18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (14 page)

I
was on an old, rustic train lumbering across the plains of Harambe, Africa (at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida), when I noticed a majestic lion sitting on a rock on top of a hill, in perfect view.

“Aren’t we lucky the lion is out,” I mused to the “ranger” on the train with us.

“He’s always out there, sitting on that rock,” he responded.

“Really?” I said. “How do you get him to stay in that exact spot?”

The ranger just smiled.

Several years ago, I lived in Savannah, Georgia. We moved there from New York City for a variety of reasons, one of which was to enjoy more relaxed outdoor living.

The very first piece of furniture we bought was an outdoor table. Our kitchen had French doors that opened onto a deck that was about six feet square. At the far end of the
deck were four steps that led down to a patio garden. It was in that garden that we placed our new table. Our plan was to eat every meal there.

But our plan failed. Maybe we were lazy. Somehow, though, we always chose to eat in the kitchen, where all the food, drinks, plates, and utensils were.

The idea of eating outside was alluring. But the reality was, apparently, too much effort.

Until one day I had a brainstorm. It was an experiment more than anything. I moved the table from the garden to the deck right outside the French doors. The difference was about ten feet and four steps.

After that, we ate
every single meal
outside.

A recent study published in the
American Journal of Public Health
found that the closer teens live to places where alcohol is sold, the greater the likelihood they will binge-drink and drive under the influence.

On a certain level, this may seem obvious. But it’s important. Parents tell teens not to drink. Schools tell teens not to drink. Television ads tell teens not to drink. The law prohibits teens from drinking and prohibits liquor stores from selling to teens. And still, if the liquor store is within walking distance of where the teens live (about half a mile), they will be far more likely to drink and drive drunk.

Because, to a larger extent than you probably realize, your environment dictates your actions.

It would be lovely to think that we make our own choices and follow through on them without being too influenced by things around us, but all we need to do is read a little
bit of Brian Wansink’s book
Mindless Eating
to realize just how much our actions are determined by our environment. Brian did a series of fascinating studies that suggest the reasons we eat have little to do with hunger and a tremendous amount to do with the subtle cues that drive us.

For example, if you use a big spoon, you’ll eat more. If you serve yourself on a big plate, you’ll eat more. If you move the small bowl of chocolates on your desk six feet away, you’ll eat half as much. If you eat chicken wings and remove the bones from the table, you’ll forget how much you ate and eat more. If you have a bowl of soup that never gets less than half full, you’ll eat more. And the more people you eat with, the more you’ll eat.

So don’t fight yourself to change your behavior in the midst of the wrong environment; just change the environment. In the case of food, using a salad plate instead of a dinner plate might be all the diet you need.

Marketers already know this. It’s why you get so many catalogs over the year. Of course you could go to their website to shop or just use the catalog you already have on the counter. But no, they’ll send you another one two weeks before Valentine’s Day. And Halloween. And Christmas. They know when you’re thinking about buying something and they’ll make sure that, just as you have that thought, hey look, a catalog.

If you want to help (or even, dare I say it, manipulate) other people, think about what you want them to do and whether the environment around them supports the behavior.

A client was complaining to me that his receptionist was not warm and friendly with people when they walked in. Guess where the receptionist sat? Think bank teller. That’s right. The receptionist sat
behind a glass window
! Don’t send her to communication training. Just remove the glass.

A friend of mine, the principal of a school in Boston, wanted to increase student engagement. They should talk to
one another
, he lamented, not just the teacher. He came up with a great solution.

He didn’t send out memos. He didn’t re-train all the teachers. He didn’t print posters and hang them in the classrooms. Instead, he rearranged each classroom, placing the chairs in a semicircle, so the students were facing one another as well as the teacher. Voilà.

If you’re leading a team and you want people to talk, knock down the walls. If they sit in ten different countries, use Skype and a video camera permanently attached to their computers so there’s no setup time and it’s always sitting there, impossible to ignore. It makes a world of difference.

Your goal is to make it
easier to do
something you want done and
harder not to
.

One of my clients wanted everyone in the company to fill out a time sheet, and they were having a very hard time getting people to do it. Their mind-set was
compliance
. They made it very clear that people didn’t have a choice. Everyone was
required
to do it. That worked for about half the employee population. The rest simply ignored it.

The leaders were about to send out a memo saying no
one would get paid unless the time sheet was handed in. But wait, I asked, do we know why they aren’t doing the time sheet? We assumed it was because people didn’t care. But we asked around anyway.

Well, it turns out that people didn’t mind the idea of filling out a time sheet, but they were frustrated by the technology. The online system required people to go through a wizard—a series of steps—in order to put their time in. It was meant to help them, but it took longer and needlessly delayed them. Not by much—ten seconds at most—but that was enough to dissuade 50 percent of the people from following through.

Once we changed the form and its technology, everyone started using it. They weren’t being defiant. They simply weren’t walking the ten feet and four steps to the table. The solution isn’t to explain to people why they should take the walk or force them to take the walk. The solution is far simpler: Move the table.

The lion that sat so royally on the rock at the top of the hill, day in and day out, for all the park visitors to see?

It turns out that the rock he sat on was temperature-controlled. It was warm on cold days, cool on hot days. No need to train the lion or tie him to the rock or hope he likes the view. Just make the rock a place he
wants
to sit.

I
woke up one morning to pouring rain and temperatures in the low forties. I had planned on going for an early bike ride in Central Park, but now I wasn’t so sure. I like to get some exercise every day, and given my commitments for the rest of the day, this was my only opportunity. But did I really want to get so wet and cold?

I decided to go for it, though I continued to question myself as I put on my biking clothes and got my bike out of the basement. I paused under the awning of our apartment building, as rain streamed down on either side of me.

A friend of mine, Chris, happened to be dashing home to avoid the rain and stopped under the awning for a second.

“Great day for a bike ride,” he said sarcastically before running on.

He’s right
, I thought.
This is crazy
. I stayed under the
awning for a few more minutes as I considered retreating into the warmth of my apartment.

Finally, knowing that I’d feel great after a vigorous ride, I got on my bike and took off, pedaling hard. The initial sting of the cold rain had me questioning myself again, but I kept going.

Then, after less than five minutes, the rain stopped bothering me. And after a few more minutes, it felt kind of good. Invigorating. It turned out to be a wonderful ride.

When I got back to the apartment building—drenched, a little muddy, and with a big smile on my face—one of my neighbors commented on how motivated and disciplined I was to be out on a day like that.

But he was wrong. My ride in the rain taught me a good lesson about motivation and discipline: We need it less than we think.

“I didn’t need to be motivated for long,” I said, laughing. “Just long enough to get outside.”

Because once I was already in the rain, it took no discipline to keep riding. Getting started was the hard part. Like getting into a cold pool: Once you’re in, it’s fine. It’s getting in that takes motivation.

In fact, when you think about it, we need to be motivated for only a few short moments. Between those moments, momentum or habit or unconscious focus takes over.

I write a weekly column. Does that take discipline? Sure. But when I break it down, the hardest part—the part for which I need the discipline—is sitting down to write. I’ll
find all sorts of things to distract me from starting. But if I can get myself to start writing, I don’t need much discipline to continue.

Need willpower to work on something difficult? Ask yourself when you need that willpower most. Received feedback that you should talk less in meetings? Figure out when you are most susceptible to blabbing on. Trying to maintain a commitment to yourself or someone else? Identify the times when you are most at risk of violating that commitment.

Then, whatever you do, don’t give up in the moments when you’re most vulnerable. Don’t give up the bike ride while standing under the awning watching it rain. Even when your friend tells you you’re crazy.

In other words, never quit a diet while reading the dessert menu. It’s too tempting. That’s not the right time to second-guess your commitment. It’s precisely the time to use your willpower and discipline.

We waste a lot of time, energy, and focus second-guessing ourselves. Am I doing the right work? Is this project worthwhile? Is this employee going to work out? That moment-by-moment deliberation is a distraction at best and sabotage at worst. If you keep asking yourself whether a project is worth working on, you’ll reduce your effort on it—who wants to spend time on something that might fail?—and doom its success.

On the other hand, it’s impossible to ignore those feelings of uncertainty. The solution? Schedule them. Create an established time to second-guess yourself, a time when you
know your commitment won’t be weakened by the temptations of the moment. If you’re going to break the diet, do it when your need for willpower is at its lowest. Decide to decide the next day, maybe after a healthy breakfast or a little exercise, when you know your inclination to stick to your goals will be naturally high.

Then, if you decide to stay on the diet, commit fully and powerfully until the next scheduled time to deliberate. Knowing you have a planned pause allows you to focus and concentrate without hesitation until the established time to second-guess yourself.

And if you do eventually decide to change your commitment, you’ll know it’s not from momentary weakness. It’ll be a strategic, rational, intentional decision.

What’s important is that your moment of choice is when you are in the right state of mind—when you need the least willpower—to make the best decision.

W
hen my friend Richard asked me to join him in training for a triathlon, I carefully considered his request. For about a second.

“No way.”

“Oh, come on. Why not?”

“Because I’ve raced triathlons before. They’re painful. It takes me a week to recover. And for what? It’s—”

“Wait a second,” Richard interrupted. “Do you actually try to win?” He laughed. “Peter, last year there were fifty-seven people in my age-group. I came in fifty-sixth. Right before the guy with one leg.” Then he looked me up and down. “You know, we’re not the kind of guys who win these races.”

“So why do you do it?” I asked.

“It’s fun.”

Research published recently in the
Annals of Behavioral Medicine
showed that the harder people exercise, the less
pleasure they feel during the exercise and the less likely they’ll be to exercise routinely. As Panteleimon Ekkekakis, one of the authors of the study, said in
The Wall Street Journal
, “Evidence shows that feeling worse during exercise translates to doing less exercise in the future.”