Switch – Chapter 1, Anyone for Radishes?
In the first chapter of “Switch, How to Change When Change is Hard,” by Chip & Dan Heath, is a story told about researchers who brought in participants for a study. They had dishes of chocolates and dishes of radishes. Group one was to eat chocolates and no radishes. Group two was to eat radishes and no chocolates. They then asked each group to attempt to complete a series of puzzles that were unsolvable. The chocolate eaters attempted the task for 19 minutes before giving up. The radish eaters gave up after only 8 minutes.
Hypothesis from the study: Self-control is an exhaustible resource. It took self-control to not eat the chocolates!!
What are the possible implications for us? Perhaps we will choose to be careful of who and how we label as “lazy.” And it affirms that we must practice self-care (self-ful) so that we do not experience burnout. It also means that to be the most productive employee, we must not work all day, non-stop. We must have breaks. We must have time when we do not have to practice self-control.
Because self-control is an exhaustible resource, we cannot perform at our best when we are spending our energy on not eating the chocolates (i.e., completing work assignments). Be aware of when you are fatigued, give yourself a break, and you will be a better employee, employer, spouse, parent, friend.
Please share your thoughts or opinions, I will be blogging on chapter 2 soon!
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I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on this Jeff. This is the first time I have thought about burnout as a consequence of exercising self-control for too long, without breaks. Thinking of PCM and how most organizations are accustomed to operating helps put individual levels of self-control into perspective. However, it isn´t easy for most people to view things so objectively, which puts people with a different threshold of self-control under significant pressure at times. So, being self-ful and giving oneself permission to take a break and recharge is key and, consequently, difficult for me to do.
So true, Aaron. I think if we were better at dividing our tasks up into sections, working on one section at a time, not multi-tasking, and learning when to say something is done instead of insisting on perfection, we’d have less burnout and more productivity. We jump whenever a phone call, email or text message appears and we feel we have to answer it immediately lest the other person think less of us. Time and people management skills are something we have lost in this fast-paced society.
As someone who is recovering right now from burnout, this is a fascinating concept! And I do like radishes ….