Blog post #18: Old dog, new tricks

I recently had to get some documents notarized—and it was a small pain in the you know what! First, it’s not evident where exactly to go—if I’m out of milk for example I know exactly where to go. After a quick google search, I arrived at the FedEx store. The notary process itself seemed non-sensical and extraneous—the person took my id, scribbled down the name of my document on this ancient notebook, stamped my fingerprints in this said notebook, and promptly charged me $30. I honestly wouldn’t have minded paying the 30 bucks without having to go through that silly ordeal—afterall, if someone needed to go back and find an audit trail a year later, just finding and going through that notebook would be another pain in the you know what. Most of us take the notary process as a given—it's what makes a document official—but seriously there’s got to be a better way.  

Just tradition? Turns out the notary dates back to ancient Roman times—eg 500 AD (that’s quite a while back), where a public official know as a “notarius” would create documents of agreements and wills for safekeeping. The documents were wax sealed with engravings so that no one can tamper with them and that signified the document was official. This also got me thinking, how many other processes exist out of tradition and are a part of our daily lives? We do them out of habit and robotically follow a process when it’s inefficient and we’re better off with another course of action. And are all “bad routines” created equal?  

If I had to categorize (maybe a brief stint as a strategy consultant gave me a small affinity of wanting to put things into boxes), I think there are 2 main types of silly routines. In one case, we do something on autopilot and don’t realize it’s inefficient until we actually stop for a second and think it through. For example, my parents have been writing checks to pay off their utility bills for years and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future even though electronic payment online would save them time and money and is also better for the environment. They can save the time from writing the check and money from ordering checkbooks and paying for stamps. All of this would of course save paper and is good for the environment. Clearly eliminating checks from my parents’ lives cannot singlehandedly make a dent in the environment but if you multiply that by the millions of people who still write checks to pay their bills, then the difference can be significant. The second type, is what I’ll call the “too painful to fix” type of routines—we know it’s causing us harm in some way but we’re either too lazy, too scared, or just want to procrastinate the fix. Whatever situation you find yourself in, I think it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks and try to pivot your mind into a different way of thinking and acting.  

We all love a good “think outside the box” idea—and I think creativity is a muscle you can train, just working on your biceps or quadriceps or obliques at the gym. There are actually creativity exercises you can do for exactly that purpose—if you’re like me, much more of a logical vs a creative thinker, then I think these exercises are very helpful. Just to set expectations though, these creative exercise will not propel you the level of creative genius of a Da Vinci or Steve Jobs. It can however help you start seeing things in a new light, especially for the “autopilot” type of inefficient or bad habit.

Alternative use.  This exercise was developed by J.P. Guilford in 1967 (it is also known as the paperclip test). Basically, take an object you use frequently and brainstorm as many other uses for it as possible. For example, I use chopsticks everyday to eat—now I need to think about 20 other ways to use it....use it as a pole to reach things on the 2nd shelf in the kitchen (ugh short people problems), sword fight with a child, pin to secure my hair in place, swatter to keep bugs away, put cotton around it and pick out earwax and so on…. well you get the point. And the best part is that none of it has to be realistic but it’s a way to “stretch” your brain so you’re not always seeing things one way.  

Quantity over quality. I know in most instances in life, we’re told the opposite that it’s more about quality versus quantity but when it comes to creativity, it’s beneficial to actually put down as much of your ideas or original thinking as you can first, without regard to perfect them. One of them is the “idea machine” concept coined by author and investor James Altucher. The idea (pun intended) of this concept is to simply think of 10 ways to do something. The concept can be something you’re familiar with like 10 ways to double revenue for your business or something very “out there” like ten technologies that can help me read the mind of my pet. Either way, just start spitting out ideas like you’re a machine. The second quantity or quality exercise I'll recommend is the 30 circles exercise developed by Bob McKim of the Stanford Design Program (Of course—the overachievers at Stanford would be the ones to come up with it). In this exercise, you start with 30 blank circles and you fill in as many circles as you can in 3 minutes. I have to say, this one was probably the most intimidating to me—because it seems to require artistic aptitude—all the examples online involved pictures in the circles—eg 30 logos for a team, 30 emojis, 30 snowflake patterns, etc. Let’s just say, if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to draw a panda bear, I’d probably be dead. But afterall, the point of these exercises is to get outside the box, so what the heck, I’ll try it.  

In case you are like Drew Barrymore in 50 First dates and have short-term amnesia, you may have forgotten there is another type of bad routine that I talked about earlier—yes the type you know is causing you harm but you’re still doing it—whether it’s always spending too long to find something in your messy garage because you don’t want to spend a whole weekend to cleaning it out or continuing to indulge a toxic friend or family member because you’re too scared to have that “tough” conversation. I have to say, this one is very tricky—and I don’t have the perfect answer—I'll let the $10 fortune teller or tarot card reader on the streets of New York (likely other major cities too) tell you the “perfect” answer. I’m only here to offer up suggestions of what could help.  

Documentation. If a company had an underperforming employee, it cannot simply let him/her go. The process is actually a long way that involves several months of meticulous documentation—for example, said employee failed to show up at a client meeting on March 6, he mistakenly put the wrong numbers on 3 presentations on March 8, and he turned in a project past the deadline on March 12. The point of this exercise I’m assuming is to provide undebatable evidence of bad behavior (and probably to protect the company if it ends up getting sued). I think this practice though, is helpful not only to kick out an “underperforming” employee but an underperforming bad habit or routine. If you write down everytime you try to search something in your messy garage (eg 20 minutes to find the screwdriver, 15 minutes to find the leafblower, etc), after a month you will have a lot of irrefutable evidence of how much time you’ve wasted. Same goes for that toxic friendship you’re in—try documenting how much angst you feel everytime during and after you hang out with your friend. When isolated incidents cause us harm, we can more easily swat away the notion it’s causing us harm but when we confront a string of the same negative anxiety-inducing incidents all at once, it becomes harder to live in denial.   

Success is likely elusive at first try. Since this a bad habit you already have some recognition of, kicking it is not going to be like eating strawberry rhubarb pie. So actually, why not lower your expectations—like the classic quote, it’s a marathon not a sprint—you'll probably fail at it the first few times—and that’s perfectly ok. I, for example, have never succeeded in ending a bad relationship on the first try—and there was no debate in my mind it was bad for me...yet somehow either because of fear, anxiety, or denial—I chicken out or is easily dissuaded on the first go, second go, and sometimes more than that. So if you say to yourself, this is the weekend you’re finally going to clean out your garage, don’t be alarmed if you want to abandon ship by Saturday afternoon. Again, think marathon not sprint—and go ahead, cut yourself some slack. If you tell people that you ran a marathon, most will be just so impressed you did it—unless it’s one of those overachieving super athletes that do an entire marathon at a 9 minute mile average—and to heck with them. For us mere mortals, just finishing one is such an extraordinary accomplishment. I’d same the same of your ability to kick a bad habit—extraordinary accomplishment regardless of the time you took to get there.  

If teaching an old dog new tricks sounds like a lot of work, well it is! No one said this was supposed to be easy—but I believe in me...and I believe in YOU. May the force be with you!