Commitment Devices -or- Lashing Yourself to the Mast

For those of you who survived reading the Odyssey, you may remember the part where his crew had to pass by the Sirens, whose voices would lure sailors to their watery doom.  To get by safely, Odysseus (Odie to his friends) gave his crew noise-cancelling headphones, or maybe wax earplugs, so they couldn't hear anything.  However, he wanted to hear them and survive to tell the tale, so he had the crew tie him to the mast of the ship and refuse to release him no matter how hard he tried to convince them.

Odie knew his will power would not be enough to stop him from giving into the temptation of the Sirens.  So, he created a scenario where he *couldn't* give in - even when he wanted to.  I've been calling this approach "lashing to the mast" in his honor (Google tells me 277,000 other people had the same idea...).  The principle is simple:  if you know something is going to tempt you, set your world up in a way that makes it impossible (or at least difficult) to give in.

"Commitment devices" is a general term for this kind of approach.  It can take may forms, but one of the more popular is an accountability agreement.  If you don't follow through on your commitment, you face a penalty/ridicule/look of disappointment from your partner.  This is the reasoning behind the advice to have a partner to work out with, so they provide that accountability.

Another fitness approach is the clearing out of the fridge.  The new dieter will go through their kitchen and get rid of everything that isn't in line with the new eating plan.  Of course, they can just go back and re-buy it, but the added hassle makes it a little easier to resist the temptation.

Another temptation, and one I have trouble with myself, is surfing sites when I should be working. (I've lost hours on Wiki-fueled explorations)  To address this, I use an extension for Chrome called StayFocusd.  The premise is simple:  I have so much time per working day (15 minutes) on those sites and then it will block access with a friendly "shouldn't you be working" message.  You can configure the sites to block, allowed sites, time of day/day of week it's active etc.  Because it's a Chrome extension, I can easily use another browser to bypass it, but I find that that extra step is enough to remind me why I installed it in the first place.

Hopefully, some of these ideas will help you (and me) avoid more of the things we know we shouldn't be doing, but find ourselves doing anyway...

Interesting Link: Failed New Year's Resolutions

As the last person with a print subscription to Newsweek, I though I would share an article I ran across. It's about New Year's resolutions, and motivation in General.  The Author, Oliver Burkeman, theorizes that the self-help industry is based on (and requires) our difficulty making major changes.   He mentions the idea of willpower as a finite resource, and proposes "small wins", or ridiculously minor goals, as a way to make progress while not tapping into the willpower reserve.

Book Report: Carrots and Sticks

In the spirit of trying to re-kindle my blogging and do more reading, I'm going to start doing periodic "Book Reports" on topics I find interesting.

One of the topics I've always found interesting is What Motivates Us.  I'm still holding out some hope that there's some secret button I can push on myself to motivate me to lose weight, save money, and launch my career ad Football Player/President/Astronaut.  I've taken a crack at a motivation theory myself, base on my own observation and experience.

In his book Carrots and Sticks, Ian Ayres presents a more refined view of how incentives motivate our actions.   He pulls a lot of his ideas from Behavioral Economics and backs up his ideas with experimental results. He's also the co-founder of StickK.com, which uses these principles to help people reach goals. (He does make a point of mentioning his site, but not to the degree that the book reads as a commercial..)

Main points:

(of course the book has a lot of examples and explanation not covered here)

• Because we have time-inconsistent preferences, we place a larger value on things we can enjoy now, as opposed to more of the same in the future (aka Hyperbolic Discounting).  This goes beyond rational discounting.  This difference is larger the closer to the actual "now" the decision is made, and is generally regretted after the fact.
• Your present self (who wants to lose weight, save money, etc.) is often at odds with your future self (who makes the decision to have dessert, buy unneeded shoes, etc.)
• Commitment devices (like a large cash penalty for "cheating") can take bad options away if set up correctly.
• Anti-incentives, such as the famous Zappos offer to pay their trainees to leave, can create a greater commitment for those who turn it down.
• Penalties are usually more cost effective that rewards, as they don't require payment normally and people count losses more heavily than gains of the same amount.
• People have a strong urge to conform to what others do.  This can be used as an incentive.
• We have a finite supply of willpower, but this can be increased through "exercise".
• We have a limited capacity to change, but resetting our "normal" can be the basis for further changes.

My opinion:

I think this book is somewhat underrated based on the Amazon reviews.  It covers a lot of the same ground as Daniel Pink's Drive, but on a more personal level.  I would recommend it.

Motivation

Considering that it's been more than a week since I've last blogged, I thought Motivation was a good topic to start with. I'm getting away from the Official Canon of Generally Accepted Knowledge (OCGAK), and throwing my own thoughts out there. So if it makes you wildly successful, I get partial credit. If it makes you fail spectacularly, you're on your own. If you saw these ideas somewhere else, I thought of it first and just didn't write it until now. I don't care if it was from the 16th century.

There are three thinks that get me (or anyone else, I assume) to do something or not do something:

1) Rewards. If we go through the maze, we get the cheese. If I show up for work, I get a paycheck. If I do good things while I'm there, I get raises, bonuses, promotions, etc. There's a lot of research and open discussion on what makes the best kind of reward (Money, recognition, intrinsic satisfaction). I personally believe that people have their own mix of them that best drives them forward.

2) Penalties. This is the opposite of the reward. If we go through the maze the wrong way, we not only don't get the cheese, but we get zapped by the electric floor. If I don't mow my yard, angry neighbors start chasing me with torches and pitchforks. If I take a HDTV from the store without paying for it, I get fitted for a orange jumpsuit. Civil & Criminal penalties, Societal disapproval, and even guilt are examples of this,

The two of these can be balanced against each other and there are cases where uncertainty is a factor. In the example of stealing the TV above, there is a chance I wouldn't get caught, then the Reward of the new free TV would outweigh the avoided Penalty of going to prison. Of course, my luck would make that chance pretty close to zero. Lawmakers use these tools in their attempt to nudge society in one direction or the other. That's one reason the tax code is as complex as it is.

The third and, I feel, most powerful of the motivators is 3) Habit. Habit never starts fully formed, but begins as response to Reward and Penalty that outlives the Rewards and Penalties themselves. A personal example is eating. I originally ate to get the Reward of the taste and avoid the Penalty of being hungry. Those are still considerations, but I occasionally (okay, frequently) find myself eating something I'm not all that crazy about when I'm not even hungry out of simple Habit. On the flip side, people who stay with a long-term exercise program often say that it's become a Habit for them.

So in short, If there's some change you want to make in what you do, look at Rewards and Penalties you can attach to that behavior and work to make it last long enough to allow Habit to kick in.