To continue from my previous post on using behavioural science to master those little things we'd like to be better at, here are a few more common challenges.
Challenge Three: Hitting deadlines
Planning Fallacy: This is where we underestimate the time it takes to complete a task (particularly for us optimistic people!). This is solvable, by using past data to make forecasts more accurately - or in other words, remember how long it took you to do it before (or something similar) and use that as your guiding data-point.
Reward-centric: Where you clearly have a reward centric mind for deadlines (‘everyone loves a deadline!’) – then creating mini-deadlines will work those same reward centres. So breaking it down to mini deadlines will help significantly
- As a little addition – they did a lovely study on to-do lists, and found that if you put a tick-box next to your items, when you tick them, you get the same level of reward (in terms of neural activity) as eating a small piece of chocolate. Even better, if you coloured in your box – rather than just a tick – the reward doubled! Lovely.
Challenge Four: Less distraction, more focus
This is classic System 1 vs. System 2 (the two models of thinking). System 1 loves shiny new emails, and actually receives a reward at each new notification (there was an idea around for a while that if you added up the neurochemical rewards for 200 emails a day, it would be equivalent to a shot of heroine!)..
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So you need to stop System 1 dominating, and wake up the lazy System 2. Classic email strategy – turning off email (and certainly notifications) for long stretches. Engage System 2, but reward system 1 for being quiet – so after x-minutes System 1 gets to play on Facebook, or look at kittens for 30 seconds.
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Amazingly, from a state of deep concentration in System 2, once distracted, it takes 30 minutes to get back into that same level of concentration. So it is VERY costly to get distracted.
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The other element is considering your circadian rhythms – it turns out most people find some times of day better or worse at certain tasks. So some are better at creative tasks in the morning, than the afternoon and visa versa. I find that I am more analytical and quicker in the morning, but if I want to write a Manifesto – my best work is in the afternoon.
A few small tips there.
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