18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (15 page)

Obvious, right? We tend to do things we find pleasurable and avoid things we find painful. But we often forget the obvious as we try to push to get things done. Efficiency, it turns out, is the enemy of fun. And yet in the end, fun is so much more efficient than efficiency.

“Look,” someone complained to me about one of her colleagues, “he’s an adult. I tell him to do something, he should do it. I don’t care whether he wants to or not. It’s his job. It’s why he’s paid.”

But that’s not how things really work.

Everything I’ve seen confirms a simple rule: People do what they choose to do. And if something’s fun, they’ll choose to do it.

Marc Manza is the chief technology officer of Passlogix, a client of Bregman Partners. A few years ago, Marc had a problem. Passlogix’s software was conflicting with an older, unsupported version of Sun Microsystems software that some of their clients were still using. Marc tried to work with Sun to fix the problem, but Sun wasn’t interested; they told Marc to tell his clients to upgrade to the newer version of Sun software.

So Marc had his team work on a fix. But it was complicated, and two years later, at a cost Marc estimates in the tens of thousands of dollars, the problem remained unsolved.

Then one day Marc had an idea. He went to a local electronics store, bought a Nintendo Wii, and placed it in a central, visible place in the office. Then he made an announcement: The first person to solve this problem wins the Nintendo. And he added a rule: You have to work on the problem on your own time, not on company time.

It took two weeks.

Marc took a boring project working on a legacy system and made it fun. Cost to the company? Two hundred and fifty dollars.

Since then he’s given away iPods, Xbox 360s, PlayStation3s, and a netbook. Fun competitions that solve real problems are a great way to boost morale and keep people engaged, especially in somewhat depressing times. This is true whether we’re motivating other people or ourselves. Two rules:

Special projects that require creativity to crack are the most fun to attack. Like figuring out how to get the attention of a new prospect who won’t return calls. Or solving a product issue that consistently annoys customers. Or finding a new way to communicate with your manager or employee without relying on the dreaded performance review.

But mundane tasks can be made fun, too. Take the anxiety-producing cold call. What if you started a running list (with a prize for the monthly winner) of the most obnoxious responses you hear? That alone could turn angst into excitement.

Fun doesn’t require a competition. When I was waiting tables as a college student, I spiced up the job by serving each table in a different accent. It took all my focus to remember which accent went with which table. Silly? For sure. Fun? Much more so than simply taking an order.

Here’s the thing, though: You can’t fake fun. Which means you have to go into your workday with a sense of amusement. It’s a lens through which you view the world. We all know people who slip easily into laughter and make jokes even as they work hard at something, seemingly unburdened by the threat of failure. And when they do fail, they laugh and keep going. It’s contagious. Which is why it’s such a critical leadership quality.

Fun keeps us motivated in a way that eventually translates into performance. After one of his races, Richard called to tell me he came in 120th out of 200, a huge improvement
over previous races. “And they all had two legs,” he told me, laughing. “Wanna join me for the next one?”

Sounds like fun.

I
was on my cell talking with someone about something—I can’t remember who or what anymore—as I ushered my three children toward our minivan, parked across the street from our apartment building.

I held the phone in my right hand and several bags in my left as I struggled to keep the kids from running into the street. Daniel, my two-year-old, was holding on to my pant leg as Sophia and Isabelle—four and eight—saw the van across the street and started to run to it.

“Wait!” I screamed before they launched themselves off the sidewalk. They stopped just in time to avoid a car that sped by. My adrenaline shot up as I realized the close call. I should have gotten off the phone at that point—it’s obvious now—but I didn’t. I thought I had averted the disaster.

It’s amazing what it takes to change a person’s behavior.

I continued to talk on the phone as I led the kids across the street and into our car.

I got into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition, and put the car in reverse, twisting around to look behind me, still on the phone. “Get your seat belts on,” I whispered, trying not to interrupt my call as I slowly moved the car back.

That’s when the car’s sensor system began beeping, signaling there was something behind me.

I looked out the back window but didn’t see anything. So in my rush, still on the phone, gesturing to the kids to put on their seat belts and moving the car slowly in reverse, I ignored the signal. Even as the beeps got closer together.

Suddenly the car jolted and I heard a crash.

I slammed on the brakes and finally—because that’s what it took—got off the phone. I walked around to the back of the car and saw two fallen, mangled motorcycles.

I could have noticed them when I got in the car or seen them in the rearview picture that appears on my GPS screen or stopped when the beeps sounded.

But I was too distracted.

The thing that really freaks me out is that those motorcycles could have had riders on them. Or they could have been children playing.

I got off easy. No one was hurt. But thankfully, I was shaken.

Driving while talking on a cell phone is the equivalent of drunk driving. And texting is worse: People who text behind the wheel are twenty-three times more likely to get into an accident because, a recent study shows, a driver sending or receiving a text message spends 4.6 of every 6 seconds with his eyes off the road.

Those seconds of distraction—the glance at the phone, the almost imperceptible moment of inattention—are the difference between avoiding an accident and creating one.

Here’s what’s interesting: You already know this. We all do.

And yet we still do it.

In fact, we do all sorts of things we know are destructive in the long run. Like eating ice cream when we’re trying to lose weight. Or arguing to prove we’re right when it doesn’t matter. Or answering email while on a phone call.

So why don’t we stop? What’s so hard about not talking on a cell phone while driving? Or stopping an argument before it’s too late?

Amazingly, we think we can get away with it. Because—and I’m not excluding myself here—we lack imagination.

Sure
, we think,
other people get into accidents while on their cell phones. But it hasn’t happened to me yet. And given my experience of driving and calling without crashing, it’s hard to really imagine that it will.
So we keep on talking and driving.

Well, if lack of imagination is the problem, amplifying our imagination and experiencing it in the present could be the solution.

There’s an ongoing argument in the world of behavior change: What works better—reward or fear, carrot or stick, hopeful vision or burning platform? Some argue you need both at the same time.

My experience is that you need both but not at the same time. If you want to change behavior, start with fear, then
experience the reward. It’s the one-two punch. The jab and the follow-through.

Fear is a great catalyst. It’s the booster rocket, the initial push that moves us through the atmosphere of inertia.

I—and more than 3.5 million other people—watched a four-minute YouTube video dramatizing an accident caused by a teenage girl who was texting while driving. The video shows the gory details of the crash and its aftermath.

I watched the girl, blood covering her face, as she stared in anguish at her friends—whom she had killed—in the seats around her. I felt her pain. Her regret. Her devastation.

After seeing that video, I stopped using my cell phone in the car. Watching it had given me an experience of my potential future self. I could imagine—and even feel—what it might be like if it had been me driving that car.

What’s so useful about fear is that it’s a current experience of a future possibility. Even if what we fear is in the future, we feel the fear now. And since our decision making favors current experience, we’re willing to change our behavior to reduce the fear.

I have a friend who wants to lose weight and, in a moment of honesty, suggested that she’d (almost) like to have diabetes so she would be forced to eat more healthfully. Fear is a tremendous motivator.

But it doesn’t last. I hate to admit it, but within a few days of mangling the motorcycles, and a few days after watching the video, I was back to talking on my cell while driving.

Because fear is unsustainable. It’s exhausting and stressful and destructive over time. Its purpose is short-term change. For long-term change, the experience of fear needs to be followed by the experience of a better life.

That’s the second step. The reward. The fulfilled promise of a better present. The nourishment that keeps us going for the long-term.

When I realized that, I watched the video again (a nice booster shot of fear) right before a long drive with my family. Then I paid attention to how it felt to drive without distraction. I got into a groove. I settled in. I enjoyed the driving itself. I had a great conversation with Eleanor. It turned out to be the nicest drive I had experienced in a long time.

Start with fear. Then notice—pay close attention to—the positive impact of your choice.

If you want to lose weight, shut your eyes before taking the first bite of ice cream and imagine, for a brief second, what you would look like if you were twice your current size. Think about how you might get diabetes. Really visualize it. Exaggerate it even. That’s your stimulus. The spark plug that will start your engine of change.

And then after a few days, as you begin to feel healthier, more energetic, you can let go of that fear and hold on to the feeling of a looser belt.

In the middle of that argument—the one in which you insist on being right when it doesn’t matter—pause for just a moment to imagine people wanting to avoid future conversations with you. Picture them making an excuse and
walking away. Call to mind your performance review with their comments on it. Really see it in the moment. That fear will help you stop.

Then let go of those fear-inducing images and make sure to pay attention to the changing quality of your conversations, the pleasure of other people’s company, and your own reduced stress.

That—like the calm, cell-phone-free drive—is the reward that will sustain the change you’ve made.

I
was walking back to our apartment in Manhattan, the hood of my jacket pulled tight to keep the rain out, when I saw an older man with a walker struggling to descend the slippery stairs of his building. When he almost fell, I and several others went over to help.

There was an Access-A-Ride van (a Metropolitan Transit Authority vehicle for people with disabilities) waiting for him. The driver was inside, warm and dry, as he watched us straining to help his passenger cross the sidewalk in the pouring rain.

Then he opened the window and yelled over the sound of the rain coming down, “He might not be able to make it today.”

“Hold on,” we yelled (there were five of us now) as we helped the man move around the back of the van, “he can make it.”

Traffic on Eighty-fourth Street had stopped. We caught
the man from falling a few times, hoisted him back up, and finally got him to the van door, which the driver then opened from the inside to reveal a set of stairs. The man with the walker would never make it.

“What about your side door, the one with the electric lift?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” the driver answered. “Hold on.” He put his coat over his head, came out in the rain with the rest of us, and operated the lift.

Once the man with the walker was in safely, we’d all begun to move away when the driver opened the window one more time and yelled, “Thanks for your help.”

So here’s my question: Why would five strangers volunteer to help a man they don’t know in the pouring rain—and think about the electric lift themselves—while the paid driver sat inside and waited?

Perhaps the driver is simply a jerk? Perhaps. But I don’t think so. Once we suggested the lift, he didn’t resist or complain; he came outside and did it immediately. And he wasn’t obnoxious, either. When he thanked us for our help, he seemed sincere.

Maybe it’s because the driver is not permitted to leave the vehicle? I actually checked the MTA website to see if there was a policy against drivers’ assisting passengers. On the contrary, it states: “As long as the driver doesn’t lose sight of the vehicle and is not more than 100 feet away from it, the driver can assist you to and from the vehicle, help you up or down the curb or one step, and assist you in boarding the vehicle.”