Time Management versus Time Orientation
How you manage time may be secondary to how you experience time.
Philip Zimbardo, more famously known for his Standford Prison Experiment and PBS series, Discovering Psychology, also studies the human experience of time. However, according to Carlin Flora in the Psychology Today article Timely Makeover, Zimbardo is not a fan of time-management per se:The proliferation of time-management books makes Zimbardo cringe, and not just because it’s emblematic of a cultural push for future-thinking. He suspects that the only people who buy them are highly future-oriented people--who should be out increasing their present-hedonistic tendencies instead.As one might imagine, I am very interested in what the eminent Dr. Zimbardo has to say about time-management (though, as one might also imagine, I am not inclined to toss out my suite of time-management books). For readers not familiar with Dr. Zimbardo’s work, let’s take a step back and define “future-oriented people” and “present-hedonistic tendencies.”
Zimbardo describes several time-orientations or time-perspectives in his book, The Time Paradox (the basis for the PT article quoted above). People in the western world generally have some combination of the following six. Using my summaries on Zimbardo’s titles, they are:
- Past-Negative: Focused on the past, characterized by regret and rumination.
- Past-Positive: Focused on the past, characterized by nostalgia and fondness.
- Present-Hedonistic: Focused on the present and its immediate pleasures and opportunities.
- Present-Fatalistic: Focused on the present, but with a passive acceptance; believes little can be done to impact well-being or circumstances.
- Future: Focused on the future--planning, expecting, imagining, and acting in the present to serve that future.
- Transcendental-Future: Focused on a future beyond death that includes a spiritual afterlife.
That said, there is a particular balance among them that Zimbardo has found to be the healthiest. Flora described this ideal balance:
People who are high in past-positive orientation, moderately high in future, moderately high in present-hedonistic, low in past-negative, and low in present-fatalistic time perspective are happier, healthier, and more successful than people with other time perspectives.So, assuming that’s true, how do we know if we have the right mix, and how do we get there if we do not?
. . .
Those with a winning blend of perspectives have hope for the future, feel securely rooted in the past, and are energetic and joyful about being alive in the present.
Figure Out Where You Are
Zimbardo developed a psychological instrument to measure an individual’s time perspectives; the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory is available for free at the official Time Paradox website (and is included in the book). This 60-item questionnaire will provide a reading on where you stand on the various time orientations.
Get Where You Want to Go
The second page of the Timely Makeover article quoted above offers three tips for cultivating each of the three time perspectives that make up the ideal mix. Some strike me as slightly dubious; to cultivate present-hedonistic orientation, Flora suggests, ”Don’t wear a watch.” In the age of ubiquitous mobile phones, I believe watches are becoming an anachronism. Still, most of the tips seem solid and should serve as a good starting point for creating other ways to shift your perspective.
Further Exploration
Of course, if the article, the ZPTI questionnaire, or this blog post leave you wanting to know more, then I recommend The Time Paradox itself. I read it with great interest last year before starting this blog. While I don’t wholly agree with Zimbardo’s distaste for time-management, I do find it interesting that elements of his “ideal mix” show up in many of my favorite books in the genre. Stephen Covey and the Merrills write extensively in First Things First on the topic of enjoying the precious present moments that won’t come again. David Allen waxes poetic in Ready for Anything about how his lists, organization, and careful planning (hallmarks of a strongly future-oriented perspective) allow him to be more present and to spontaneously walk away from his work to do something inspired and pleasurable, like work on his garden.
So if you find you have time-management more or less under control but aren’t feeling the satisfaction you expected to, then Zimbardo may be right; think about nurturing warm recollections or unleashing your inner hedonist.
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Monday, January 4, 2010
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Resolve to Make Fewer Resolutions
Why when it comes to goals, the fewer you make the better your odds
Leo Babauta’s 6 Changes website recommends that we pick a half-dozen or fewer goals for 2010 and work on them one at a time (rather than starting them all at the stroke of midnight on January 1). You can resolve to quit smoking, lose weight, and save more money in one year; however, Babauta recommends doing each individually for a solid two months so that the habit has time to form.This sounds reasonable, but is there psychological research backing Babauta’s strategy?
The Science Behind Failed Resolutions
Blame It on the Brain, writes Jonah Lehr for the Wall Street Journal (hat tip: Marginal Revolution):
Willpower, like a bicep, can only exert itself so long before it gives out; it's an extremely limited mental resource.How limited is the will when it comes to multiple goals? Lehr mentions a pair of studies that found that relatively trivial cognitive strains caused participants to give in to temptation more readily. These tasks included such things as memorizing a 7-digit sequence of numbers or walking down a busy street. If such small cognitive loads have this effect, surely stacking multiple behavior-change goals will short-circuit the brain.
Given its limitations, New Year's resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. It makes no sense to try to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, or to clean the apartment and give up wine in the same month. Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year. Human routines are stubborn things, which helps explain why 88% of all resolutions end in failure, according to a 2007 survey of over 3,000 people conducted by the British psychologist Richard Wiseman. Bad habits are hard to break—and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once.
. . .
The brain area largely responsible for willpower, the prefrontal cortex, is located just behind the forehead. While this bit of tissue has greatly expanded during human evolution, it probably hasn't expanded enough. That's because the prefrontal cortex has many other things to worry about besides New Year's resolutions. For instance, scientists have discovered that this chunk of cortex is also in charge of keeping us focused, handling short-term memory and solving abstract problems. Asking it to lose weight is often asking it to do one thing too many.
What about people who set and achieve many goals?
Do you know anyone who seems to set and achieve a large number of goals each year, or who cleaned up multiple areas of their life at once? In 2008, PsychCentral blogged about research that acknowledges such individuals. Does the evidence suggest that we should emulate their goal-promiscuity?
[Researchers Mukhopadhyay and Johar] found that people who believe that self-control is something dynamic, changing and unlimited (e.g., “I can stop smoking, all I have to do is put my mind to it. I can also change my eating and be a better person, it just takes willpower.”) tend to set more resolutions.This claim inserts a causal link into a correlation (if not into a spurious correlation). Those with high self-efficacy both set more goals and achieve more goals; this does not suggest that setting more goals raises self-efficacy and/or increases the odds of achievement. Self-efficacy itself (or being good at achieving goals) may be the cause of the large number of goals these individuals set; trying to reverse such a causal chain by setting too many goals may strain limited time and cognitive resources, leading to failure.
. . .
As the researchers summarized, individuals with high self-efficacy attribute failure to insufficient effort, while individuals with low self-efficacy attribute failure to deficient ability. Higher self-efficacy generally is correlated with a greater likelihood of achieving one’s goals.
The investigators also found that if you are made to believe that self-control is a fixed or limited resource that you can’t change, you will also set fewer goals and will give up on them sooner, regardless of your level of self-efficacy.
. . . [I]t also seems to help to set more goals, because you will be more likely to succeed at them if you do (people who set fewer goals seem to often go into the exercise with the self-fulfilling expectation of failing).
If you do set several goals or resolutions each year and succeed in most or all of them, keep doing what you are doing. If you struggle to hold resolutions longer than your New Year’s Day hangover, try taking them one at a time. You have nothing to lose; 100% success on one resolution is better than failing at five, three, or even two.
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Friday, January 1, 2010
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Multitasking, Confounds, and the Yeti
How overdoing self-improvement makes success harder to achieve and harder still to explain.
Merlin Mann once said of multitasking, “This is not only a stupid idea, this is a non-existent idea. I have more faith in the idea of the Yeti, and a Dukakis presidency, than I do in the concept of multitasking.” He is not alone-- the media and psychology blogs frequently report on studies about multitasking’s shortcomings. In The 4 Disciplines of Execution audio program, FranklinCovey consultant Jennifer Colosimo said, “Human beings are wired to do one thing at a time with excellence.” But 4 Disciplines isn’t urging one task at a time--they mean pursuing one goal at a time in your entire work life (or two or three, at most).
In his oddly-named (but compelling) Zen To Done, Leo Babauta espouses a similar one-thing-at-a-time philosophy:
One of the main problems people have with other productivity systems, probably without knowing it, is that they are a series of habit changes that people attempt to undertake all at once.Two of those “other productivity systems,” GTD and FranklinCovey’s personal planning methodology, each encompass several habit changes. Getting started with either of these methods takes several hours of focus; however, once the system is in place, the habits involved tend to be mutually reinforcing. The same goes for programs in other domains, including Julie Morgenstern’s organizing methodologies, Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace program, or Paul McKenna’s weight-loss program, I Can Make You Thin.
. . . [Habit change] can be successful, but it takes a lot of energy and focus and motivation, and it’s hard to do that with a bunch of habits all at once.
But Babauta’s point is well taken; changing multiple habits simultaneously can be challenging, even when the habits are part of an internally-consistent and mutually-reinforcing system. What about working on several systems of habit change--to put several programs into practice at once, and hope for the best? Or, for that matter, to try many simultaneous approaches to change a single habit or achieve a single goal?
In my days as a self-improvement junkie, I read everything I could find about time-management or career development. Your poison may be different: weight loss, money management, relationships, goal-setting, etc. Trying everything you can think of to reach a goal holds a certain appeal. However, when we do not fully implement and evaluate one program before moving on, it becomes hard to tell what works. In other words, trying to install multiple new habits at once creates confounds.
According to Wikipedia, a confounding factor or confounding variable is “an extraneous variable in a statistical model that correlates (positively or negatively) with both the dependent variable and the independent variable.” The University of New England’s WebStat offers a definition that I like even better:
[Confounds] are nuisance variables that interfere with our attempts to explain a relationship between our variables of interest. A confounding variable is one that provides an alternative explanation for the thing we are trying to explain with our independent variable.Both of the definitions linked above list good social-science examples, but consider a mundane and micro-level example. The facial cleanser I use changed recently: new package, new name, slightly different ingredients. After three days of use, my skin was noticeably drier. I mentioned this to my fiancé; she pointed out that the week I switched, the weather took a sharp turn for the wintery: dry air, freezing temperatures, and bitter winds. Everybody’s skin is dry. I initially attributed dry skin to my cleanser, but the weather is a competing explanation--a confound. To know for sure that my cleanser is the cause, I would need to take it on vacation in a milder climate.
The same goes for habit changes. If you read six books and apply advice from all towards one goal, even if you succeed, you don’t know which methods, if any, helped. Similarly, if you are using two or more programs and fail, how do you know which was truly defective?
If you start exercising to lose weight the same day that you start using a new day planner, and you find that you suddenly begin accomplishing more each day, can you credit the day planner? Or do you simply have more energy and self-esteem because of the exercise? Or are you simply more strategic with your time because exercise steals hours from your week?
In other words, if you want to see real results in your life--and understand how you achieved them so you can repeat them in the future--learn to be patient and not multitask on your goals. Try FranklinCovey’s advice and tackle fewer goals at once. Try Babauta’s advice and avoid trying to reinvent all of your habits at once. Without such focus, the story you tell about how you achieved success may be no less a fantasy than the yeti.
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Monday, December 28, 2009
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Resolve and Begin Again
How to achieve meaningful New Year’s Resolutions (assuming you aren’t too cool to be seen setting them).
As we approach another new year, articles on setting and achieving New Year’s Resolutions appear across the media landscape. These are inevitably followed in close succession by articles by authors who are soooo over resolutions.I am struck by something Christopher Peterson, Ph.D., recently said of some of the naysayers of positive psychology:
[T]hose in and out of psychology who mount a relentless attack on positive psychology and more generally on anything positive (e.g., happiness, optimism). Even when their criticisms are correct, I am always confused about what they are urging on the rest of us.I often wonder the same about those who are decry New Year’s Resolutions.
Certainly, drinking to excess on December 31 while promising to never again [insert bad habit] and to always [insert good habit] is a formula for failure. We may set unrealistic goals, overestimate the boost in motivation that comes with a new year, underestimate the inevitable obstacles and setbacks (often, starting with a January 1 hangover). And it’s worth remembering that we can set goals and start over any time of year. But I see a certain baby-with-the-bathwater problem in throwing out our only holiday that explicitly includes goal setting in its rituals. I see nothing wrong with reflecting on the year just past and setting mindful, inspiring goals in areas of our lives that we care about.
If you, as I do, assume that some resolutions are worth making and keeping, how do you ensure that they are worth your while and improve your odds of success?
One list I found helpful comes from, of all places, a coupon. In late 2005, FranklinCovey distributed a coupon in blue and black on cardstock. Attached by a perforated line was an index-card-sized insert cut to fit inside most binder-based organizers. The masthead (and matching in-store displays) read, Resolutions Begin with the End in Mind. The front of this card offered this advice:
RESOLUTIONS TIPSOne the back were several lines to write out one's resolution or resolutions. I wrote four that year--two of which (returning to college as a full-time student and reading 50 non-fiction books in 2006) I completed. A 50% hit rate is, depending on who you ask, either slightly above or way above the national average, but it’s certainly over my personal average.
#1: DON'T BEGIN BY WRITING RESOLUTIONS
Begin by writing (or reviewing) your Personal Mission Statement, your most deeply held values and core beliefs. This provides the foundation for meaningful resolutions.
#2: WORK WITHIN YOUR CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE
Never set a resolution that is based on factors beyond your control. "Get a new job"--wrong. "Send out 15 resumes by March 30"--right.
#3: BE ACCOUNTABLE
Share your resolutions with someone you trust. Set specific times or dates that you will report your progress.
#4: RESOLUTIONS HASTILY CREATED ARE EASILY ABANDONED
Take time to really consider what would be most important for you to accomplish in the coming year. Don't make an impulsive list on New Year's Day.
#5: BELIEVE IN YOUR ABILITY TO CHANGE
Envision yourself living your resolution. Use your imagination to picture yourself overcoming challenges and sticking to your goal.
If you are looking from some more psychologically-grounded advice (which is ostensibly what this blog is about), procrastination researcher Timothy Pychyl wrote a great article on the subject last January. Here are some highlights from his New Year's Resolutions: One day down, 364 to go!:
- Successful projects need to be personally meaningful to motivate us to proceed, yet manageable enough to know what it is we need to actually do to proceed successfully.
- Expect to feel lousy when you begin and suck it up. If you can move past this initial discomfort and get started, your attitude will follow your behavior. . . . What we do know from a variety of research is that once we make progress on a goal (even a little), we feel better and more motivated. So, don't wait until you feel like it, just get started.
- Finally, expect setbacks. In fact, expect to feel like a failure at times. Change is not easy, and New Year's resolutions seem to be around some of the most negative and difficult goals in our lives. Be kind with yourself, yet also be relentlessly mindful , firmly bringing your attention back to your goal and your focus to the schedulable act at hand.
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Friday, December 18, 2009
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