Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

There are things in life that we want to stop doing.  Perhaps it is cutting out dessert.  Or smoking.  Or any one of the countless other bad habits that tend to creep up on us in life.

We strive so often to be efficient.   A couple of articles I stumbled upon argue that inefficiency can be our savior, when it comes to kicking bad habits.  This comes from James Clear.

If you want to make it easier to break a bad habit, then you need to increase the number steps required to perform that habit.

Remember my habit of eating a cookie each time I walk into the kitchen? Well, if I put those cookies into a tupperware and place them in the pantry, then it turns out that I am much less likely to eat them. The simple act of taking them out of my sight makes them easier to deny. In fact, I don’t even think about them unless I see them. Out of sight, out of mind.

The overall goal here is to increase the number of steps required to perform your bad habits. Taking things out of plain sight is one way to do this. The pantry door seems like a pretty insignificant barrier between myself and a cookie, but it turns out to be enough to kick the habit. Any barriers that you can put between you and your bad habits will make it easier for you stay on track.

Some of you may be thinking...sure.  I'd just open the drawer and open the Tupperware. But Google recently conducted an experiment (Freakonomics) that backs up this theory. They give their employees free grub, including junk food.  Management found that some employees were hitting the M & Ms a bit hard during the day.  

What if the company kept the chocolates hidden in opaque containers but prominently displayed dried figs, pistachios and other healthful snacks in glass jars? The results: In the New York office alone, employees consumed 3.1 million fewer calories from M&Ms over seven weeks. That’s a decrease of nine vending machine-size packages of M&Ms for each of the office’s 2,000 employees.

Hmmm.  I urge you to read these two articles.  And think about the following:

1. What bad habits are you trying to kick?  What organizational bad habits is your credit union trying to kick?  Can you tweak your environment to push people in the right direction?
2. This stuff has to work the other way, as well.  Google made eating figs easier by putting them in glass jars.  Can you encourage good behavior at your credit union by making it easier? By removing barriers? 

Have a great weekend, guys.  

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Sometimes things happen, and you realize how fast time can move.  Kate and Briggs had their first day of pre-school on Wednesday.  That is impossible.  My babies cannot be that old.

The quest for 2 college scholarships begins here!