your brain will see to it that you do.

In fact, anything you experience as urgent falls under the operation of System 1, whether it’s good for you or not. All of your planning and evaluating and strategizing require the attention of System 2, the conscious part of your brain. The matrix is a System 2 product. It’s logical and it seems like a really good idea. System 2 has millions of really good ideas. (Anything you classify as important but not urgent is, until you take action on it, nothing but another good idea.)

System 2 forgets it is often a mere bit player in the game of life.

Make What’s Important also Urgent!

The prime directive of System 1 is your survival. It carries out that directive in a number of different ways, one of which is to maintain the status quo. When you try to change your behavior, System 1 “corrects” you back to your previous path.

For example, per the matrix, you may decide that it’s really important to make different choices in regard to exercise, eating, snapping at your co-workers, or the amount of sleep you get. If so, you will likely notice that important is often insufficient to maintain your commitment to making those changes. That’s because, from moment-to-moment, System 1 will keep you focused on what it considers to be urgent. You simply don’t have enough System 2 attention to continuously override System 1’s impulses.

System 1 is powerful and pretty relentless. If you want to change the status quo, you need an equally powerful and relentless force to counteract it and to get it to work for you rather than against you. So the best thing you can do is make what’s important as compelling to your brain as possible. You want to have a sense of urgency about accomplishing what really matters to you. If you don’t have that sense of urgency, then what you claim is important to you is nothing more than a good idea or intention—you know, those things famously paving the road to hell or at least to disappointment, mediocrity, and failure.

You’re much more likely to take action based on what’s important to you if you—and your brain—feel a sense of urgency about it. Get your brain to take on those good ideas and intentions as if your life depends on it because, not to be overly dramatic, it probably does.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

T Is for Thinking

March 15, 2017 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

What exactly is thinking? It turns out this is an area where you can’t trust dictionaries to provide meaningful definitions. If you consider the various definitions of the word—or the process—you’re likely to either be confused or to grab one that fits your existing concept so you (and your not-necessarily-thinking brain) can move on.

I don’t want to get philosophical about it, but I think there’s value in acknowledging the confusion. Being able to think clearly and effectively is essential for anyone who wants to lead a satisfying and meaningful life. It’s the difference between using your brain and letting your brain use you.

Warning! Metacognition* Ahead.

One definition equates thinking and opinion. But that source also equates opinion and judgment, so my opinion is that their thinking is sloppy and can’t be trusted. Are they referring to opinions and judgments rendered as a result of careful deliberation or are they referring to off-the-cuff (and often off-the-wall) moment-to-moment opinions and judgments that result from jumping to conclusions based on little or no evidence?

Another source says thinking is the action of using one’s mind to produce thoughts. This sounds reasonable, but I’m not sure what they mean by “using one’s mind.” Based on the way the two parts of the brain work, we know that the majority of thoughts we have are suggestions from System 1 (the unconscious) rather than the result of conscious deliberation.

Yet another definition equates thinking with having a conscious mind. But there’s a difference between consciousness and both the contents of consciousness (what you’re aware of—see above) and conscious processes. You’re conscious of all kinds of things you’ve never given any particular thought to.

For example, I’m aware that I dislike the color pink and rainy climates. I’m also aware that I’m suspicious of people who prefer rainy climates. But I’m not under the impression that any actual thinking was involved in the development of those so-called “thoughts.”

How Do I Think?
Let Me Count the Ways.

Some of the confusion undoubtedly results from the fact that, as with memory, there are so many different types of thinking that the term needs adjectives to clarify and differentiate them. Variations on the theme of thinking include:

Critical thinking
Associative thinking
Ruminative thinking
Creative thinking
Default-mode thinking
Counterfactual thinking
Overthinking
Positive thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly, rationally, and objectively and to understand the logical connection between ideas. It’s an active rather than a passive process. Because it requires System 2 (conscious) attention, it doesn’t come naturally and isn’t easy. In order to make an important decision or solve a significant problem, you need well-developed critical thinking skills so you can effectively evaluate both the information at hand and the “intuitive” suggestions spontaneously arising from System 1.

Associative thinking is the process System 1 (the unconscious) uses to link one thing (thought, idea, experience, etc.) to another. Associative thinking is much faster than logical, linear thinking, and there are times and places when quick, non-reflective responses are required. But there are some built-in problems with associative thinking. It sacrifices accuracy for speed, so the patterns it sees and the connections it makes don’t always lead to useful conclusions. It doesn’t discriminate very well, preferring clear-cut distinctions rather than shades of gray. And it takes numerous cognitive shortcuts known as cognitive biases.

Ruminative thinking is the tendency to passively think about the meaning, origins, and consequences of negative emotions (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). One negative incident or thought leads to another, and the escalating intensity of negative thoughts can result in depression, aggression, or even an increase in physical pain. You can ruminate about situations, other people, or about yourself (self-rumination). Rumination can feel like problem-solving, but all it does is keep you focused on the problem. The danger is that it can become a habit—and habits are notoriously difficult to change.

Creative thinking (or creativity) is the ability to see what already exists in a new light, to think of new ideas, and to make new things. This is less a talent or gift than an approach to life, and it provides many rewards apart from the products of creativity. Creative thinkers are less likely to be bored, more likely to have greater problem-solving abilities, and are very likely to get more general enjoyment out of life. The key to creative thinking is to know when to use logical, linear (System 2) thinking and when to use associative (System 1) thinking.

Counterfactual thinking is thinking that runs counter to the facts. It consists of imagining outcomes other than the ones that occurred: the way things could have been—or should have been—different from the way they turned out. Being able to imagine different outcomes is an enormous evolutionary and practical advantage. It’s integral to being creative or inventive and in not continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again. Counterfactual thinking can be either functional (helps you figure out what to do next time) or nonfunctional (leads to blame, stress, anxiety, etc.). And it can be either upward (how could things have gone better?) or downward (how could things have gone worse?).

Default-mode thinking is the opposite of mindfulness. Although you can sometimes direct your mind to focus on what you want it to focus on, at other times it just wanders along a winding path on a trajectory of its own. That’s because whenever you’re not focused on an external task—and even sometimes when you are—the network of brain structures referred to as the Default Mode Network (DMN) is active. Mind wandering isn’t the same as being distracted. In fact, default mode thinking is essential for consolidating memory and maintaining your sense of self (who you are).

Overthinking is often the result of believing you can fully determine—or even guarantee—an outcome based on the amount of thinking you do about it. It often consists of making multiple lists of pros and cons, running through if/then scenarios, trying to gather as much information as possible, or attempting to approach an issue from every conceivable angle. This is not an effective approach to planning or decision making because thinking more or thinking harder doesn’t lead to clarity, only to confusion and possibly a headache. Too much logical, linear thinking can be as bad as too little.

Positive thinking is usually defined as a mental attitude that accentuates the positive and eliminates the negative. Supposedly, positive thinking can help you succeed and better deal with life’s upsets and challenges. However, a considerable amount of research has come to a different conclusion, which is that positive thinking may be more of a hindrance to success than a help. Positive thinking isn’t the same as optimism, which is a character trait. Positivity and optimism are desirable, but not to the point where your glasses become so rose-colored you’re unable to see through them.

*Metacognition means thinking about thinking as opposed to reacting to it or being at the effect of it. The part of the brain that runs you most of the time (the unconscious) initiates both thoughts and actions that serve to maintain your personal status quo. So if you want to change the status quo, you need to determine what kind of thinking you’re doing—or what kind of thinking is “doing” you.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

O Is for Obstacles

February 8, 2017 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

An obstacle is something that blocks your path or prevents or hinders your progress. If there’s one thing that’s certain in life, it’s that things won’t always go the way you want them to or according to your plan. Like many people, you may think that’s always a bad thing. But obstacles and setbacks are part of life. They don’t mean anything in and of themselves. That doesn’t mean they don’t have an effect on you, but you’re the one who imbues them with meaning.

Obstacles can be external or internal. The external ones can range from a traffic delay on your way to an important meeting to an uncooperative family member or co-worker to serious illness or a natural disaster. My temperament is such that it’s easy for me to experience life itself as one giant obstacle. In Enneagram terms, I resist impact from the environment and there’s a lot of environment to go around. So I have considerable experience coming to terms with the nature of obstacles, including the fact that my attitude is not always helpful. Maybe you can relate.

A few other ways you can be your own biggest obstacle are by:

failing to get all the information or acting on unverified assumptions
dropping the ball (not following through on something)
communicating or behaving in a manner that results in an undesirable outcome
having unrealistic expectations of yourself and others

Of course the major obstacle, at least when it comes to behavior change, is your own brain, which is intent on maintaining the status quo. If you fail to recognize this particular obstacle, you’re in for a rougher ride than you need to be as you try to figure out why you keep doing what you’re doing when what you want to do is something entirely different.

One Interesting Thing about Obstacles

Imagine reading a story or watching a movie in which the protagonist faced no obstacles. Would you read a novel or enjoy a movie like that? People who write for a living are betting you wouldn’t. A rule of thumb for writers is there should be some element of conflict on every page. The more conflict, the better. The more obstacles the characters have to deal with, the better.

When something goes wrong in your life, just yell: “Plot twist!” and move on. —Anonymous

Conflict and obstacles make things interesting because they’re unexpected. They also force you out of your comfort zone. You can be proceeding through life on autopilot (System 1), driving along a familiar route, when suddenly you notice a mudslide has closed the road ahead. System 1 calls on System 2: What should we do now? If what’s on the other side of that mudslide is something you really want or someplace you really want to go, you’ll try to figure out another way to get there. Which brings us to…

One Useful Thing about Obstacles

I’m not going to claim obstacles are opportunities or tell you they’re gifts or blessings in disguise. You can interpret them that way if you like, but obstacles are just obstacles: things that get in the way of what you want to do or where you want to go. I’m also not going to insist that obstacles (or overcoming obstacles) make you stronger or tougher because maybe they will and maybe they won’t.

There is one significant benefit obstacles can provide, however, although not everyone benefits equally. Experiencing an obstacle can help you think globally—step back and see the bigger picture—not just about the obstacle you’re facing but in regard to other unrelated situations or unrelated tasks. As a result, you’re more likely to come up with creative solutions in a variety of different settings.

The basic cognitive processes elicited by obstacles help people to find more creative means towards their goals. —Janina Marguc, University of Amsterdam

But there are two caveats.

First, in order to reap this benefit, you have to be motivated to follow through with what you’re doing. If you’re not already motivated, you’ll be more likely to see an obstacle as an excuse for slacking off or giving up than as a spur to action or invention.

Second, you’re more likely to think globally as a result of encountering an obstacle if you have what is referred to as low volatility. Art Markman, Ph.D., writing in Psychology Today says:

People who are not that volatile tend to engage with a task and stick with it even when it gets difficult. Those people who are highly volatile tend to skip from task to task to task.

For the latter group, encountering an obstacle does not make them more likely to think globally. That makes sense, given that volatile means excitable, unpredictable, or irresolute. If you’re highly volatile, you prefer to move on rather than stick around feeling uncomfortable or temporarily discouraged.

But even if you tend toward high volatility, you can make it more likely you’ll achieve a goal or create or change a habit if you do the legwork up front to make sure you really want what you’re going after—that your desired outcome is extremely desirable. The more motivated you are, the less likely you’ll be to give up in the face of an obstacle.

The most practical and realistic approach to take when you want to achieve something is to assume the path ahead won’t be a smooth, straight line. Then you can figure out ahead of time how to respond to the twists, turns, and bumps you’re bound to encounter.

If you get as many of your ducks in a row as you can, you’ll be in a better position to deal with the obstacles you will inevitably encounter. And if you encounter one that’s an actual deal-breaker, it will be easier for you to identify it as such, stop beating your head against that particular boulder, and scrap your plan without guilt or regret. That’s worth a little upfront effort, isn’t it?

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

Reward Stickers
and the End of Civilization

September 7, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

If you listen to the dire warnings of the anti-reward-stickers faction, you’ll discover that giving kids reward stickers—or any kind of reward for that matter—is likely to turn them into anti-social schmucks who send their parents off to assisted living as soon as they can get away with it. Someone really said that. That’s because the kids will inevitably become “reward addicts,” which means they’ll need more and more of the reward to be satisfied. And eventually, they won’t be able to function without it.

No one is arguing that rewards don’t work. In fact, experts in the field frequently comment that they work “too well.” But the fact that they work isn’t good enough. One individual with a Ph.D. actually wrote this: “If I went to the doctor with a sore knee, one solution that would end the pain would be to amputate my leg. There is no doubt the solution would work. But it is still the wrong answer.” (Well, there is some doubt the solution would work, given that phantom limb pain is real and a real possibility.)

I’ve written and talked about rewards a lot, so I’m not going to go into the why of them again, except to say that the brain runs on rewards and we can’t change that. Rewards activate memory and learning circuits in the brain. You can figure out the implications. What I want to do is address some of the misguided thinking about rewards (including reward stickers) and behavior change.

Desired Outcome

What both the fellow with the hypothetical sore knee and the rest of the anti-reward folks seem to be missing is a clear definition of their desired outcome. In addition to being painful, a sore knee usually has some negative impact on mobility, so the desired outcome for treatment would include a return to normal function, thus eliminating amputation as a possible solution—and this particular example as a viable refutation of rewards.

So determine what your desired outcome is, and then decide whether or not rewards will help you get it.

Maybe you’re a busy person who wants to pursue your interest in Italian Renaissance art. You might decide that taking a class or spending a certain amount of time each week exploring the subject will help you achieve that outcome. In that case, you could set up a system to reward yourself each time you complete an assignment or spend your weekly allotment of time on your pursuit. Rewards can help you follow through and keep you on track. They can’t help you improve your talent or taste in art or sustain your interest in the subject.

Or maybe you’re a parent who wants to get your kid to develop a bedtime routine that doesn’t involve screaming, crying, or begging. You could set up a system to reward him or her for completing specific tasks. Rewards can definitely help with that, especially if you start small (with one task) and add new tasks one at a time and your kid is into the reward. But rewards can’t get him or her to love getting ready for bed, and it’s unrealistic to expect them to.

Intrinsic Motivation

All of the experts opining on the subject seem to believe that (1) kids should be intrinsically motivated to do the right thing—meaning whatever it is the adults want them to do—and (2) being intrinsically motivated will affect their behavior (i.e., will cause them to, in fact, do the right thing).

There should be a collective hysterical burst of laughter right about now. I’m an adult. You’re an adult. We can’t even get ourselves to do things we’ve decided we want to do when we’re crystal clear about the benefits of doing them and the consequences of not doing them. Why would we expect kids to behave better than we do?

Intrinsic motivation is a tricky concept, anyway, because it’s tied up with should. I should want to do this because it’s the right (healthy/ appropriate/ considerate/ responsible, etc.) thing to do. And you should want to do it, too. Some people are more bound by what they should do than others. They follow the rules. Whether they’re adults or kids, they generally cause less trouble. From the outside, they appear to be intrinsically motivated, but they’re not. The point is that I can’t tell what your motivation is for doing something and you can’t tell what my motivation is.

And being intrinsically motivated is no guarantee that anyone, adult or child, will follow through. Motivation and action are not one and the same, much to the disappointment of people who’ve paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to get motivated. Adding extrinsic motivation to the mix doesn’t conflict with the intrinsic motivation. It provides an extra boost and can help you deal with System 1’s siren calls of distraction and immediate gratification.

A couple of weeks ago, I described my current reward sticker routine for completing the same four tasks once in the morning and a second time before going to bed. They’re all things I want to do (am intrinsically motivated to do) and that I was doing more often than not. But since I wasn’t doing every single thing twice every single day, I decided to try the gold stars. That was my desired outcome, by the way: to do the four things twice a day. Period. And I would know I did them by the number of stars on my calendar. The extrinsic reward stickers have been just the boost I needed to get to—and so far to stay at—100% completion.

Maybe you’re intrinsically motivated to do a particular thing. If you are doing it, congratulations! But if you aren’t following through to your satisfaction, add an extrinsic reward to the process.

Maybe your kid wants to learn to play an instrument (is intrinsically motivated), but doesn’t always feel like practicing. Add an extrinsic reward for following through on the practice schedule and see if that increases his or her practice time.

For both adults and kids, reward stickers are easy. You get a visual record of a series of successes that encourages you to keep the chain intact. But you can use anything that works.

Behavior change is not easy, for kids or adults. But it’s important to recognize that the concepts we have about how we should go about changing behavior need to be balanced against how our brain actually operates. Our brain wants a treat. So we can decide what kind of treat to give it or we can let it choose its own treats. See Eating the Entire Bag of Potato Chips.

5 Characteristics of Innovative Thinkers

August 31, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Innovative thinking doesn’t require an innate talent or special technique. It isn’t limited to artists or inventors or any other group of people. If you want to develop your innovative thinking skills, focus on these five characteristics.

1. Be Curious

Curiosity prepares your brain for learning and long-term memory. It also activates the brain’s reward system. When you’re curious about something, you anticipate discovering more about it. And your brain treats the answer or the new knowledge the same way it treats any kind of reward—by releasing hits of dopamine.

Curiosity increases activity in the hippocampus, which involves the creation of memories. When there is a higher level of interactivity between the reward system and the hippocampus, your brain is more likely to remember the new information—as well as incidental information you encountered along the way.

Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it. –Dr. Matthias Gruber, UC Davis

2. Be Passionate

When you’re passionate about learning something, creating something, or solving a particular problem, working on it doesn’t feel like work no matter how effortful it might be. Passion is motivating. It keeps you engaged and helps you through the rough or confusing spots, so you’re more likely to keep going instead of getting bored or giving up. Obsession isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When you’re passionate about something, you spend more time working with or thinking about it, which expands your capacity for innovation and creativity within that area.

The more different kinds of experiences you have and the more you learn, in general, the more opportunities you give yourself to discover what you’re passionate about. This isn’t the same thing as “finding your passion.” You can be passionate about several things at the same time or about different things over the course of your life.

Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks. –Yo-Yo Ma

3. Be Willing to Fail

The unconscious part of the brain is risk averse, but while avoiding risks can get you incremental gains, it won’t really get you innovation or invention. It’s true that just because you can imagine something, that doesn’t mean it’s possible or viable. On the other hand, you won’t know until you try.

The occurrence of failure is less important than how you respond to it. If you treat it as feedback (information), there is always something you can learn from it to help you decide what to do next. If you treat it as evidence that there’s something wrong with you or your idea or course of action, you’re unlikely to get anything out of it.

And the failure to solve a problem can actually be the key to its eventual solution:

Failure to solve a problem stimulates your brain to store a special, easily retrieved memory of the problem. This memory energizes all of your associations to the information in the problem, sensitizing you to anything in your environment that might be relevant. —John Kounios and Mark Beeman, The Eureka Factor

There are no guarantees in life. If you can learn to live with uncertainty and recognize failure as feedback, you’re actually more likely to succeed.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. –Thomas A. Edison

4. Take Action

I’ll let Tim Ferris take this one: “Not yet!” one might say (and I have said often). More research, more preparation, more interviews, more… procrastination. Let’s call it what it often is: a forgiving term for a terrible habit. To create anything remarkable, it takes not one giant leap after perfect prep, but many baby steps in the right direction once you have barely enough to get started. To start something big, you have to first start something small.

The keywords here are “start something.” When you take action, you get more information in the form of feedback and you learn things you wouldn’t have learned if you simply continued thinking about your project. Taking any action can have unexpected results and undesired consequences. Although you can anticipate that such things might occur, you can’t plan for them because you won’t know what they are until after they happen.

An excellent motto to adopt is create and adjust. Until you begin actively creating, you have nothing to adjust.

5. Use Both Parts of Your Brain

Creativity and innovative thinking involve both parts of the brain—the conscious and the unconscious. Sometimes you need to apply focused (System 2) attention, which is linear, logical, effortful, and slow. But attempting to sustain System 2 attention is counterproductive. Sometimes you need unfocused (System 1) attention, which is associative, non-logical, runs in the background, and is fast.

Too much logical, linear thinking is as bad as too little. After framing the problem or situation and considering possible solutions, turn it over to your unconscious for a while and see what it comes up with. Let your mind wander instead of keeping it on a tight leash. Research indicates that if you take a break from a problem and come back to it later, you’re more likely to be able to solve the problem than you would be if you continued working on it without the interruption.