Have you ever tried to change a behavior and failed? Join the club. If this has not happened to you don't bother reading the real of this post and also quit lying to yourself. There is a lot of guilt associated with failing to change unwanted behaviors. So many success stories highlight the strength of will of those who are successful at losing weight, getting out of debt, quitting something cold turkey, etc. that there is an unstated implication that anyone who fails is lacking in fortitude. I have been there and wallowed in my own guilt when I have regressed. The truth is changing behavior is one of the hardest things in life to do. Failing to correct bad habits can lead quickly to wasted time and money and poor health. With this in mind, overcoming the difficulties of behavior change is crucial. As Chip and Dan Heath said in their excellent book Switch shaping the path can go a long way toward making a change. One of the most effective ways I have found to shape my path is to find a way to physically limit myself in a way that encourages the change that I want to make. Below are a few examples:
1. If you want to change your eating habits trade in the cooler you take your lunch in for a 6" X 6" Lock n' Lock container. If it does not fit in the container it does not go with you. Then get rid of all of the other lunchbox options in your home.
2. Take all of the large dinner plates out of the convenient cabinets and hide them away for special occasions. With only the smaller 8" plates ready to hand, you are limited to what can physically fit on a plate and thus eat less.
3. Tie the light switch in the laundry room to the outlet that powers your iron. When the light goes off the iron will shut off as well.
4. Set up an automatic savings account then forget about it.
5. Have all of your bills automatically paid by credit card, then have the credit card automatically pay itself off once a month.
* find a card with great mileage, points or cash back options you get a double bonus here
6. Install motion sensing lights in your kids rooms and you will save on energy and the frustration of following them around and shutting off lights.
7. Move to a smaller space when the opportunity arises. Nothing eliminates waste like downsizing. It eliminates the potential for buying "stuff" by requiring you to find space for every new purchase at the expense of getting rid of whatever is currently occupying that space. You will also save time cleaning up and maintaining your home.
8. Limit your dishes to what you need for one meal. Not only will you be forced to clean up after each meal before you can eat the next, but you will probably stop using your dishwasher because you will never have a full load to run.
9. Limit the number of hangars in your closet. When you run out of hanger space its time to donate some clothes to charity.
10. Buy several small laundry totes to replace one large hamper. When one of the small totes is full, take it to the laundry and wash a load of clothes. When the empty tote is full take it to your closet and put the clean clothes away. This simple visual system makes doing laundry a more frequent, but also more manageable task, and avoids massively unproductive "laundry days".
Try these and let me know in the comments if they worked for you. If you have ideas or examples of how to change behavior through physical limitation I would love to hear them.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Bragging a Little
Normally I am a pretty modest sort of person, but I was really struck by my wife's post on her blog Wednesday. It was nice to get a look at some of the changes we have made from her perspective and I thought that I would link to it here.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Hidden Targets
Have you ever noticed that when you start really recording your workout statistics you see a lot of nice round numbers? I find that I do three sets of 10 or run for 20 minutes a day at the same pace for weeks. Lately I have been thinking that this is a sign of laziness. If I was really trying to improve myself I should see some sets where I can only get 3 reps or 7. This would indicate that I am pushing myself to my limits and seeking to expand them. If you don't push the limits you will never improve in anything, and if you are not improving, someone out there is passing you by. This is true in athletic compettition or in business.
When you work toward improvement you should seldom see round numbers in your metrics. If you are working toward selling a thousand units of something and you consistently hit one thousand on the nose, you should look at changing some aspect of the target. You could try to sell the same thousand units, but reduce your cost by half. Maybe changing the timeline for getting those thousand units sold so you can free up more time for strategic planning, or finding new markets, or just forgetting about working and doing whatever you are passionate about doing.
Another instance of this is stagnation of progress. When your metrics level off just below your target it is a strong indication that there is an unstated acceptance of this level as a success. This is particularly seen when the initial goal is audacious. If you find one of these hidden targets you should start digging into things a little deeper to root out the problem and get moving again.
When you work toward improvement you should seldom see round numbers in your metrics. If you are working toward selling a thousand units of something and you consistently hit one thousand on the nose, you should look at changing some aspect of the target. You could try to sell the same thousand units, but reduce your cost by half. Maybe changing the timeline for getting those thousand units sold so you can free up more time for strategic planning, or finding new markets, or just forgetting about working and doing whatever you are passionate about doing.
Another instance of this is stagnation of progress. When your metrics level off just below your target it is a strong indication that there is an unstated acceptance of this level as a success. This is particularly seen when the initial goal is audacious. If you find one of these hidden targets you should start digging into things a little deeper to root out the problem and get moving again.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Tanking Up
Reducing fuel costs is a summer tradition for many Americans. Air conditioners go on and gas prices go up. Articles abound in every form of mass media with suggestions about how to ratchet up the number of miles you can squeeze out of a full tank of gas. Using this gold standard to measure performance however overlooks some big opportunities to reduce your monthly spending.
Miles per gallon improvements are really minimal once you have already purchased a vehicle. The opportunities for reducing costs however are increased significantly if you shift your perspective away from MPG thinking. One of the biggest opportunities to reduce your fuel costs is getting beyond the assumptions that both your starting and end points for travel are fixed.
When I changed jobs recently I made an effort to find us housing as close to my new employer as possible while still meeting all of our other requirements. The result was a four mile one way drive that replaced my previous fifteen mile trip. It seems like a small thing, but the results are significant. I achieved a 73% reduction in fuel cost and a 40% reduction in travel time. To achieve this same fuel cost reduction I would have needed a 2010 Prius (50 MPG) and all of the costs that go along with it.
Since this first step I have upped the ante again and begun riding my bike to work. This has cut my fuel costs to zero (or very close, I am still driving in once every two weeks or so) and has still resulted in a time savings over my previous commute of 14%. In addition I have eliminated nearly five hours per week of gym time by getting my daily exercise during my ride to work.
Telecommuting is another good way to achieve the same or even better results, but good discipline and a career that does not demand your physical presence are required.
Miles per gallon improvements are really minimal once you have already purchased a vehicle. The opportunities for reducing costs however are increased significantly if you shift your perspective away from MPG thinking. One of the biggest opportunities to reduce your fuel costs is getting beyond the assumptions that both your starting and end points for travel are fixed.
When I changed jobs recently I made an effort to find us housing as close to my new employer as possible while still meeting all of our other requirements. The result was a four mile one way drive that replaced my previous fifteen mile trip. It seems like a small thing, but the results are significant. I achieved a 73% reduction in fuel cost and a 40% reduction in travel time. To achieve this same fuel cost reduction I would have needed a 2010 Prius (50 MPG) and all of the costs that go along with it.
Since this first step I have upped the ante again and begun riding my bike to work. This has cut my fuel costs to zero (or very close, I am still driving in once every two weeks or so) and has still resulted in a time savings over my previous commute of 14%. In addition I have eliminated nearly five hours per week of gym time by getting my daily exercise during my ride to work.
Telecommuting is another good way to achieve the same or even better results, but good discipline and a career that does not demand your physical presence are required.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Living Lean
I mentioned a while back that my family was downsizing our life to a small apartment. The results so far are great! Not only do we have less junk and more free time, but we are currently able to make both the rent and house payment without having to cut back on things that we enjoy. More walking, due to living near almost everything that we enjoy and elimination of some of the services that we never used have cut our costs more than we realized was possible. My truck has sat in the parking lot for all but three days in the past month, and I have ridden my bike to work. We get all of our entertainment through netflix on demand and the Wi-fi connection that is included with our lease. We have been eating a lot more fresh foods and have not "stocked up" once due to the limited space we have for storage. We seem as a family to be even more dedicated to continuing to eliminate the unnecessary. Our son does not quite have the philosophy down yet, he is only four, but my wife has truly embraced the concept and we have been making regular trip to donate things that we do not need. We truly use all of the space we have, and when the walls close in a bit we go outside and enjoy the sunshine and the grass and the sky. I almost wonder where this process will end. My wife told me about a story she read recently where someone eliminated theri life down to one north face backpack and wandered off into the world....sounds good to me!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Time Blindness
The following is from a converstation I overheard two days ago:
(Some specifics have been modified to protect the guilty)
"Hey you know what we need is a thingamabob that can turn widgets into ultra widgets by changing the angle of the doohicky!"
"Yeah that would be great, but I tried that three years ago and they don't make it anywhere. Don't waste your time. You have a lot more important things to do."
"But it could increase our profit 200%? I know I can find it."
"I'm telling you its not out there. I would have found it. Forget about it."
You have probably been in this same situation when you have moved into a new situation and worked in close proximity with someone who has been doing similar work for a long time. Now if you do whatever it is anyway and it works you will have embarassed someone senior to you (read this as "made an enemy"), and if you don't you have taken the first step into the rut that everyone else has dug. The logic error that is inherent in this story is time blindness.
All things change over time. There is nothing static in the world. Everything from technology to the location of land masses to the words in a dictionary always have and always will be in flux. Forgetting this fact can lead to serious errors in judgement. Often elaborate structures of belief are built on the fragile evidence of one attempt far in the past. Simply questioning whether things might have changed over time can collapse the whole, and open new worlds of possibility and inquiry. Give it a try sometime and let me know how it works out.
(Some specifics have been modified to protect the guilty)
"Hey you know what we need is a thingamabob that can turn widgets into ultra widgets by changing the angle of the doohicky!"
"Yeah that would be great, but I tried that three years ago and they don't make it anywhere. Don't waste your time. You have a lot more important things to do."
"But it could increase our profit 200%? I know I can find it."
"I'm telling you its not out there. I would have found it. Forget about it."
You have probably been in this same situation when you have moved into a new situation and worked in close proximity with someone who has been doing similar work for a long time. Now if you do whatever it is anyway and it works you will have embarassed someone senior to you (read this as "made an enemy"), and if you don't you have taken the first step into the rut that everyone else has dug. The logic error that is inherent in this story is time blindness.
All things change over time. There is nothing static in the world. Everything from technology to the location of land masses to the words in a dictionary always have and always will be in flux. Forgetting this fact can lead to serious errors in judgement. Often elaborate structures of belief are built on the fragile evidence of one attempt far in the past. Simply questioning whether things might have changed over time can collapse the whole, and open new worlds of possibility and inquiry. Give it a try sometime and let me know how it works out.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Walking The Talk
In about a week I will be dragging my family along on a real world experiment in lean living. In past posts I have discussed matching capacity to demand in living space. With this in mind we will be moving from a 2000 square foot house to a 900 square foot apartment. If this sounds crazy to you you are not alone. I have been excited about this new experience ever since we made the decision, but I have
been amazed at the inability of most people to understand. Virtually everyone I have spoken to about our new living space immediately assumes that this is a temporary move to get through my job transition. No one can imagine that we would not want to buy a house at the earliest opportunity. For us however this is a chance to simplify our lives by physically limiting our footprint. We have sold off nearly all of our stuff and made many difficult choices about what we will keep. There will be no room to keep the unnecessary. In addition, the new apartment is as walkable as we could possibly find. We are making an escape attempt from the suburban driving culture. Nearly everything that was only a short drive away will now be only a short walk away. This walkabilty is calculated to reduce the time cost of many of our frequent tasks and gain us more discretionary time for each other. The next few months may be a difficult adjustment but they should at
least be interesting.
been amazed at the inability of most people to understand. Virtually everyone I have spoken to about our new living space immediately assumes that this is a temporary move to get through my job transition. No one can imagine that we would not want to buy a house at the earliest opportunity. For us however this is a chance to simplify our lives by physically limiting our footprint. We have sold off nearly all of our stuff and made many difficult choices about what we will keep. There will be no room to keep the unnecessary. In addition, the new apartment is as walkable as we could possibly find. We are making an escape attempt from the suburban driving culture. Nearly everything that was only a short drive away will now be only a short walk away. This walkabilty is calculated to reduce the time cost of many of our frequent tasks and gain us more discretionary time for each other. The next few months may be a difficult adjustment but they should at
least be interesting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)