Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the tag “Conscious vs Unconscious”

09 Jul 2008

Why Do We Feel Better if the Wording is Changed?

“There is no doubt that bringing elements of the US strategic arsenal close to Russian territory could be used to weaken our deterrent potential,” the Russian foreign ministry said. “…in such a situation the Russian side will take appropriate measures to compensate for potential created for threats to its national security”

Now I did a degree in Politics. Scary times, but not the point of this post.

A few minutes after reading the above in the FT, I opened up a letter about my subscription to the Times. They used to send ‘Timesaver’ tokens through with the vouchers. A perk of the subscription, it meant that I didn’t need to collect vouchers for anyspecial offers available. The letter said ‘You may notice that Timesaver Tokens are no longer included. We are continually working on new ways in which to deliver special promotions to you…..’

Yesterday I spent most of my time giving 360 degree feedback to my line reports at Madgex. We use a tool called My3Things which I based on a brilliant ‘rapid’ feedback tool from a guy called Matt Clarke from beyondnowhere UK. He worked with the finance team when I was at Sainsbury’s.

The feedback tool asks the person giving the feedback to give three things they’ve really noticed about the person they’re giving feedback to. And three things they’d love to see more of.

Now you may be asking yourself whether I’ve gone mad. What do these three things have in common?

Why does Relaxation lead to Creativity and Performance?

A whole heap of things have come together in my thoughts over the last 24hrs. They are primarily covered by the following:

Why does relaxing lead to more creative thinking?
Why does not thinking about an activity and sometimes just going with the gut or the flow often lead to better performance?

I started to think about these things because of the counter-intuitive way in which we sometimes work. In one of my line reports today I saw (what felt like) a classic case of ‘over-thinking’. I could virtually feel the heat coming from their brain….

How Easily Simplicity Tips into Bad Habit

The interesting thing with the whole concept of simplicity is how close a bed partner it is with habits, and in particular bad habits.

I think.

The challenge I have is the apparent ease with which I can fall into bad habits vs. the challenge of maintaining a good habit. And whether the concept of ‘neutral habits’ is the answer.

Game playing and simple routines like keeping scorecards or tracking must be so close to creating a habit. I can see that when you consider the analysis of reactive and rational brains, the reactive is a blocker to a good habit vs. being acceptant of a bad habit.

As the bad habits are normally the ‘juicy morsel’, the reactive brain will be attracted to them and quickly addicted to doing the thing that gives it the reward. The reactive brain equally rejects the good habits as ‘hard’ and without the immediate reward. Our rational brains counter this with the longer-term reward. However, to turn the good habit into a routine involves a lot of battling against defaulting to the bad habit.

Does game playing lessen the ‘weight’ of the reactive response? Does it remove resistance because the new routine to be adopted is being done so as a game/ challenge as opposed to a mental challenge? It is therefore made ‘neutral’ by the game.

So in a sense, game playing and a simple response to routine accelerates the journey to the neutral point of a routine being as easy to continue as it is to stop. A route to the 21 days habit tipping point….

Hhmm. A Fooled by Randomness moment? 3 times 7 = 21?