"Diz-me com quem andas, dir-te-ei quem és"

O ditado popular reza assim: "Diz-me com quem andas, dir-te-ei quem és."

As avós estão sempre preocupadas com quem os netos passam o tempo.

Entretanto, no sétimo capítulo (Conformity) de "The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" de Katy Milkman encontrei:

"We feel like misfits when we stand out from the crowd.

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the logic behind the herd behavior is different. No one is worried about fitting in. Rather, we suspect other people have noticed something dangerous that we missed. Sometimes, other peoples’ decisions reflect valuable information

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how important it is to be in good company when you hope to achieve big goals and how harmful it can be to have peers who aren’t high achievers. A growing body of evidence suggests that the people you’ve spent time with have been shaping your behavior your whole life, often without your knowledge.

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we found that encouraging people to copy and paste one another’s best life hacks motivated both more exercise and better class preparation in adults who wanted to work out more and college students seeking to improve their grades, respectively.

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When we’re unsure of ourselves, a powerful way the people around us can help boost our capacity and confidence is by showing us what’s possible. Often, in fact, we’re more influenced by observation than by advice.

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These studies highlight that the closer we are to someone and the more their situation resembles our own, the more likely we are to be influenced by their behavior, even if the behavior is merely described rather than directly observed.* They also speak to the power of using norms as a tool of influence. Describing what’s typical can be an effective way to help large groups change their behaviors for the better."

Reforçar a crença na capacidade de mudar.

Mais um trecho interessante retirado de "The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" de Katy Milkman:

"It’s common to give out advice when we see someone struggling to achieve a goal. We often think guidance is just the thing they’re looking for, whether they ask for it or not.

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when it came to being more successful, people had plenty of good ideas for how to do it. Even underperforming salespeople, C students, unemployed job seekers, and spendthrifts struggling to save consistently offered smart strategies for improving their circumstances. Students made suggestions ranging from the mundane ("Turn off your phone when you're studying") to the creative ("Put candy at the bottom of a worksheet, and when you finish, you can eat it"). People with money problems advised "Don't pay with a credit card." Job seekers suggested keeping résumés up-to-date and carrying them at all times. Almost everyone knew what to do to overcome their problems; they just weren't doing it.

Lauren began to suspect that this failure to act wasn't related to a lack of knowledge, but rather to self-doubt what the legendary Stanford psychologist Al Bandura has called "a lack of self-efficacy." Self-efficacy is a person's confidence in their ability to control their own behavior, motivation, and social circumstances. ... goal strivers are sometimes plagued by insecurity. In fact, a lack of self-efficacy can prevent us from setting goals in the first place.

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Research confirms the obvious: when we don't believe we have the capacity to change, we don't make as much progress changing.

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Too often, we assume that the obstacle to change in others is ignorance, and so we offer advice to mend that gap. But what if the problem isn’t ignorance but confidence—and our unsolicited wisdom isn’t making things better but worse?

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prompting goal seekers to offer advice led them to feel more motivated than when they were given the very same caliber of advice.

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being asked to give advice conveyed to people that more was expected of them, boosting their confidence."

O problema não é falta de conhecimento.

O problema é não acreditar que se consegue aplicar esse conhecimento com sucesso. Por isso, muitas intervenções eficazes não se centram em ensinar mais, mas em reforçar a crença na capacidade de mudar.

Acerca de ter um plano

O quarto capítulo de "The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" de Katy Milkman é dedicado ao esquecimento ("Forgetfulness").

Primeiro, algumas notas:

"our intentions are only loosely predictive of our behaviors, [Moi ici: Sim, podemos genuinamente esquecer-nos]

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forgetfulness isn't always a made-up excuse. It's a more serious and common culprit for follow-through failures than you might think. According to one recent study, the average adult forgets three things each day, ranging from pin numbers to chores to wedding anniversaries.

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One obvious way to prevent this kind of mistake is to create reminder systems. 

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Often when we make plans, we don't focus on what will trigger us to act. Instead, we focus on what we intend to do. [Moi ici: O equivalente a enunciar um objectivo mas não preparar um plano para o atingir. É muito comum em sistemas de gestão que audito. Há um objectivo, há um prazo e um responsável geral, mas falta o pormenor sobre o que fazer] 

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First, as he later explained to me, making such detailed plans requires some time and effort. And the more time and effort we put into thinking about something, the deeper it gets lodged in our memories. [Moi ici: Entregar/receber um plano detalhado, ou ajudar a construi-lo são duas coisas muito diferentes]

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needed to know one thing: Which of the many behavioral insights he'd learned about was most important to helping him achieve his goals?

Angela didn't hesitate before giving her answer - to her, it was blindingly obvious: cue-based plans. Forming these kinds of plans most effectively sets you up for success, she told him. It's the best insight behavioral science has to offer on this topic.

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 Angela pointed out that in addition to reducing forgetting and short-circuiting the need to think about what you'll do in the moment, planning forces you to break big goals into bite-size chunks. This turns out to be really important to making progress on ambitious projects

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when you have a big goal you hope to achieve, such as "earn a promotion in the next year," planning forces you to do the critical work of breaking it down. Planning for how to earn a promotion might lead you to recognize that you'll need to better communicate with your boss in weekly meetings, advocate for recognition of your work, and spend Tuesday and Thursday evenings studying to complete your online degree. Without this kind of planning, which forces you to do the critical work of understanding what achieving your goal actually entails, your goal will likely remain elusive."

Ou seja, simplesmente querer fazer algo (como terminar um trabalho) tem pouco impacte, enquanto formular um plano concreto com um estímulo (cue) quase triplica a taxa de sucesso. Planear a acção associando-a a um gatilho (hora, local, evento) aumenta muito a probabilidade de execução. 

O simples acto de pensar como, quando e onde executar um objectivo é, em si, um mecanismo de reforço da memória e do compromisso com a acção. Sem planeamento estruturado, os objectivos ambiciosos (como melhorar o desempenho de um processo ou atingir metas estratégicas) ficam vagos e inalcançáveis, mera divagação. Planear é transformar a ambição em acções específicas e realistas.

E recordo as discussões que tive com uma empresa ... 

Um parêntesis. Quando se trabalha como consultor directamente com uma empresa podemos sempre dizer "No and walk away", como refere Bent Flyvbjerg em "How Big Things Get Done". Contudo, quando somos subcontratados para trabalhar com uma empresa é muito mais difícil dizer "No and walk away" porque ao dizer não a um projecto estamos provavelmente a dizer não a futuros trabalhos com o contratante.

Essa empresa tinha uma grande dificuldade em aceitar boas-práticas se não encaixavam com o modelo mental das chefias. Uma das discussões era sobre não verem qualquer vantagem em elaborar planos de acção para atingir objectivos. A desculpa era: o dono da empresa está muito envolvido na empresa e, por isso as coisas fazem-se sem necessidade de plano.

O pior é quando o mundo muda e repetir o que dantes funcionava deixa de funcionar.

"Commitment devices"

O capítulo 3 de "The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" de Katy Milkman é dedicado à procrastinação.

O capítulo é particularmente interessante porque contraria a teoria económica e está desalinhado com um tema que os liberais tentam introduzir em Portugal. 

O que é melhor para as pessoas:

• receber o subsídio de férias só quando vão de férias ou diluído pelos 12 meses do ano?
• emprestar dinheiro ao estado sem juros e receber sob a forma de devolução de IRS ou pagar o IRS cobrado a menos?

A autora dá o exemplo de um banco nas Filipinas que criou uma conta para a qual as pessoas, que não faziam qualquer poupança no passado, descontavam voluntariamente todos os meses mas só podiam ter acesso ao dinheiro no fim do prazo.

"They [Moi ici: Os alunos de mestrado da autora] insist it's crazy for people to voluntarily lock away their money without an interest rate premium or sign up for class deadlines with penalties. People should never want to give up flexibility or freedom without being compensated for it! This isn't just a central tenet of economic theory or a cornerstone of government policy and marketing strategies the world over ...

by by opting into constraints—on when they could access their money, on how much they could procrastinate—they were making it harder to give in to future temptations and easier to reach their long-term goals. [Moi ici: 28% dos clientes do banco que receberam esta possibilidade passaram a poupar mensalmente e em valores superiores à média nacional]

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Robert Strotz's article on the topic turned out to be a blockbuster (well, if any academic article can ever be called blockbuster). It introduced the heretical idea to economists that rather than always preferring flexibility and freedom, sometimes people want just the opposite because they know it will help them avoid temptation. Strotz's disciples (including the future economics Nobel laureates Thomas Schelling and Richard Thaler) began exploring these strategies in greater detail and gave a name to them: "commitment devices."

Whenever you do something that reduces your own freedoms in the service of a greater goal, you're using a commitment device.

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The data are clear. Even if they do contradict a golden rule of economic theory, commitment devices can be something of a godsend. They help us change our behavior for the better by locking us into choices we make when we're clearheaded about what's good for us, not when we're hotheadedly reacting to an imminent temptation, and they keep us from indulging in the temptation to misbehave later on."

Por fim, o capítulo fala dos "cash commitment devices". Pessoas que se comprometem a pagar uma multa se não cumprirem uma promessa que fizeram a si próprias.

Não receber o subsídio de férias representa uma espécie de "commitment device" para quem estima a sua incapacidade de resistir às tentações de curto prazo.

Temptation bundling

 

"Doing the "right" thing is often unsatisfying in the short-term.

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Economists call this tendency to favor instantly gratifying temptations over larger long-term rewards "present bias," though its common name is "impulsivity," and it's unfortunately universal.

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"Oh no; they just put a drop of medicine on a lump of sugar." Oddly enough, research has shown that we rarely follow this wise approach and sweeten the deal when we set out to pursue our long-term goals. Instead, we tend to pursue behavior change without thinking of the discomfort we'll have to endure or attempting to alleviate it.

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In fact, in one study of the way people tackle change, more than two thirds of respondents told researchers that they typically focus on the benefits they expect to accrue in the long-run without regard for their short-term pain. Only 26 percent of those surveyed said they would try to make goal pursuit enjoyable in and of itself.

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Lots of research shows that we tend to be overconfident about how easy it is to be self-disciplined.

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Recognizing this, the psychologists Ayelet Fishbach and Kaitlin Woolley suspected that people could tackle tough goals more effectively if they stopped overestimating their willpower. They predicted that if people focused on making long-term goal pursuit more enjoyable in the short-term by adding the proverbial lump of sugar to their medicine, they'd be far more successful.

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Rather than believing we'll be able to "just do it" (as Nike implores us), we can make more progress if we recognize that we struggle to do what's distasteful in the moment and look for ways to make those activities sweeter.

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And it confirmed that temptation bundling can change behavior in a robust, lasting way.

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The moral of this research to me is that temptation bundling certainly works best if you can actually restrict an indulgence to whenever you're doing a task that requires an extra boost of motivation (such as making it possible to listen to audiobooks only at the gym, and not in your car or on the bus). But merely suggesting that people try temptation bundling is enough to produce benefits that last."

O que se entende por "temptation bundling"?

"emparelhar uma actividade agradável (uma "tentação") com uma tarefa útil mas menos atraente, de forma a aumentar a probabilidade de realização desta última.

Consiste em agrupar algo que se deseja fazer (por exemplo, ver a sua série preferida) com algo que se deve fazer (por exemplo, fazer exercício físico), permitindo-se a actividade agradável apenas durante a execução da tarefa produtiva.

Tira partido da psicologia da gratificação imediata para reforçar o autocontrolo ao longo do tempo. A recompensa (a tentação) torna a tarefa necessária mais apelativa, transformando-a num ciclo de hábito.

Trechos retirados de "The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" de Katy Milkman.

Recomeços e sucesso, ou não

"She learned that rather than perceiving time as a continuum, we tend to think about our lives in “episodes,” creating story arcs from the notable incidents, or chapters, in our lives.

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This research helped us develop the idea that the start of a new life chapter, no matter how small, might be able to give people the impression of a clean slate. These new chapters are moments when the labels we use to describe ourselves, who we are, and what we're living through shift, compelling us to shift with them."

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These statistics suggest that when we’re seeking to change, the disruptions to our lives triggered by physical transitions can be just as powerful as the fresh starts spurred by new beginnings on our calendars.

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Instead of getting a performance boost from a trade as struggling players had, top performers suffered from resets, which made their recent successes feel farther in the rearview mirror and forced them to rebuild their record from scratch.

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Not everyone benefits from a fresh start. When you’re on a roll, any disruption can be a setback. We see this at home and at work, and though the disruption itself might seem like no big deal, even trivial, the consequences can weigh you down. 

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that while fresh starts are helpful for kick-starting change, they can also be unwelcome disruptors of well-functioning routines. Anyone seeking to maintain good habits should beware."

Interessante... talvez explique porque poucos jogadores mantém o alto nível após uma transferência.

Trechos retirados de "The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" de Katy Milkman.