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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Counterintuition Revisited
The counter-intuitive has, counter-intuitively, become the conventional wisdom.
“For pundits, Freakonomists, and Malcolm Gladwell, following the crowd meant going against the grain,” writes New York Magazine’s Alex Pareene in the Encyclopedia of Counter-Intuitive Thought (hat tip: Marginal Revolution). He describes dozens of examples from the past decade, including these gems:- Amateurs are better than experts.
- Boys are the biggest victims of sex discrimination.
- Being smart doesn’t help you get ahead.
- Consumption isn’t just good for the economy, it’s good for the soul.
- Critically acclaimed authors are terrible.
- Exercise is bad for you.
- Giving your product away is better business than selling it.
- Government transparency is bad.
- Plagiarism isn’t a big deal.
- Radiohead isn’t a good band.
Conventional wisdom is right.I previously explored the psychological processes that make counterintuition so appealing, relative to the intuitive and mundane. New, novel, and challenging information catches our attention and sticks in our memory. We seem to be wired to pay attention to what surprises us, and to seek out and remember novel information to prevent further surprises.
2001, Magazine.
While you may have read (hundreds of times in the very magazine this piece was being written in) that the conventional wisdom is wrong, it is actually usually right. It is “a broad agreement of elite opinion” and “a time-tested means of filtering out the bunk.” Attacks on the C.W. are vestiges of the New Left’s distrust of authority, and the consensus of wise, mainstream figures is reliable.
FRANKLIN FOER, “IN DEFENSE OF THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: WHY WHAT EVERYONE THINKS IS USUALLY RIGHT,” THE NEW REPUBLIC, MARCH 19.
Of course, what that essay implied was that this can be used against us. Last week, I blogged about an article in which Jason Hanna recounts self-help warning signs from psychology professor John C. Norcross, which include, “People who reject conventional knowledge and instead imply a revolutionary secret. ‘It's marketing, essentially,’ says Norcross.” Indeed, when talking about “secrets,” The Secret exemplifies this trend. As some commentators (and even some of the “teachers” featured in The Secret) point out, there was nothing new (or particularly secret) about The Secret. By packaging it as a great revelation of hidden wisdom, author/producer Rhonda Byrne helped sell her get-rich-quick scheme to the masses.
But while I agree for the most part with Norcross, I don’t know that we can simply dismiss those who dismiss the conventional wisdom. Even if this is just marketing, it may be necessary in order to get important ideas into the marketplace. Alex Pareene’s “Encyclopedia” implies that being counterintuitive isn’t a nice plus--it may now be the cost of entry into the debate. Ezra Klein recently observed this, as well:
Speaking of bizarrely counterintuitive articles, and with the ostentatious contrarianism of Super Freakonomics still on everybody's mind, it's worth saying that there's nothing contrarian about being contrarian in elite intellectual circles. Indeed, the really contrarian move would be to try to make your way as a thinker without taking aim at somebody's sacred cows, or at least making it seem like you're taking aim at somebody's sacred cows. There's a reason the book "Everything You Know Is Wrong" is not titled "Most of The Things You Know Are Right."In my first piece about the appeal of counterintuition, I mentioned Dan and Chip Heath’s idea (taken from Made to Stick) about common sense: “When messages sound like common sense, they float gently in one ear and out the other. And why shouldn't they? If I already intuitively 'get' what you're trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it?” To Klein’s point, in order to be relevant, one must present the appearance of new, novel, challenging, or risky positions.
. . .
The conceit behind counterintuitive articles is that the author is taking an intellectual risk. But that ceases to be true when counterintuitive articles become the norm. At that point, the author is just trying to be relevant.
Counterintuition carries more weight, psychologically, than the material may merit. Counterintuitive, anti-conventional-wisdom appeals may be marketing gimmicks. Some highly dubious material will be dressed up as a great secret in order to boost sales. At the same time, having a counterintuitive appeal may be a necessary precondition to getting noticed at all in a competitive marketplace of ideas. Which means some rather conventional wisdom still prevails: Buyer beware. The onus is still on all of us to judge new ideas, new advice, and new information not on counter-cultural appeal, but on their merit.
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Monday, December 14, 2009
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Quack Psychology, The Secret, and You
Evaluating (and avoiding) dubious self-help
Psychology and time-management fascinate me. These twin obsessions drive one of Higher Process’s main themes: exploring the research support, such as it is, for the effectiveness of time-management strategies. But interest in psychology is not all that drives me to this particular topic. I want to avoid being part of a particular crowd that sprang up in the wake of 43folders.com’s success, identified by Merlin Mann last year:Over the years, “productivity blogs” of unbelievably varying quality shot up like hothouse kudzu--many baldly hoping to capitalize on the low-cost, high-return business of theoretically useful self-help publishing--mostly without affecting even the vaguest patina of wanting to help another human being solve a real-world problem. Some of these folks continue to make a living (and draw a considerable crowd) by producing material that I personally find transparently dumb and useless.And, for that matter, I don’t want to fall in with self-help quack psychologists of the early 20th century (hat tip: Mind Hacks):
PSEUDO-PSYCHOLOGISTS, who promise, like fairy godmothers, to turn every-day human beings into fascinating personalities or into great financial successes, are creating large groups of discontented individuals, according to Dr. E. A. Shaw and George E. Gardner, of the Harvard University Psycho-Educational Clinic.I feel a sense of responsibility to any reader who stumbles upon my site; I want Higher Process to offer help in the shape of research-backed possibilities, not empty promises from compelling-sounding (but ultimately empty) nonsense.
. . .
The psychological quack, half informed concerning scientific psychological principles, undertakes in a conference or by lectures, and for no small fee, to advise men and women about their mental and vocational ills. The two Harvard psychologists explain that "these men, we maintain--and their numbers are growing day by day--are a detriment to the mental health of the community. In their doctrines and platitudes there is just enough of truth and of falsity to make them dangerous."
Given that, I admired and enjoyed Jason Hanna’s Good, bad and ugly self-help: How can you tell? Hanna recounts the recent troubles of James Arthur Ray, one of the “teachers” featured in The Secret. He explores whether three deaths during a recent Ray seminar should raise doubts about the validity of The Secret. I think the connection is tenuous, but then The Secret doesn’t exactly need help debunking itself.
Perhaps more valuable is Hanna’s discussion of the larger (and, he notes, unregulated) self-help industry. Three of the experts quoted neatly sum up its shortcomings, and offer tips for spotting self-help shenanigans:
Gerald Rosen, a clinical psychologist in Seattle, Washington, says he believes more self-help books should undergo pre-publication testing--especially those written by psychologists, who he says should be held to a high professional standard.Indeed; I believe that learning, growing, and improving require an open mind, but an open mind and an open wallet are two different things.
"When you look at a book for depression, there probably isn't a blurb on the back that says this book has been shown in studies to help 65 percent of those who have been diagnosed with this. There's just a claim that this can happen for you," said Rosen, a former chairman of the American Psychological Association's task force on self-help therapies.
[John C. Norcross, professor of psychology at the University of Scranton] says that a lack of scientific evidence isn't the only thing to look out for. Other characteristics that should make consumers wary, he says:Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society, said consumers should be wary of programs that cost a lot of money but teach no hands-on skills.
- Authors or speakers who don't have formal training in the featured topic. "They should look for someone with rigorous training at an accredited university and who has spent years investigating and conducting these treatments," Norcross said.
- Programs that don't screen consumers for problems. For example, Norcross says, certain programs might be harmful for a person with bipolar disorder.
- People who reject conventional knowledge and instead imply a revolutionary secret. "It's marketing, essentially," Norcross said.
- People who propose solutions for all problems instead of particular problems.
I also like that these tests require no scientific background to apply. Many (maybe all) of the most execrable examples of self-help I’ve encountered would fail at least one of these measures.
I created this site, in part, to explore and validate good ideas in time- and life-management. The flip side of that is a desire to be forthright and candid when promising strategies are not supported by the available evidence. I believe good advice is harder to find (and to trust) when bad advice proliferates. But staying alert--and using heuristics like the ones described above--make that part of my job that much easier.
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Friday, December 11, 2009
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Change in Context = Change in Results
The environment is more powerful than the will.
Witness the rate of failure for diets, New Year’s Resolutions, or any other attempted habit change in the lives of people around you. Are these failures of the will? Do people simple lack the character and drive to succeed? Perhaps. But there is ample evidence that the x-factor is not willpower. It seems changing the external environment sometimes works better than relying on raw will. Wray Herbert recently wrote about this in The Perils of Willpower:[Northwestern University psychologist Loran Nordgren and colleagues] contacted about 50 smokers who were trying to quit through a smoking cessation program. All had gone without a smoke for at least three weeks, which means that their physical withdrawal cravings were past. The researchers began by giving the smokers a questionnaire to gauge their beliefs about their ability to control their impulses and withstand temptation. Then they asked them a series of questions about the steps they took to avoid being around cigarettes: Do you avoid people who smoke? Ask people not to smoke? Sneak an occasional drag? And so forth.Those who did not believe as strongly in their willpower changed their environment; that change, in turn, supported their change in behavior.
Four months later, they contacted the recovering smokers again to see how they were doing with their effort to quit. They expected that their beliefs would shape their risky behavior, which would in turn influence success or failure. And that’s precisely what they found. As reported in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science, quitters who were confident in their powers of self-restraint were more apt to hang around smokers and keep cigarettes around--and were also more likely to relapse. Those who felt weak and vulnerable had a higher rate of success.
They are not alone. In many circumstances, changing the context of a decision improves the decision. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell offers several examples, including maestros of American orchestras. Gladwell says they began making less biased and more meritocratic hiring decisions when screens were introduced in audition halls. The screens removed the temptation (or tendency) to stereotype musicians based on gender, posture, or dress; audition evaluations became more accurate and pure.
In the “life hacks” movement, Merlin Mann and Danny O’Brien have used the term “useful landmines”--something you put in your path that makes it easier to succeed (or harder to give in) when trying to change a behavior. In 2005, Mann wrote about several such tricks suggested by Dr. Stephanie Burns:
You want to start carrying a bit of cash and not using your credit card.In Ready For Anything producitivity guru David Allen refers to these kinds of modest environmental changes as the “a fundamental productivity gimmick,” which he refers to with the shorthand of “Put it in front of the door.” If you have something that you must take to work the next morning, the best place to put it the night before is right in front of the door. You can’t possibly miss it on your way out the next morning. He says the principle generalizes to other areas of life--putting goals, aspirations, and possible actions in front of the “door” of our awareness on a regular basis leads to accomplishment.
Make it hard to do. Freeze your credit card in a block of ice.
You want to move more, your [sic] annoyed at your inactivity.
Make it easier to do. Take your TV remote to work and leave it there.
You want the habit of waking up 20 minutes earlier but keep pushing the alarm snooze.
Make it hard to stay in bed. Move the alarm, set the lights on a timer, set the TV on a timer.
You may believe in willpower and self-reliance, but ask yourself how well you are doing in changing whatever habit you want to change or achieving whatever long-term goals you hold. If you struggle with these things--or simply want to make it easier--leverage your environment. Ask what you can add (or subtract) from your surroundings that might make it easier (or harder) to do what you should or shouldn’t. Who you are hanging out with who isn’t helping? Who should you pal around with that might help? Look for changes you can make to your context that turn the right thing to do into the easy thing to do.
And if you feel defensive about your willpower and ability to change--or feel uncomfortable being at the mercy of your environment--then remind yourself that you are the one who is taking control of that environment to reinforce your positive changes in a moment of weakness.
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Monday, December 7, 2009
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Introspection and Its Discontents
Why knowing your priorities doesn’t always lead to better outcomes
Much of the popular time-management literature posits that knowing what we value--and why--will help us make better decisions. Hyrum Smith and Stephen Covey encourage listing values and writing mission statements. Julie Morgenstern’s first step to eliminate clutter is identifying why we are doing so. Whether choosing tasks to do today (Smith), what to do with our lives (Covey), or what to do with a box of memorabilia (Morgenstern), we are told to first introspect on what matters most to us. Unfortunately, human beings are really bad at introspection.
We can’t always tell what matters--or how.
Our Minds Are Black Boxes--Even To Ourselves. So says PsyBlog, writing about a 1977 study by Nisbett and Bellows. Participants read a description of a job applicant named Jill. Five factors were mentioned to some participants but not others (Jill’s attractive appearance, performance in school, etc.). Participants then ranked “Jill” on likeability, flexibility, intelligence, and sympathy. Finally, they rated how each of the five factors influenced their ratings. How accurate were they?
For ratings of sympathy, likeability and flexibility the participants turned out to be surprisingly poor at predicting the actual effect that each of the above 5 factors would have on their own judgements. On more than half the judgements people didn't even get the direction of the effect right.So we don’t know what we actually value. But say one does successfully identify one’s values; how consistently does one use them to make decisions? Perhaps not very consistently, given the tendency to easily explain away lapses.
. . .
People may know what they like, but they often don't know why they like it
When we choose contrary to social values, we make up faulty explanations.
Mind Hacks described research by Chance and Norton, in which male participants chose between two customized sports magazines:
One had more articles, but the other featured more sports. When a participant was asked to rate a magazine, one of two magazines happened to be a special swimsuit issue, featuring beautiful women in bikinis.An article in The Economist notes that the old joke, “I read Playboy for the articles,” is so well-known that Chance and Norton get away with using it as the title of their paper.
When the swimsuit issue was the magazine with more articles, the guys said they valued having more articles to read and chose that one. When the bikini babes appeared in the publication with more sports, they said wider coverage was more important and chose that issue.
This, as it turns out, is a common pattern in studies of this kind, and crucially, participants are usually completely unaware that they are post-justifying their choices.
Unfortunately, stated reasons can be more than merely incorrect.
Articulating reasons can cause poorer choices.
Malcolm Gladwell described research on this subject by Tim Wilson in a talk (transcribed in this blog post):
[Y]ou bring in some college students in, and you say ‘pick any poster you want, take it home’. And they do that. Second group is brought in and you say, ‘pick any poster you want, tell me why you want it, and then go home’. Couple of months passes, and he calls up all the students, and he asks, “That poster you got a couple of months back, do you like it?’ and the kids, who in the first group didn’t have to explain their choice, all liked their poster. And the kids in the second group who did have to explain, now they hate their poster. And not only that, the kids who had to explain their poster picked a very different kind of poster then the kids who didn’t have to explain their poster. So making people explain what they want changes their preference and changes their preference in a negative way . . .Students who had to explain themselves tended to choose a photo of a kitten hanging in midair with the caption, “Hang in there, baby” (and later disliked it); the students who did not have to explain themselves chose an Impressionist print (and later liked it). Gladwell calls this “a language problem”. To art historians’ dismay, you can enjoy Impressionism without possessing much art vocabulary. However, explaining why you like it is another matter. Expecting to have to justify your choice might nudge you towards the kitten in peril and its easier-to-explain appeal.
Implications
If our minds are “black boxes,” uncovering values--our standards and preferences--will be trickier than self-help books suggest. Explaining our goals (as noted previously, FranklinCovey’s goal-setting form places a “why” question ahead of the actual goal!) may move them away from our true preferences.
These studies alone don’t invalidate all introspective pursuits. But they do give me--a relatively-canonical FranklinCovey planner user--some pause. Simply getting to know oneself may not be the panacea that the popular success literature suggests.
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Friday, December 4, 2009
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