Why Keeping Your Options Open Is A Really, Really Bad Idea

Glad to see that positive psychology is becoming more and more mainstream. Check out this article from Fast Company:

Given the choice, would you prefer to make an iron-clad, no-turning-back decision, or one you could back out of if you needed to? Does that seem like a stupid question? I understand why it might, but bear with me--because it isn't.

People overwhelmingly prefer reversible decisions to irreversible ones. They believe it's better to "keep your options open," whenever possible. They wait years before declaring a major, date someone for years before getting married, favor stores with a guaranteed return policy (think Zappos), and hire employees on a temporary basis (or use probationary periods), all in order to avoid commitments that can be difficult, or nearly impossible, to un-do.

People believe that this is the best way to ensure their own happiness and success. But people, as it turns out, are wrong.

Let's start with the happiness part. Research by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, author ofStumbling on Happiness, shows that reversible, keep-your-options-open decisions reliably lead to lower levels of satisfaction than irreversible ones. In other words, we are significantly less happy with our choices when we can back out of them.

(For example, in one of Gilbert's studies, people were asked to choose an art poster that they could keep. Those who were told that they could change their mind and return it for a different poster in the next 30 days reported being less happy with their poster than those who had to pick a poster and stick with it.)

Why does keeping our options open make us less happy? Because once we make a final, no-turning-back decision, the psychological immune system kicks in. This is how psychologists like Gilbert refer to the mind's uncanny ability to make us feel good about our decisions. Once we've committed to a course of action, we stop thinking about alternatives. Or, if we do bother to think about them, we think about how lousy they are compared to our clearly superior and awesome choice.

Most of us have had to make a choice between two colleges, or job offers, or apartments. You may have had to choose which candidate to hire for a job, or which vendor your company would engage for a project. When you were making your decision, it was probably a tough one--every option had significant pros and cons. But after you made that decision, did you ever wonder how you could have even considered the now obviously inferior alternative? "Wow, I can't believe I even thought about going to Yale, when Harvard is better in every way." (That's just an example--I am neutral when it comes to Harvard vs. Yale. I went to Penn, which incidentally was way better than those schools, but I digress ... )

Human beings are particularly good at rearranging and restructuring our thoughts to create the most positive experience possible in any situation. The psychological immune system protects us, to some extent, from the negative consequences of our choices--because after all, almost every choice has a downside. The key to happiness is to dwell as little as possible on that downside.

When you keep your options open, however, you can't stop thinking about the downside--because you're still trying to figure out if you made the right choice. The psychological immune system doesn't kick in, and you're left feeling less happy about whatever choice you end up making.

This brings us to the other problem with reversible decisions--new research shows that they don't just rob you of happiness, they also lead to poorer performance.

Once again, it's because thoughts related to making the right decision stay active in your mind when your options are open. This places a rather hefty burden on your working memory, and it's distracting. When you're still deciding what you should do, you don't have the cognitive resources to devote yourself fully to what you're actually doing. Your attention wanders. And as a result, your performance suffers. (For instance, in one study, people who made a reversible decision were able to recall fewer correct answers on a subsequent task then those who made a choice they had to stick with.)

So keeping your options open leads to less happiness and success, not more. Ironically, people don't actually change their minds and revise decisions very often. We just prefer having the option to do so, and that preference is costing us.

I'm not, for the record, saying reversible decisions are never beneficial. Obviously if you have no real basis for making a good choice in the first place and you're just guessing, or if the consequences of your choice might end up killing someone, the option of a do-over is probably a good thing.

But assuming that your choice is carefully considered and you've weighed your options, you will be both happier and more successful if you make a decision, and don't look back.

To learn more about reaching your career goals, check out Heidi's new book is Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals. Follow her on Twitter@hghalvorson. Her website iswww.heidigranthalvorson.com.

It seems completely irrational that keeping options open would lead to dissatisfaction but I do feel it's true (from personal experience).

Drive: Ask yourself questions, and take a Sagmeister

I really liked Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

In Drive, Pink suggests asking yourself "What's your sentence?" (examples include "He raised four kids who became happy and healthy adults" or "She invented a device that made people's lives easier" or "She taught two generations of children how to read.") and then asking every night before your go to bed "Was I better today than yesterday?"

Pink also suggests trying the following exercise from Alan Webber's Rules of Thumb:

Get a few blank three-by-five inch cards. On one of the cards, write your answer to this question: "What gets you up in the morning?" Now, on the other side of the card, write your answer to your question: "What keeps you up at night?" Pare each response to a single sentence. And if you don't like an answer, toss the card and try again until you've crafted something you can live with. Then read what you've produced. If both answers give you a sense of meaning and direction, "Congratulations!" says Webber. "Use them as your compass, checking from time to time to see if they're still true. If you don't like one or both of your answers, it opens up a new question: What are you going to do about it?"

Pink also suggests following designer Stefan Sagmeister's lead and taking one year off every seven years, during which you travel, experiment with new projects, and generate ideas that (at least for Sagmeister) often provide income for the next seven years. 

"Taking a Sagmeister" (as Pink calls it) sounds intense but it's something I've advocated for years. 

Click here to view all my posts on Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

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Nautilus and Rememberance

I came across the website for the Northern Michigan University School of Art and Design and fell in love with these two pieces:

Nautilus by Alicia Bastian

Rememberance by Mitch Steinmetz

The Nautlius was designed to be a cherished family heirloom that, with its ascending pattern representing a reader's growth in age and advancement in personal knowledge like markings of a child’s height on the wall. The ascending shelves also symbolize the pursuit of lifelonog learning. In linear form, Nautilus acts as a whimsical room divider; but when closed, Nautilus’s circular form becomes an adapted reading sanctuary.

Remembrance combines the social interaction of family gatherings (like a coffee table) with the nostalgia and enjoyment of remembering the past (like a photo album). Instead of acting as a facilitator for a user's  entertainment, Remembrance can be the source of entertainment while simultaneously creating new memories and cataloguing and cherishing old ones.

Doesn't the Nautilus look so inviting? And I love the idea of having what looks like a giant photo album as a coffee table.

Type I (versus Type X)

I'm very intrigued by Daniel H Pink's Type I description, as written in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Where Type X (extrinsic motivation) is the center of Motivation 2.0, Type I (intrinsic motivation) is the center of Motivation 3.0. Here's more about Type I:

• Type I behavior is made, not born. 
• Type I's almost always outperform Type X's in the long run. 
• Type I behavior does not disdain money or recognition. 
• Type I behavior is a renewable resource.
• Type I behavior promotes greater physical and mental well-being.

Ultimately, Type I behavior depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Type I behavior is self-directed. It is devoted to becoming better at something that matters. And it connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose. 

Some might dismiss notions like these as gooey and idealistic, but the science says otherwise. The science confirms that this sort of behavior is essential to being human -- and that now, in a rapidly changing economy, it is also critical for professional, personal, and organizational success of any kind.  

So we have a choice. We can cling to a view of human motivation that is grounded more in old habits than in modern science. Or we can listen to the research, drag our business and personal practices into the twenty-first century, and craft a new operating system to help ourselves, our companies, and our world work a little better. 

It won't be easy. It won't happen overnight. So let's get started. 

Doesn't it sound so inspiring?

Click here to view all my posts on Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Books become Lampshades

It sounds like a crazy idea, recycling old books and turning them into Lampshades. But the imaginative folks at Ginko Studios (GreenWallNL on etsy) have done it and they're available for $49 each.

 

What do you think? Would you buy one?

365 Thank Yous

Just read about 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life by John Kralik on npr.org:

After a particularly bad 2007, lawyer John Kralik decided to start 2008 with a serious New Year's resolution: to be thankful for the good things and people in his life. So he spent the next year writing one thank you note for each day — to family, friends, co-workers, even the barista at his local Starbucks. Those notes make up his new book, 365 Thank Yous: The Year A Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life.

I've always been a big proponent of handwritten thank you notes (and digital thank you emails) so I was thrilled to read about this book.

Hope my local library carries this book!

Carrots and Sticks: The Seven Deadly Flaws

As I promised, here's more about Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

I particularly liked this list from Chapter 2, Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Don't Work.

Carrots and Sticks: The Seven Deadly Flaws

1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.
2. They can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity.
4. They can crowd out good behavior.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.
6. They can become addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking. 

Click here to view all my posts on Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

The Power of Books

This 2003 series, The Power of Books, by Mladen Penev graphically illustrates how easy it is to get lost in a good book.

It's so fun!

Daniel Pink's Drive

I've just finished reading Daniel H Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

It was a surprisingly good read with a strong basis in positive psychology (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, noted for his work on happiness, creativity, and "flow", is frequently mentioned and quoted).

Pink breaks down the history of human motivation into several operating systems. Motivation 1.0 was based on survival and was very effective in the early days of humans.

Motivation 2.0 was developed during the Industrial Revolution and was based on the idea that people respond rationally to external forces (extrinsic motivators) like rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior. The economic development of the past century was fueled by Motivation 2.0.

Motivation 2.1 was an incremental improvement on Motivation 2.0 based on MIT professor Douglas McGregor's research that poeple have hgher drives that could benefit businesses if managers and business leaders respected them. This led to loosening of dress codes, flex-time schedules, and other perks to grant employees greater autonomy.

But Pink suggests we need a total upgrade to Motivation 3.0, based on what he calls Type I behavior.

Type I behavior is fueled more by intrinsic drives than extrinsic ones. It concerns itself less with the external rewards to which an activity leads and more with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself.

I'll write more about this book over the next week or two, especially about Type I behavior and improving your life (and business).

Daniel Pink's self written cocktail party summary of Drive is:

When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system–which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators–doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: 1. Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives. 2. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters. 3. Purpose — the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

In the meantime, click here to take a survey to determine whether you exhibit Type I behavior.

60 Quotes Project by B. Romain

I came across a beautiful set of images on flickr by B Romain, the man behind the 60 Quotes Project.

Romain took it upon himself to illustrate a selection of sixty quotations from various sources and on varying topics.

A few of the quotation illustrations are from authors I really like and of those, these are some of my favorites:

 Big Brother is watching you ~ George Orwell.

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do ~ Oscar Wilde.

Never look back unless you're planning to go that way ~ Henry David Thoreau.

All things truly wicked start from an innocence. ~ Ernest Hemingway.

Blogger is finally back!

I've been neglecting this blog for so long and of all the days I decide to get back into it (Wednesday and Thursday), Blogger was buggy and then down.

Thankfully, Blogger is finally back!

It's been especially frustrating since I switched from Wordpress to Blogger in part because I thought Blogger was better.

Required Reading for the Social Entrepreneur

Fun list of books to read via sparksf.wordpress.com:

As part of the fellowship application process, each finalists was asked which books they consider to be “required reading” for social entrepreneurship. I wanted to share this list, especially as we all work hard to find ways to innovate and build on Spark’s tremendous model.

• The Prophet by Khalil Gibran and Love of Life by Jack London
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and Rose, Where Did You Get That Red by Kenneth Koch
• Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must-Reads: The Essentials
• Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
• The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
• How to Change the World by David Bornstein
• Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki
• Follow Her Lead: Leadership Lessons for Women as They Journey from the Backroom to the Boardroom by Dr. Anita Davis Defoe
• The Revolution Will Not be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by Ed. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
• The Republic of Tea by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenzweig
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Aku Aku by Thor Heyerdahl
• Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman
• How to Change the World by David Bornstein
• Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus
• The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
• The Elements of Influence by Alan Kelly
• Critical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller and Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
• God’s Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembéne and Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking is Not The Answer by Jim Collins
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
• The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
• Crossing the Finish Line by William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos and Michael S. McPherson
• Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

I've read some of these (Good to Great, Founders at Work, Predictably Irrational, The Alchemist, among others), but I'll have to add some of the others to my list of books to read.