Check out the video intro for the Science of Thriving, online Sept 16-20….
Here’s What Happens When You Extend Deadlines
In June, the Obama administration pushed back the deadline for employers with fifty or more workers to provide health insurance for their employees by a full year – until Jan 1, 2015. Admittedly, the implementation of anything as complex as the Affordable Care Act is going to take time, and those involved have been working furiously to try to meet the government’s deadlines. So, at least with respect to this particular part of the ACA, everyone has an additional year to get everything just right. Sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?
Only – how furiously do you think everyone with this new, extended deadline is working now? Are they still burning the midnight oil… or are they saying to themselves, Let’s take a breather. We’ve got plenty of time.
What happens when we move back deadlines – once we get past the initial feeling of sweet relief? Research suggests we have a lot of difficulty using our newly-found time wisely. We wind up facing the same problem again – the same time pressure, the same stress, the same feeling-not-quite ready – only now we’ve gone an additional week, or month, or year without reaching an important goal.
So why do we squander the time extensions we are given, and what can we do about it? The answer to the latter requires an understanding of the former, so let’s start there.
Problem #1: We lose motivation
It was first observed by researchers in the early part of the last century that one’s motivation to reach a goal increasesas one’s distance from the goal decreases. Whether you are a salesperson trying to reach a sales target, or a rat running down a tunnel to get a piece of cheese, the closer you get to success, the more intensely you pursue it. Psychologists call this largely unconscious mechanism the “Goal Looms Larger Effect,” meaning that the nearer you are to the finish line, the larger the goal “looms” in your mind – the more it dominates your thinking, and benefits from your attention.
Whenever you push back a deadline, you are increasing the distance once again between you and the finish line. Now, more urgent goals will loom large, and your original goal will languish in the back of your mind.
Problem #2: We procrastinate
In 2012, the IRS received over 10 million tax extension forms – a number that increases every year. Also increasing, according to Turbo Tax, is the number of people who wait until the last two weeks of tax season to file. What do we have to thank for these trends? E-filing. That’s right – now that it is quicker and easier to file our taxes, or file for an extension, we are waiting even longer to do so. E-filing takes the pressure off, so it’s easier for those with a tendency to procrastinate to delay.
But that’s ok, because I work better under pressure, says the procrastinator. Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t. No one does. Psychologically, saying your work is better under pressure makes zero sense, because “pressure” is just another way of saying “just barely sufficient time to complete whatever I’m doing.” How can less time help you do a better job? This is like claiming that you are more rested when you give yourself fewer hours to sleep.
It’s really far more accurate to say that if you are a procrastinator, you work because there is pressure. Without pressure, you don’t work. Which is why pushing back a deadline is absolutely terrible for procrastinators. (Though naturally, they are usually the ones asking for extensions in the first place.)
Problem #3: We are terrible judges of how long things take
Psychologists call this the planning fallacy – a pervasive tendency to underestimate how long it will take to do just about anything – and it can be attributed to several different biases. First, we routinely fail to consider our own past experiences while planning. As any professor can tell you, most college seniors, after four straight years of paper-writing, still can’t seem to figure out how long it will take them to write a 10-page paper.
Second, we ignore the very real possibility that things won’t go as planned–our future plans tend to be “best-case scenarios.” And as a consequence, we budget only enough time to complete the project if everything goes smoothly. Which it never really does.
Lastly, we don’t think about all the steps or subcomponents that make up the task, and consider how long each part of the task will take. When you think about painting a room, you may picture yourself using a roller to quickly slap the paint on the walls, and think that it won’t take much time at all–neglecting to consider how you’ll first have to move or cover the furniture, tape all the fixtures and window frames, do all the edging by hand, and so on.
If you push back a deadline without addressing the poor time planning that landed you in hot water in the first place, you will likely end up in hot water again down the road.
How to Make Good Use of an Extended Deadline
If we want to solve Problems 1 & 2 – keeping motivation high and keeping the pressure on for procrastinators – we need to find ways to shorten the distance between where we are now and where we want to end up. The most effective solution is to impose interim deadlines, effectively breaking a larger goal up into discrete sub-goals spaced out strategically in time. These deadlines need to be meaningful as well – if it’s no big deal to miss the deadline, then it’s not a real deadline.
Research by Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch suggests that many of us understand this implicitly. In one of their studies, students who had to turn in three papers by the semesters’ end. Only 27% of them chose to submit all three on the last day – the majority established earlier deadlines for one or more of the papers voluntarily. In fact, roughly half the students chose to impose deadlines optimally, evenly-spacing them throughout the semester. Those that did turned in superior work and received higher grades. (So much for working best under pressure, eh?)
To solve Problem #3, you need to be very deliberate when it comes to project planning. Specifically, you need to make sure you explicitly…
a) consider how long it has taken to complete s similar project in the past,
b) try to identify the ways in which things might not go as planned, and
3) break the project down, spelling out all the steps you will need to take to get it done, and estimating the time necessary to complete each step.
If it’s not possible to set interim deadlines or make sure actions are taken to avoid the planning fallacy, then you really should try to avoid pushing back your deadline altogether. The odds are good that you’ll have little to show for it but wasted time.
The Science of Thriving: An Online Conference in Sept (Free!)
There’s a lot of advice out there – but where’s the evidence that it actually works? Join an extraordinary group of world-renown scientists, psychologists, and experts as they explain how each of us can be happier and more effective in every area of our lives, by understanding the science of thriving.
I’m hosting The Science of Thriving: At Work & In Life – a one-of-a-kind online event in September, featuring:
Dan Ariely – Duke behavioral economist, author of Predictably Irrational, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty
Dan Pink – author of Drive, To Sell is Human
Carol Dweck – Stanford psychologist, author of Mindset
Oliver Burkeman – Guardian columnist, author of The Antidote
Adam Alter – NYU business professor, author of Drunk Tank Pink
Amy Cuddy – Harvard business professor, expert on “power posing”
David Rock – founder of Neuroleadership Institute, author of Your Brain At Work
Paul Tough – journalist, author of How Children Succeed
Annie Murphy Paul – journalist, author of Brilliant: The Science of Smart
Laura Vanderkam – author of What Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast
David Burkus – founder of LDRLB, author of The Myths of Creativity
Art Markman – UT Austin psychologist, author of Smart Thinking
Adam Grant – Wharton psychologist, author of Give and Take
Maria Konnikova – psychologist, science writer, author of Mastermind
Matt Lieberman – UCLA social neuroscientist, author of Social
Tomas Chamarro-Premuzik – NYU business professor, author of Confidence
Francesca Gino – Harvard business professor, author of Sidetracked
Scott Barry Kaufman – NYU cognitive psychologist, author of Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined
Kristin Neff – UT Austin psychologist, author of Self-Compassion
Tory Higgins – Columbia psychologist, author of Focus
Elizabeth Saunders – time coach, The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment
and Sian Beilock, U. of Chicago psychologist, author of Choke
In-depth interviews, practical evidence-based wisdom. And FREE! Sign up here
Danger Where You Least Expect It
People are generally not all that happy about risk. As Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has written, “For most people, the fear of losing $100 is more intense than the hope of gaining $150. [Amos Tversky and I] concluded from many such observations that ‘losses loom larger than gains’ and that people are loss averse.”
While the phenomenon of loss aversion has been well-documented, it’s worth noting that Kahneman himself refers to “most people” — not all — when describing its prevalence. According to 20 years of research conducted by Columbia University’s Tory Higgins, it might be more accurate to say that some of us are particularly risk-averse, not because we are neurotic, paranoid, or even lacking in self-confidence, but because we tend to see our goals as opportunities to maintain the status quo and keep things running smoothly. Higgins calls this a prevention focus, associated with a robust aversion to being wide-eyed and optimistic, making mistakes, and taking chances. The rest of us are promotion-focused, see our goals as opportunities to make progress and end up better off, and are not particularly averse to risky choices when they hold the potential for rich gains.
Studies from Columbia’s Motivation Science Center have shown that prevention-focused people work more slowly and deliberately, seek reliability over “coolness” or luxury in products, and prefer conservative investments to higher-yielding but less certain ones. Further research conducted by Harvard’s Francesca Gino and Joshua Margolis, indicates that prevention-focused people are more likely than the promotion-focused to behave ethically and honestly — not because they are more ethical per se, but because they fear that rule-breaking will land them in hot water.
They even drive differently. In one study, researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands equipped customers of a Dutch insurance company with a GPS that was used to monitor their driving habits. The prevention-focused were, not surprisingly, less likely to speed than their promotion-focused fellow drivers. A second study showed that they also needed larger gaps between cars in order to feel comfortable merging.
So when people talk about the factors leading to the recent recession, and you hear a lot about excessive risk-taking (what Alan Greenspan famously called “irrational exuberance”), the prevention-focused would probably be last on your list of potential culprits. But you would be wrong.
That’s because everything I just told you about prevention-focused people is true when everything is running smoothly — when the status quo is acceptable. When the Devil you know is better than the one you don’t (a prevention-focused bit of wisdom if ever there was one.)
When the prevention-focused feel they are actually in danger of loss — and when they believe that a risky option is the only way to eliminate that loss — it’s a very different story.
For instance, in one study conducted by Abigail Scholer and her colleagues at Columbia, participants invested $5 in a particular stock. Half were subsequently told that the stock had lost value — not only the initial investment, but an additional $4. The other half were told that the stock had gained $4 in value. (These values were determined — they were told — by a computer simulation of real-world conditions). Then participants were given the option to invest again, this time with a choice: a 75% chance of gaining $6 and a 25% chance of losing $10 (the conservative option), or a 25% chance of gaining $20 and a 75% chance of losing $4 (the risker option). Note that while the odds were longer, only the riskier option could eliminate the loss of $9 for those currently at -$4. Note also that these were undergraduate students to whom the dollar amounts at stake were significant.
The promotion-focused chose the risky option roughly 50% of the time, regardless of whether their stock had gained or lost value. But the prevention-focused preferred the risky option only 38% of the time under gain and 75% of the time under loss. In other words, prevention-focused people generally prefer the conservative option when everything is going according to plan, but they will embrace risk when it’s their only shot at returning to status quo.
This suggests that “excessive exuberance” may be something of a misnomer. Certainly there are risk-loving traders on Wall Street, and some of the blame for the events that led to the recession lies with them. But much of it seems to lie with investment bankers — people who rarely strike anyone as “exuberant.” If anything, they appear to despise risk — so much so that they lobbied hard to create a system (i.e., “Too Big To Fail”) in which comparatively little risk (for them) existed.
These are the people who, counter-intuitively, will take the most dangerous risks under the right circumstances. One of the most famous risk-takers in recent memory is JP Morgan’s “London Whale,” Bruno Iksil, who doubled down on a losing bet rather than admit his losses, ultimately costing the bank over six billion. Evidence from the Senate hearings on the matter, in the form of recorded phone calls and emails, paints a picture of desperation rather than over-confidence. (Incidentally, Iksil was head of the Chief Investment Office, the purpose of which is to protect the bank by hedging some of its other riskier bets. This is no longer ironic, when understood from the vantage of prevention focus.)
This is why the only deterrent to reckless risk-taking is to make sure that reckless risks have real consequences for those who take them — to make sure, as Nassim Taleb has put it, that the players have “skin in the game.” These consequences have to be worse than those of the risks themselves, or they will not be effective. And frankly, they still may not deter a true risk-loving, thrill-seeking cowboy trader — but then again, they aren’t really the ones you need to look out for.
How Happiness Changes As We Age
I’m just shy of 40 years-old. I spend most Saturday nights at home in yoga pants, rereading favorite novels or watching old movies, or playing Monopoly Junior with my seven-year-old. (If you think Monopoly is boring, then you haven’t tried Monopoly Junior.)
This way of spending my Saturday nights makes me happy. If you went back and told my cooler 20-year-old self about the typical evening that awaits the future her, though, she would be pretty devastated that her life turns out to be so … boring. That a Saturday night spent reading a book — not even a new book — qualifies as a great time.
“What the hell happens to me?” she would wonder. A lot of people feel that way to some extent when we look back at our younger selves and realize how much we’ve changed. The answer, of course, is that we all grow up — and for many of us, what it means to be “happy” slowly evolves into something completely different.
Happiness becomes less the high-energy, totally-psyched experience of a teenager partying while his parents are out of town, and more the peaceful, relaxing experience of an overworked mom who’s been dreaming of that hot bath all day. The latter isn’t less “happy” than the former — it’s a different way of understanding what happiness is.
Social psychologists describe this change as a consequence of a gradual shifting from promotion motivation — seeing our goals in terms of what we can gain, or how we can end up better off, to prevention motivation — seeing our goals in terms of avoiding loss and keeping things running smoothly. Everyone, of course, has both motivations. But the relative amounts of each differ from person to person, and can shift with experience as we age.
Research from Northwestern University in the journal Psychology and Aging suggests that promotion-mindedness is most prevalent among the young, because youth is a time for focusing on your hopes for the future, what you ideally want to do — you don’t have much in the way of responsibilities, and you still believe you can do anything you set your mind to. That and you think you are immortal. This is more or less a recipe for strong promotion motivation.
As we get older, illusions of immortality vanish. There is a mortgage that needs to be paid, a home that must be maintained, and children to be cared for. (Speaking of children, new mothers are an especially prevention-minded group. They have the daunting task of somehow protecting a completely vulnerable, clueless, yet hell-bent-on-exploration infant from a world filled with germs, stairs, pointy objects, and electrical outlets. New motherhood is mostly about ceaseless vigilance.)
The older we get, the more we want to hang on to what we’ve already got — the things we’ve worked so hard to achieve. We also have more experience with pain and loss, having been knocked around a bit by life, and having learned a few lessons the hard way.
In a recent set of studies, psychologists Cassie Mogliner, Sepandar Kamvar, and Jennifer Aaker looked for evidence of how our sense of happiness changes with age by analyzing twelve million personal blogs. Specifically, they were interested in seeing what kinds of emotions the bloggers mentioned when they talked about feeling “happy.”
They found that younger bloggers described experiences of happiness as being times when they felt excited, ecstatic, or elated — they way you feel when you are anticipating the joys the future will bring – like finding love, getting ahead at work, or moving to a new town.
Older bloggers were more inclined to describe happy experiences as moments of feeling peaceful, relaxed, calm, or relieved – they way you feel when you are getting along with your spouse, staying healthy, and able to make your mortgage payments. This kind of happiness is less about what lies ahead, and more about being content in your current circumstances.
(You can see these age-related differences in motivation very much reflected in the workplace, where older workers have more prevention-motivated concerns – like job security and flexible work schedules, while people under thirty have more promotion concerns — like opportunities to develop skills.)
If you’re like me, and you find that your life has become more about pursuing peace and relaxation than giddy excitement, rest assured that you aren’t missing out on happiness. Your happiness has evolved, just as you have. Even though our version seems less fun by the standards of our younger selves, that doesn’t mean it’s less good.
The Most Effective Ways to Make It Right When You Screw Up
After promising your boss you would complete an important assignment on time, you realize you’re behind and it’s going to be late. You unintentionally leave a colleague out of the loop on a joint project, causing him or her to feel frustrated and a bit betrayed. On the subway, you aren’t paying attention and accidentally spill hot coffee all over a stranger’s expensive suit. It’s time for a mea culpa.
Apologies are tricky. Done right, they can resolve conflict, repair hurt feelings, foster forgiveness, and improve relationships. An apology can even keep you out of the courtroom. Despite the fact that lawyers often caution their clients to avoid apologies, fearing that they are tantamount to an admission of guilt, studies show that when potential plaintiffs receive an apology, they are more likely to settle out of court for less money.
However, as anyone can tell you, most apologies don’t go so well. Ask John Galliano, for instance. Or John Edwards, or Todd Aiken, or Kanye West. (I could go on and on.) An apology is no guarantee that you’ll find yourself out of hot water.
This is usually either because the person or persons from whom you are seeking forgiveness really aren’t interested in forgiving, or because the transgression itself is deemed unforgivable. But more often than not, your apology falls flat because you’re apologizing the wrong way.
In a nutshell, the problem is that most people tend to make their apologies about themselves—about their intentions, thoughts, and feelings.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“I was trying to…”
“I didn’t realize…”
“I had a good reason…”
When you screw up, the victim of your screw up does not want to hear about you. Therefore, stop talking about you and put the focus of your apology where it belongs: on him or her. Specifically, concentrate on how the victim has been affected by your mistake, on how the person is feeling, and on what he or she needs from you in order to move forward.
Thanks to recent research on effective apologies, you can fine-tune your approach even further according to your relationship with the recipient of the apology:
You Are A Stranger or Mere Acquaintance
The guy in the coffee-stained suit wants an offer of compensation. Offers of compensation are attempts to restore balance through some redeeming action. Sometimes the compensation is tangible, like paying to repair or replace your neighbor’s fence when you inadvertently back your car into it, or running out to get your girlfriend a new phone when you accidentally drop hers into the toilet (which happened to me, by the way. Not cool.) Offers of compensation can also be more emotional or socially-supportive. (as in,”I’m sorry I acted like a jerk, and I’ll make it up to you by being extra thoughtful from now on.”)
You Are My Partner, Colleague, or Friend
The colleague you accidentally left out of the loop doesn’t want compensation. When you have a relationship with the injured party, you will instead need to take his or her perspective and express empathy. Expressions of empathy involve recognizing and expressing concern over the suffering you caused. (e.g., “I’m so sorry that I didn’t appreciate all of your effort. You must have felt awful, and that’s the last thing I want.”) Through expressions of empathy, the victim feels understood and valued as a partner in the relationship, and trust is restored.
You Let Our Team Down
In the modern workplace, we often operate as teams. So when you fail to meet an important deadline, chances are it’s not just your boss that’s affected—it’s your whole team, and possibly your whole organization. In team settings, people don’t want compensation or empathy—they want an acknowledgement of violated rules and norms. Basically, you need to admit that you broke the code of behavior of your social group, your organization, or your society. (e.g., “I have a responsibility to my team/organization/family/community and I should have known better. I didn’t just let myself down, I let others who count on me down.”)
When you think about it, it’s surprising that we’re often so bad at apologizing. After all, we are frequently on the receiving end of apologies ourselves—so we should know what works and what doesn’t. In reality, we often forget what it’s like to be on the other side—whether we’re trying to apologize, impress, persuade, help, or motivate.
So when crafting your apology, remember to ask yourself the following: Who am I talking to, and what is he or she looking for in my apology? The guy on the subway still dripping from your morning joe doesn’t want to hear that you “feel his pain”—but when you forget your wife’s birthday, she most definitely would like you to feel hers.
After promising your boss you would complete an important assignment on time, you realize you’re behind and it’s going to be late. You unintentionally leave a colleague out of the loop on a joint project, causing him or her to feel frustrated and a bit betrayed. On the subway, you aren’t paying attention and accidentally spill hot coffee all over a stranger’s expensive suit. It’s time for a mea culpa.
Apologies are tricky. Done right, they can resolve conflict, repair hurt feelings, foster forgiveness, and improve relationships. An apology can even keep you out of the courtroom. Despite the fact that lawyers often caution their clients to avoid apologies, fearing that they are tantamount to an admission of guilt, studies show that when potential plaintiffs receive an apology, they are more likely to settle out of court for less money.
However, as anyone can tell you, most apologies don’t go so well. Ask John Galliano, for instance. Or John Edwards, or Todd Aiken, or Kanye West. (I could go on and on.) An apology is no guarantee that you’ll find yourself out of hot water.
This is usually either because the person or persons from whom you are seeking forgiveness really aren’t interested in forgiving, or because the transgression itself is deemed unforgivable. But more often than not, your apology falls flat because you’re apologizing the wrong way.
In a nutshell, the problem is that most people tend to make their apologies about themselves—about their intentions, thoughts, and feelings.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“I was trying to…”
“I didn’t realize…”
“I had a good reason…”
When you screw up, the victim of your screw up does not want to hear about you. Therefore, stop talking about you and put the focus of your apology where it belongs: on him or her. Specifically, concentrate on how the victim has been affected by your mistake, on how the person is feeling, and on what he or she needs from you in order to move forward.
Thanks to recent research on effective apologies, you can fine-tune your approach even further according to your relationship with the recipient of the apology:
You Are A Stranger or Mere Acquaintance
The guy in the coffee-stained suit wants an offer of compensation. Offers of compensation are attempts to restore balance through some redeeming action. Sometimes the compensation is tangible, like paying to repair or replace your neighbor’s fence when you inadvertently back your car into it, or running out to get your girlfriend a new phone when you accidentally drop hers into the toilet (which happened to me, by the way. Not cool.) Offers of compensation can also be more emotional or socially-supportive. (as in,”I’m sorry I acted like a jerk, and I’ll make it up to you by being extra thoughtful from now on.”)
The guy in the coffee-stained suit wants an offer of compensation. Offers of compensation are attempts to restore balance through some redeeming action. Sometimes the compensation is tangible, like paying to repair or replace your neighbor’s fence when you inadvertently back your car into it, or running out to get your girlfriend a new phone when you accidentally drop hers into the toilet (which happened to me, by the way. Not cool.) Offers of compensation can also be more emotional or socially-supportive. (as in,”I’m sorry I acted like a jerk, and I’ll make it up to you by being extra thoughtful from now on.”)
You Are My Partner, Colleague, or Friend
The colleague you accidentally left out of the loop doesn’t want compensation. When you have a relationship with the injured party, you will instead need to take his or her perspective and express empathy. Expressions of empathy involve recognizing and expressing concern over the suffering you caused. (e.g., “I’m so sorry that I didn’t appreciate all of your effort. You must have felt awful, and that’s the last thing I want.”) Through expressions of empathy, the victim feels understood and valued as a partner in the relationship, and trust is restored.
The colleague you accidentally left out of the loop doesn’t want compensation. When you have a relationship with the injured party, you will instead need to take his or her perspective and express empathy. Expressions of empathy involve recognizing and expressing concern over the suffering you caused. (e.g., “I’m so sorry that I didn’t appreciate all of your effort. You must have felt awful, and that’s the last thing I want.”) Through expressions of empathy, the victim feels understood and valued as a partner in the relationship, and trust is restored.
You Let Our Team Down
In the modern workplace, we often operate as teams. So when you fail to meet an important deadline, chances are it’s not just your boss that’s affected—it’s your whole team, and possibly your whole organization. In team settings, people don’t want compensation or empathy—they want an acknowledgement of violated rules and norms. Basically, you need to admit that you broke the code of behavior of your social group, your organization, or your society. (e.g., “I have a responsibility to my team/organization/family/community and I should have known better. I didn’t just let myself down, I let others who count on me down.”)
In the modern workplace, we often operate as teams. So when you fail to meet an important deadline, chances are it’s not just your boss that’s affected—it’s your whole team, and possibly your whole organization. In team settings, people don’t want compensation or empathy—they want an acknowledgement of violated rules and norms. Basically, you need to admit that you broke the code of behavior of your social group, your organization, or your society. (e.g., “I have a responsibility to my team/organization/family/community and I should have known better. I didn’t just let myself down, I let others who count on me down.”)
When you think about it, it’s surprising that we’re often so bad at apologizing. After all, we are frequently on the receiving end of apologies ourselves—so we should know what works and what doesn’t. In reality, we often forget what it’s like to be on the other side—whether we’re trying to apologize, impress, persuade, help, or motivate.
So when crafting your apology, remember to ask yourself the following: Who am I talking to, and what is he or she looking for in my apology? The guy on the subway still dripping from your morning joe doesn’t want to hear that you “feel his pain”—but when you forget your wife’s birthday, she most definitely would like you to feel hers.
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