Behavior change
Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change (via Amy Bucher)
Amy is one of my colleagues at Lirio, and she graciously provided a copy of her book. It provides a fantastic overview (in an accessible and fun manner) about the psychology of behavior change as it applies to digital product design. Topics include monitoring, choice-making, decision-making, ability blockers, solving ability blockers, designing for growth, designing for connection, using technology to connect with others, trust-building, and how to engage long-term. I consider this book table stakes for anyone in the design space that aims to help users along a journey toward a better self.
Productivity
How to Stop Procrastinating (via HBR)
- Strong habits reduce the need for self-control; however, establishing habits often takes months.
- Schedule your deep work consistently. Deep work = most important project.
- Create a system for starting new tasks. A system reduces decision fatigue about how to start. One tip is to reverse engineer it (work backward and identify how you’d get there).
- We avoid tasks the stir up negative emotions (avoidance, rumination), which are amplified in those suffering from mental health difficulties. It’s also heightened in times of uncertainty or when we feel overwhelmed.
- Disentangle your feelings. Identify the emotions and rank them 1..10 on how it’s affecting your attitude toward a task. Start the task with the elements that are the least stressful and progress from there (exposure therapy — gradually work up to what scares you the most).
- Use self-compassion to overcome strong negative memories.
- Reverse brainstorm. Think about what would make a task impossibly hard, then develop the opposites. Another technique is to recall the ways this task is similar to something you can do easily.
- Learn to accept friction-filled work. Familiar things are accomplished more easily and feel more satisfying than novel ones that are more difficult or offer greater potential. Emotional reasoning = overextrapolation of how we feel when new work is slower, which causes stress, which makes us think we’re moving in the wrong direction or not making enough progress.
- Limit yourself to short work periods. The prospect of slogging away makes use more likely to procrastinate. Do a minimum of 10 minutes to get over the hump. Next cap it at 90 minutes a day until it doesn’t feel so challenging.
Strategy
Strategy in an Age of Uncertainty (via HBR)
- The problem is that most of our existing frameworks, developed during a more stable era, don’t work as well in dynamic conditions.
- Practices individuals can learn…
- Reframing uncertainty from a source of loss to a gateway to new possibilities
- Preparing yourself and the organization to be more resilient to uncertainty through self-knowledge
- Third, applying the right practices to take action such as breaking the uncertainty down into small steps and engaging with cognitive flexibility
- Sustaining yourself through robust emotional and cognitive hygiene in the face of disappointment and change
- The goal is to create an organization capable of the experimentation required to discover and create growth.
- Empower people to use their native intelligence to solve problems they care about personally
- Move from long, planning-based cycles to short experiments to test and learn
- Create the organizational structures that enable, rather than block, people from experimenting
- Dynamic environments are more like surfing, where you try to be agile and prepared to catch the waves of opportunity. But there’s a difference: In uncertain environments, we don’t just ride the waves, we create them.
Technology
Monitoring Employees Makes Them More Likely to Break Rules (via HBR)
- “We found that monitored employees were substantially more likely to take unapproved breaks, disregard instructions, damage workplace property, steal office equipment, and purposefully work at a slow pace, among other rule-breaking behaviors.”
- “…monitoring employees causes them to subconsciously feel that they are less responsible for their own conduct, thus making them more likely to act immorally.” Those who weren’t monitored felt they (vs their supervisor) were responsible for their actions.
- Ways to monitor justly…
- Only monitor what’s necessary (e.g., for legal compliance)
- Find ways to give employees access to the monitoring data, as well as aggregated, anonymized data from groups
- See if there are ways that the data can benefit employees (e.g., wellness initiatives)