18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (16 page)

So why didn’t the driver help? Part of the answer is probably that for him, an old man struggling with a walker isn’t a onetime thing, it’s every day, every stop, and the sight doesn’t compel him to act.

But that answer isn’t good enough. After all, it’s his job to help. That’s when it suddenly hit me: The reason the driver didn’t help might be precisely because he was paid to.

Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University, and James Heyman, a professor at the University of St. Thomas, explored this idea. They set up a computer with a circle on the left side of the screen and a square on the right side, and asked participants to use the mouse to drag the circle into the square. Once they did, a new circle appeared on the left. The task was to drag as many circles as they could within five minutes.

Some participants received $5, some 50 cents, and some were asked to do it as a favor. How hard did each group work? The $5 group dragged, on average, 159 circles. The 50-cent group dragged 101 circles. And the group that was paid nothing but asked to do it as a favor? They dragged 168 circles.

Another example: The AARP asked some lawyers if they would reduce their fees to $30 an hour to help needy retirees. The lawyers’ answer was no. Then AARP had a counterintuitive brainstorm: They asked the lawyers if they would do it for free. The answer was overwhelmingly yes.

Because when we consider whether to do something,
we subconsciously ask ourselves a simple question:
Am I the kind of person who…?
And money changes the question. When the lawyers were offered $30 an hour their question was,
Am I the kind of person who works for $30 an hour?
The answer was clearly no. But when they were asked to do it as a favor? Their new question was,
Am I the kind of person who helps people in need?
And then their answer was yes.

So what does this mean? Should we stop working for money? That wouldn’t be feasible for most people. No, we need to get paid a fair amount, so we don’t say to ourselves, “I’m not getting paid enough to…”

Then we need to tap into our deeper motivation. Ask ourselves: Why are we doing this work? What moves us about it? What gives us the satisfaction of a job well done? What makes us feel good about ourselves?

The same holds true for motivating others. People tend to think of themselves as stories. When you interact with someone, you’re playing a role in her story. And whatever you do, or whatever she does, or whatever you want her to do, needs to fit into that story in some satisfying way.

When you want something from someone, ask yourself what story that person is trying to tell about herself or himself, and then make sure your role and actions are enhancing that story in the right way.

We can stoke another person’s internal motivation, not with more money, but by understanding, and supporting, his or her story. “Hey,” the driver’s boss could say, “I know
you don’t
have
to get out of the van to help people, but the fact that you do—and in the rain—that’s a great thing. And it tells me something about you. And I appreciate it and I know that man with the walker does, too.” Which reinforces the driver’s self-concept—his story—that he’s the kind of guy who gets out, in the rain, to help a passenger in need.

Ultimately, someone else’s internal motivation is, well, an internal issue. But there are things we can do that will either discourage or augment a person’s internal drive. And sometimes it’s as simple as what we notice.

And what’s true about someone else is true about you. What’s your story about yourself? How would you finish the sentence “I’m the kind of person who…”? And how does that story support—or detract from—what it is you want to accomplish?

It’s not lost on me that I, too, have a story about myself—I’m the kind of guy who stops on a rainy day to help an old, disabled man to his van—and that it makes me feel good to tell you about it. That will make it more likely that I’ll do it again in the future.

As we left the scene, I looked at the drivers of the cars who waited so patiently and waved, mouthing the words
thank you
as they passed. Every single one of them smiled back. Wow. New York City drivers smiling after being stuck in traffic for ten minutes? That’s right.

Yeah,
they were thinking behind their smiles,
I’m the kind of driver who waits patiently while people less fortunate than me struggle
.

W
hile visiting her parents in North Carolina, Eleanor and I escaped for a few hours to go mountain biking in Panthertown Valley. Several times during our ride, we stopped to admire the incredible views and warm our faces in the sun.
The perfect day,
we thought.

As we coasted down the last few feet to the parking lot, we had to squeeze through the space between a tree and a short but wide metal post. Eleanor made her way first, leaned on the post for balance, and then glided down toward the car. My turn. I reached out for the post and paused, watching Eleanor.

Suddenly I felt stabbing pain everywhere. Little blades piercing my body. All over my arms and legs, on my back, through my clothing. It was a second or two before I heard the buzzing, felt the brushing, and realized what was happening. By then it was too late. Hornets. A swarm of them. The post I was holding was hollow, and inside was
their nest. Eleanor must have rustled them up when she passed.

I sprang off my bike and ran, flailing, thrashing about, slapping myself until it seemed like the hornets had gone. I was covered in stings, about a dozen of them.

Then the dreaded question: Was I allergic? I hadn’t been stung since I was a boy, when I’d had a mild reaction. What would it be like now, especially with so many stings? Would my throat swell up? Would I stop breathing?

The nearest pharmacy was fifteen minutes away. The nearest hospital twenty-five. We threw the bikes onto the car and drove off. The stings were red and swelling. I sensed a lump in my throat. It was hard to take a deep breath. Was my fear getting the better of me? Or was I going into anaphylactic shock? Eleanor drove faster.

The mind is an amazing tool. We can use it to think through complex problems and intuit subtle emotions. We can dream up dazzling ideas and make them happen.

But occasionally, our minds just take over. We imagine the worst, feeding our fear with fantasies and, sometimes, creating a future that fulfills our nightmares.

Charles, a senior leader, was convinced he was being driven out of his company. When he wasn’t invited to a meeting, was left off an email list, or was told his work could be improved, he saw it as proof of a plot to discredit him.

Charles spoke with his boss, the CEO, but she didn’t see it. You’re doing a good job, she told him, I value and respect you. But it didn’t help.

When he was left out of another meeting, one to which his boss was invited, he took it as evidence that she was sidelining him, too. Now it was clear to him that everyone—his colleagues, his own direct reports, even his boss—was trying to push him out.

“Your boss doesn’t have to try to push you out,” I reasoned with him. “She’s the CEO. She could just fire you if she wanted.” Of course, that didn’t help, either.

His boss asked him to meet with her, planning to tell him he was achieving his goals and doing well. But Charles vented for twenty minutes about how everything he did got twisted, subverted, and manipulated.

The CEO left the meeting thinking there was no solution except to fire him.

Charles didn’t simply confirm his fears, he manifested them. His mind envisioned a world and then created it. He isn’t paranoid or schizophrenic or crazy. He’s just human.

We do this all the time. We think someone is angry with us, so we respond aggressively to a gesture and they become angry with us. See? We were right all along. We think a customer isn’t going to give us business, so we don’t pursue them, and they don’t renew our contract. We knew it! Our neglect was justified.

What can we do about it?

As Einstein said, we can’t solve a problem by using the same thinking that created it. In this case we can’t solve the problem using any thinking at all. Because thinking is the problem. And sometimes it’s virtually impossible to
change our thinking. Better just to stop thinking altogether. But what should we do instead?

Pretend. Act
as if
.

When the CEO called Charles into her office, he should have listened, thanked her, and, defying everything he thought was happening to him, acted
as if
he were a valued member of the team. Then, the next time he wasn’t invited to a meeting, he should have asked to be invited, saying he’d like to help with the project at hand. Because that’s what a valued member of the team would do.

What should you do with someone you think is angry at you? Ask them about it. If they say they’re not angry, then act
as if
they’re telling the truth. Respond generously to anything they do. Pretend you believe they meant well.

An unresponsive customer? If they say they want to meet with you but they’re just busy, then choose to believe them. Keep calling.

Will you be living in a fantasy world? Maybe. But you might already be living in one. Why not choose the fantasy that works for you instead of against you?

The mind is so hard to control that sometimes, when it runs off in rampant fear or anger or frustration, you shouldn’t try. Just accept that it might be playing tricks on you and invent a work-around.

As the hornet stings turned into red blotches and welts, I wasn’t controlling my fear that I was going into shock. The harder I tried, the worse I made it.

So I gave up. Instead of focusing on the possibility that I
might be allergic, I reminded myself that I had been stung before with only a mild reaction.
Sure
, my mind responded,
but you’ve never been stung this many times at once.
I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and decided there was no difference.

And then, knowing it’s impossible to
not
think about something, I distracted myself by talking to Eleanor about a dinner we were planning for that night. Crazy as this sounds, I simply acted
as if
there were no danger from the stings.

We continued to drive to the pharmacy—it would have been reckless not to. But by the time we arrived, my mind had relaxed, my breathing had improved, the lump in my throat was gone, and the adrenaline had receded. It was almost as if I had not been stung at all.

N
ate started working for a large consulting firm after many years as an independent consultant. He called me for some advice shortly after joining the firm.

“I’m wasting a tremendous amount of time,” he complained to me. “I’m in meetings all day. The only way I can get any real work done is by coming in super-early and staying super-late.”

Nate had gone from an organization of one to an organization of several thousand and was drowning in the time suck of collaboration. He is not alone.

I surveyed the top 400 leaders of a 120,000-person company and found that close to 95 percent of them—that’s 380 out of 400—pointed to three things that wasted their time the most: unnecessary meetings, unimportant emails, and protracted PowerPoints.

Working with people takes time. And different people have different priorities. So someone may need your
perspective on an issue that’s important to him but not to you. Still, if he’s a colleague, it’s important to help. And often, we want to help.