Dear Crucial Skills,

I often find that I, as a consultant, am brought in as an expert, but as I attempt to guide clients toward a different way of thinking or problem-solving, they take it as a threat to how they currently do things. A power struggle ensues because they think my recommendations are an attempt to change them. Isn’t that what they hired me to do?

How can I get them to understand that my recommendations are meant to help, that we are heading toward the same goals, and that they hired me to help them fix something that isn’t working? How should I respond when someone asks for my advice then gets offended when I give suggestions?

Signed,
Trying to Help

 Dear Trying,

You’ve come to the right guy! After years of answering questions, I finally get someone asking me about consulting! Thank you, thank you.

In addition to the ideas I’ll share below, I encourage you to read the reader comments below my response. I know many of our 169,000+ subscribers are consultants (internal or external), so I hope they’ll share a boatload of wisdom as well.

So how can you increase the chance that your ultimate recommendations will be seen as helpful thoughts rather than annoying criticisms? Here are a few practices I use:

Contract up front for commitment from the real leaders. When you’re contracting for the work, be sure you’re reporting to a group that wants change. Often, at the front end of a project, I talk with a senior person who is motivated to lead change, but as things progress the work gets delegated to those with more parochial agendas. I’ve learned that I have more influence before I promise to take on a project. After that, you begin to get consumed within the system that everyone else gets stifled by. So, I take advantage of that “influence window” to contract with the real leaders of change for the amount of time and access I will need in order to accomplish the result they are asking of me. Then I hold them to it.

Clarify and document the mission. I’ve found that in longer-term projects you can easily get mission drift—especially in my work. Leaders say, “We want to change the culture.” With a charter a mile wide like “changing culture,” you’re bound to get people who criticize most anything you do—as it doesn’t match their image of what these vague “results” mean. I am very careful to ask leaders up front to clearly articulate, publish, and document the mission. What behaviors are you trying to change? Why do you want them to change? What results will that produce? How will we measure success? If I’m sloppy about clarifying, documenting, and socializing the results at the front end, it’s easy for people to take offense or disagree with what we ultimately produce.

Honor what’s working before talking about change. In Crucial Conversations, we teach a skill called contrasting. Essentially, we teach people to avoid giving unnecessary offense by helping others understand not just what you mean but also what you don’t mean. When someone like you or I comes in spouting off about change, it’s easy for people to feel like their important contributions are about to be lambasted. That’s not your intention. You aren’t trying to show disrespect for the thousand positive things that are working well. You’re trying to offer ideas for how to improve a dozen or so things that aren’t.

Be sure to explicitly acknowledge best practices that are working well as a way of contrasting to ensure you maintain a sense of mutual respect and mutual purpose with those who have created what you are criticizing. If you sincerely acknowledge what’s working, you make it easier for them to see that your motive is to help, not just to make yourself look like the only smart person in the room.

Build motivation by calibrating to their ability. This is a tricky one. You want to be sure you’re honest about what needs to change, but if your recommendations seem overwhelming, even well-intended leaders will lose motivation to consider them. You have to calibrate your recommendations to their ability to absorb them. Sometimes their rejection of your proposals is a reflection of your failure to present them in a hopeful way rather than an overwhelming concern that leads to more work.

Involve them in the journey. I left this one for last because it’s one I want you to remember. As I said in the previous suggestion, your job is not just to offer right-headed ideas, but to do so in a way that builds motivation to address them. The best way to do this is to involve your clients in the discovery process. If you do too much of the diagnosis with little or no involvement on their part, then you’ll be left to use verbal persuasion—PowerPoint presentations filled with sterling logic and compelling data—to make your case. And as we teach in Influencer, verbal persuasion is the least effective tool you can use. Direct experience is the best.

When VitalSmarts conducts assessments, we never do interviews without partnering with the leaders who will be responsible to implement findings. We know that having them hear key concerns firsthand affects them emotionally in a way PowerPoint never can. Be sure your consulting process builds motivation along the way and you’re less likely to be surprised by resistance at the end.

Best wishes,
Joseph

The Challenge
As the housing market flourished over the last thirty years, Gallery Furniture enjoyed years of profitable sales and growth. But with the burst of the housing bubble in late 2007, the furniture retailer took a hard hit.

“When the housing business fell through the roof, we saw a huge decrease in our customer base,” says Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, owner of Gallery Furniture. “In order to grow during the recession, we had to innovate or else we were going to evaporate.”

It was that need to innovate and take a larger share of the dwindling furniture market that caused McIngvale to go looking for a model to change behavior within his 150-person company.

“I could do as much blubbering, cajoling, screaming, and hollering as I wanted to try to get my team to change behavior, but I knew it wouldn’t get us where we needed to go,” says McIngvale. “I was looking for a process that would get my people to want to change their behavior and act in ways that give the customers what they’re looking for.”

The Training
A voracious reader, McIngvale skimmed a review of Influencer in the newspaper and was interested enough to pick up the book. After reading it, he thought, “These guys really get it.” It wasn’t long before he asked the experts at VitalSmarts to train his leadership team in Influencer Training. The group of twenty leaders spent the entire session focused on the challenges facing their business and implementing the Influencer principles into their goals.

After his management team was trained, McIngvale ensured that everyone in his company—from the furniture loaders to the truck drivers to the sales team—also got trained. Over the next year, 150 employees went through Influencer Training, and McIngvale occasionally invited outside vendors and key customers to attend sessions.

“We now use Influencer Training and the other VitalSmarts training courses as the main management tool for the whole business,” McIngvale reflects.

The Solution: Read our case study to learn how Gallery Furniture used the Influencer model to innovate the way they do business.

We want to help one deserving person change their life by giving them a seat in an upcoming Change Anything Training public workshop. The selected winner will also receive a $200 travel stipend to get them to the VitalSmarts public course nearest them (Total value: $895).

Enter to win our training giveaway by joining us on Facebook and telling us which behavior you would change if you were selected to attend training.

Find a Change Anything public workshop in your area.

  Dear Crucial Skills,

I’m wondering how to deal with the use of electronic devices in meetings, conversations, and other public forums. At home, my kids are continually annoying my husband and me with their use of so-called smart devices. At work, we don’t have clear guidelines about electronic interruptions and it’s the cause of some tension and discontent. What can we do to (1) set clear expectations and (2) keep ourselves from seeing every electronic invitation as just cause for interrupting a live conversation?

Electronically Interrupted

 Dear Interrupted,

Let’s start with a common example of the problem. You’re talking to Chris, one of your best friends, and her phone notifies her that she’s just received a text. You can tell Chris is torn between listening to you and checking her message. Trying to appear interested in the point you’re making, Chris craftily moves her phone so it’s now sitting at the top of her open purse. Chris then coughs into her hand—causing her to lean her head forward so she can catch a quick glimpse of the newly arrived message.

You can tell Chris is torn between responding to the message and talking to you, but you believe face-to-face conversations should be given priority so you continue with your point. But when you finish your idea, Chris responds by holding up her hand and signaling you to stop yacking. She then picks up her device and dashes off a response while you watch and wait. All of this is done with a flair that suggests Chris has just texted advice on how to complete heart surgery that would most certainly kill the patient should she not intervene, when in fact she’s just told her son to make himself a bologna sandwich. You find the whole experience annoying and mutter something to the effect of, “If Alexander Graham Bell could only see. . .”

Situation number two. You’re in a meeting when you feel your phone vibrate. You glance at the screen, notice the call is from home, and wonder what’s going on. There are eight people in the meeting, you’re not talking, and you don’t want to make a scene by exiting. So you gently pull back from the table, tuck your head into your chest, bring your phone to your ear, hit the redial button, and chat quietly with your spouse. He wants you to pick up the dry cleaning on your way home. You’re glad he caught you before you left work but can’t help but notice your boss giving you the evil eye. “Phone Czar!” you think to yourself. It’s not as if you missed anything important or interrupted anybody.

Or how about this? Your teenage son walks into the room with ear buds plugged into his head and you try to say something to him but he can’t hear you. When your son eventually responds, he more or less shouts at you. You tell him to turn down the volume or he’ll surely be deaf by age thirty. He retorts that he wouldn’t mind losing his hearing because then he “won’t have to listen to you complain.”

Variations of these electronic insults are manifest, myriad, and magnifying with each new invention. Why? Because as a society, we haven’t decided on the common courtesies and basic rules of electronic etiquette and we’re starting to drive each other nuts.

When you have the option to use a device to make your life more convenient—even if doing so might interfere ever so slightly with your face-to-face experience—you often take the digital path. After all, it’ll only take a few seconds and it’ll solve a problem before it grows out of hand. In contrast, when others interrupt a conversation by using a device for their convenience—well, that’s just plain rude.

We’re obviously not going to solve this problem easily or quickly. New forms of electronic disruptions are sprouting up faster than ever and with each new tool comes new violations of traditional social norms. The problem is very likely to continue for years. However, there are a few things you can and should do now.

First, create a “bug list”—an enumeration of the behaviors you find annoying or even offensive. Use this list to decide which issues warrant a conversation. You’ll let some problems slide because they’re not worth the discussion. You also won’t speak up to everyone since you don’t interact with certain offenders frequently enough to justify the conversation.

Once you have your list of problems, fight your burning desire to point fingers and act smugly. Don’t come up with a list of your ideas of what should and shouldn’t be done. You may have some very strong notions, but you don’t make the rules. Social norms are made by whole societies of people and consist of rough guidelines. They reflect current feelings and changing preferences, not scientific certainties. The guidelines you create need to be jointly developed and flexible.

So, instead of laying down your law, tentatively describe the problem. Ask others to share their view of the same concerns then move to a discussion of specific issues that are currently causing problems. Talk about the questionable actions and their consequences (often unintended). Establish basic principles such as “face-to-face interactions deserve priority” and “when genuine emergencies arise, excuse yourself from the conversation and move to a private location.”

Keep the tone of these conversations light and exploratory. Genuinely seek others’ point of view then jointly brainstorm solutions. Try out your new ideas and then make changes as necessary. In summary, go public, involve others, be flexible, and realize that new products are just around the corner so this discussion will continue for quite some time.

When it comes to encouraging yourself to stick with the rules, be prepared. You will be tempted to break your own code of conduct when doing so is convenient rather than socially sensitive. Motivate and enable your behavior with six sources of influence.

Source 1: Love What You Hate. Keep in mind the long-term consequences of maximizing your convenience at the expense of harming your relationships
Source 2: Do What You Can’t. Work on your crucial conversations skills. When others offend you, know what to say and how to say it.
Sources 3 and 4: Turn Accomplices Into Friends. Gain the support of others by continually going public with new challenges as they arise. As you discuss the issue, seek advice from a colleague or loved one who can give you feedback on how well you’re keeping your own rules.
Source 5: Invert the Economy. Reward yourself when you step up to the conversation and handle it well or when you take care to respect others over your electronic devices.
Source 6: Control Your Space. Use devices to solve the problem created by devices. For instance, a product was just announced at CES—the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow. When a parent enters a room and talks to her teenage son who is wearing ear buds, the device recognizes the parent’s voice, turns down the volume of the device, and amplifies the volume of the parent. How cool is that?

I hope this helps you think about the growing electronic onslaught and provides you with a starting point for helpful conversations and a reasonable change in behavior.

I’d love to hear your creative strategies for controlling your digital devices so they don’t control you. Share your ideas below.

Kerry

Join us in celebrating the launch of our newest training program, Change Anything Training—a one-day course that teaches individuals stuck in life- and career-limiting habits a proven method for driving rapid and sustainable behavior change. Learn more:

Find a Change Anything public workshop in your area.

Dear Crucial Skills,

I read about your career-limiting habits survey and immediately realized a career-limiting habit has held me back from a promotion I’ve wanted for several years. You could say I have two of them. First, I have the one you describe as “short-term focus.” I focus on urgent tasks and let some of the long-term priorities slide. Second, I sometimes get caught in the “too little too late” trap—I’ve procrastinated on a long-term priority, and now I take shortcuts or miss deadlines.

I want this year to be the year I finally meet my goal. Do you have any advice for overcoming my career-limiting habits so I can finally get the promotion I’ve been working so hard to earn?

Career-Limited

 Dear Career-Limited,

Congratulations on seeing yourself with such steely-eyed objectivity. Most of us have trouble recognizing our faults, but the career-limiting habits you’ve recognized put you in great company. They are among the most common career-limiting habits we see in workplaces. The good news is that you can overcome them.

I’ll suggest some ways to make progress on habits in general, and on yours in particular.

Escape the Willpower Trap. The most common mistake we make is to rely too much on willpower alone. Of course, willpower is important. If you aren’t determined and resolute in your desire to improve, then you won’t. However, while willpower may be the spark to get you started, it won’t be enough to carry you through the dog days of change.

The problem is that your status quo, your career-limiting habit, is held in place by several of the six sources of influence, and you may not even see them. Here are a few that might keep you working on short-term tasks instead of focusing on long-term priorities:

Source 1: Love What You Hate. It’s personally satisfying to take a job to its completion. This is more possible with short-term tasks than with long-term priorities.
Source 2: Do What You Can’t. It’s difficult to say “no” to some short-term tasks. You may need to master this new skill.
Sources 3 and 4: Turn Accomplices Into Friends. Your manager and others probably rely on you because you deliver on short-term tasks. They may push you to keep your short-term focus. Others may also be more willing to help on short-term tasks because the commitment is smaller.
Source 5: Invert the Economy. The rewards for completing short-term tasks are immediate; the punishments for missing long-term priorities are in the future.
Source 6: Control Your Space. Technology is constantly reminding you of your short-term tasks. For example, most instant messages, e-mails, and phone calls focus on short-term projects.

Instead of just trying harder, take control of these sources of influence. Get them pulling for you, instead of against you.

Be the scientist and the subject. Setbacks are as predictable as death and taxes. You will experience them. Your success will be determined by how you respond to them. People who are caught in the Willpower Trap respond by blaming themselves—their character, their steadfastness, and their ability to “stick to it.”

Successful changers respond as scientists would—with curiosity instead of blame. Instead of blaming themselves, they treat their setbacks as data—they use them to examine and improve their plan. We call it “turning bad days into good data.”

Here’s how you can use your setbacks as good data. When you realize you’ve slipped back into your habit, stop and ask yourself when, where, and how it happened. Find the crucial moment—the circumstances—that led to your slip up. One of my crucial moments is when I tell myself a clever story—a story that lets me off the hook for acting on my bad habit. Once you find these crucial moments, decide how to handle them. I often need to change my clever story to one that’s less clever, but more true.

Use all six sources of influence. We’ve collected data on the tactics people use to overcome career-limiting habits. The biggest mistake people make is to rely on willpower alone or in combination with just one or two other tactics. People who combined tactics from four or more of the six sources of influence were up to ten times more likely to get rid of bad habits and improve their chances of advancement.

Here are a few tactics the people we surveyed use to help them overcome career-limiting habits:

Source 1: Love What You Hate. Focus on the positive things that could happen if you change your bad habit, or focus on the bad things that could happen if you don’t change.
Source 2: Do What You Can’t. Skill up by reading books, articles, searching the internet, etc., then practice these better skills until they become your new habits.
Sources 3 and 4: Turn Accomplices into Friends. Get advice or coaching from someone you respect, or ask a coworker, manager, or family member to hold you accountable for changing.
Source 5: Invert the Economy. Reward yourself with a pat on the back or an actual incentive.
Source 6: Control Your Space. Rearrange your desk, computer, or workplace in a way that helps you stick to the change, or make changes to other aspects of your physical space—move chairs, put up reminders, remove distractions or temptations, etc.

The key is to try several tactics in combination and to track your success. Use setbacks as data, the way a scientist would. Seek out the crucial moments—the times, places, and circumstances when your plan needs to be reinforced—and focus your tactics on those moments.

David

  Dear Crucial Skills,

Mine is a story of conflicting priorities and unmade decisions. My bad habits at home support my bad habits at work, and these habits are all supported by behavior, social influences, and environmental infrastructure that need to change. When I try to pick one thing to work on, I find several others that undermine my efforts.

For example, we’re trying to remodel our kitchen but we ran out of money so we can’t hire someone to finish it. We eat out too often because our kitchen is torn apart and our house is always cluttered, but we don’t have time to exercise or clean because we’re too busy with work and school activities. We have very few friends because we don’t want to invite people to our house and we’re too busy juggling everything else. How do I know where to start when it seems that everything I’d like to change is interdependent or influenced by all the other things I’d like to change?

Where to Start

 Dear Where to Start,

I understand your concern. It reminds me of that old saying that tells us, “life comes at you fast.” Each little concern or unfinished bit of life can have a ripple effect, not only on our own life, but also on the lives of loved ones and friends. When we stop long enough to assess our circumstances, we conclude—as you did—that “mine is a story of conflicting priorities and unmade decisions.”

I’d like to talk to you like I’m your best friend. This means I care about you and I want to help you solve these issues. I’m going to be as honest as I can but I know I can’t make these changes for you. If I were your best friend, I’d be able to ask questions that would help us understand the real issues. Without being able to ask those questions I may miss the mark a bit, and I hope you and the tens of thousands of onlookers (no pressure) will cut me some slack.

I’ll start with a word you used in the first sentence of your question: “story.” We’ve been teaching people to master their clever stories for years. A clever story is what we tell ourselves to justify our own behaviors. So, as your best friend, I’m asking what stories you’re telling yourself that make it difficult for you to be as effective as you want to be? Here are some possible stories I see.

Problem: Your kitchen is in the middle of an unfinished remodel.
Story: You eat out too often because of the remodel.
Option: There are many ways to cook at home with only a fridge and a microwave. You and your family need to make the decision to eat at home.

Problem: You think your house is messy.
Story: You are too busy or tired to clean.
Option: For years, I tried to teach my children about the magic of five minutes. At the end of the day, after you’ve readied yourself for bed, take five minutes to straighten the bathroom, bedroom, and closet. Before you go to work, clean up the little mess you made getting ready. After any meal, clean up the mess and wash the dishes. In your case, you may want to set the foundation by having a magic half-day or full-day. Take a Saturday, remind everyone of the benefits of having a clean house, and then clean up. Creating a plan for regular cleaning takes away a lot of other problems.

Problem: You don’t have enough friends.
Story: You don’t invite people to your house because of the remodel and because you’re too busy juggling work and school activities.
Option: Invite others to do things outside of the house. There are many inexpensive activities you can do outside such as hikes, picnics, and so forth. You are certainly correct that a key step to making friends is initiating invitations, but you needn’t stop inviting people because of your house or your schedule.

Now remember, this advice is coming from your distant best friend. I may be missing the mark. I may cause you to counter every suggestion with a “yeah, but.” However, remember that clever stories are called clever because they are tricky. They are hard to see, they can morph quickly and they can call in more of their clever clan in nanoseconds. When we fall short of the results we want, or when we start feeling down and hopeless, we need to assess what we honestly have and what we really want.

You might need a friend to help you do this. What you don’t want at times of assessment and planning are accomplices. Remember, a friend is someone who helps us; an accomplice is someone who helps us get and/or stay in trouble. Accomplices help us spin clever stories; friends help us see our stories and find options out of them.

It’s clear from your question that you have an understanding of the six sources of influence. I agree that you have many sources of influence affecting your behaviors, and thus the results you are getting in your life. You do have—as we all have—some bad behaviors and unmade decisions, but you don’t have to stay there. I advise you to find the vital behaviors that will help you get what you really want and need. For example, your vital behaviors might include:
 
1. Cleaning the house every Saturday morning.
2. Practicing the magic five minutes at bedtime, before work, and after each meal.
3. Inviting a friend for an affordable outing each Friday night.

After you identify your vital behaviors, ask yourself, “How can I marshal enough influence to make sure I do these behaviors?” Then, ask the following questions to identify tactics in each of the six sources:

Source 1: Love What You Hate — Can you articulate the positive benefits you would get from changing your behavior?
Source 2: Do What You Can’t — Can you improve your organizing and cleaning skills? Can you learn about inexpensive activities to do with friends?
Sources 3 and 4: Turn Accomplices into Friends — Can you get buy-in from the people you live with? Can you ask a friend to hold you accountable to your clever stories or to help you analyze and adjust when your plan isn’t working?
Source 5: Invert the Economy — Can you identify an affordable reward that would be meaningful to you if you stick to your plan for a month? Can you set up a scorecard and report your performance to a coach or mentor?
Source 6: Control Your Space — Can you put up cues and reminders? In short, what can you do to change your surroundings and get the numbers in your favor?

Notice that I have said nothing about finishing the kitchen. Of course, it would be wonderful to complete this project, but it need not stand in the way of achieving many of the goals that are important to you. Often, we hold back in achieving our goals because we tell ourselves a clever story that justifies all the reasons we simply can’t succeed. I believe your kitchen remodel has become your Achilles heel to accomplishing other achievable goals like cleanliness and friendship. It’s time to change your story and start isolating one behavior challenge from the next.

As a friend, I’ve tried to give you a starting point. Begin by looking at the stories that affect your decisions. From that process, options will emerge. Then identify the vital behaviors that will get you to your desired goals, and marshal enough influence that you will be motivated and enabled to do the behaviors. Start small and then aim bigger. In that way, we are more likely to overwhelm our problems rather than simply be overwhelmed.

Best wishes,

Al

This letter was received in response to a question Kerry Patterson answered in the June 22, 2011 Crucial Skills Newsletter titled, “How to Eliminate Sarcasm.”

Dear Kerry,

Your response to my question was very useful in helping me find the next steps I needed to take.

I shared your article with my wife and family and explained to them that I wanted to change. They recognized the behavior straight away and agreed these were exactly the type of responses they could expect from me—sometimes humorous but often hurtful sarcasm.

I invited them to continue calling me on that behavior each and every time they saw it. They entered their role with unexpected enthusiasm, and I ate from a humble pie dish as I started to learn new habits.

Having gotten buy-in from my most severe critics, I took the next step. I explained to my work colleagues that I exhibited this behavior, but I wanted to change and needed their help to do so. After some initial doubt as to my sincerity, they too entered into the spirit and have been open in their feedback.

Your advice in bringing everyone into the picture was instrumental in helping me along this path. I occasionally lapse into sarcastic behavior, but I have a group of folks around me more than willing to continue to help me. I sometimes forget, but others do not and I get that direct, non-punishing feedback I asked them to provide.

Chagrinned

Editor’s Note: If you would like to share similar feedback about how the authors’ advice has helped you, please e-mail us at editor@vitalsmarts.com.

Dear Crucial Skills,

I recently realized we aren’t out of debt because we really don’t want to pay all the money to make it happen! We have been on a debt payoff plan for years but never follow through because it’s so painful to pay our bills when it seems like we are just giving money away. It’s just too hard to catch up when we don’t even know what the balance is for because it has accumulated over several years. As a result, we lose steam after a few months, spend money on a nice night out or an evening entertaining friends, and get off track.

Can you share some tips to help us address our personal motivation and learn to “Love What We Hate”? Do you have any tips for motivating ourselves to get out of debt by turning it into a game we can win and enjoy playing?

Sincerely,
Wanting Off the Hamster Wheel

 Dear Hamster,

What a frustrating and sad situation. Not only are you struggling financially, you are beating yourself up for your setbacks and failures. You’re blaming your character when you should blame your plan.

In our book Change Anything we describe your situation as “The Willpower Trap.” It happens when you over-rely on your willpower instead of employing all six sources of influence. Your willpower lets you down, you blame yourself, and you become discouraged and even less successful.

The way out of this trap is to involve all six sources of influence, not just those related to personal motivation. You specifically ask for ways to address your personal motivation—and I’ll get there—but that’s not where I’d like to start. Instead, I’ll begin with structural ability.

Structural Ability. If “a nice night out or an evening entertaining friends” is enough to throw you over the edge, then you’re living too close to the edge. I recommend you take a few steps back by lowering your fixed expenses. I know these are difficult steps to take, but they will do wonders to lower the pressure you’re feeling today.

Find ways to reduce regular monthly payments

• Reduce your rent or mortgage. Consider renting out a room in your house, moving to a smaller apartment, or moving in with a friend or relative.
• Reduce your transportation costs. Consider selling a car or trading in your current car for a less expensive car. Downsizing a car will save more than your car payments. It will reduce insurance, gas, and repairs.
• Cancel non-critical services. Reduce monthly payments by cancelling non-critical services like cable TV, cell phone data plans, and magazine or newspaper subscriptions.
• Sell unnecessary assets. Sell assets like boats, power toys, vacation homes, etc.

Make impulse buying more difficult

• Cut up or cancel credit cards.
• Make tempting locations “out of bounds.” For example, stop going to particular stores or malls, stop visiting eBay and other online retailers.
• Never shop without an actual shopping list and never buy items that aren’t on the list.

Keep score

• Keep a visible scorecard or chart that shows your progress—and update it every day or every week.

Add another paycheck

• Consider taking a second job. An evening or weekend job that brings in an extra $100 a week might give you that extra margin you need.

Personal Motivation. It sounds as if your motivation wanes when you think to the past—especially when you can’t remember where your money went in the first place. Motivation works better when you focus on the future—on where you want to get. Here are a few ideas:

Visit your default and desired futures

• Select a very specific debt-reduction target. Make it as detailed as possible. For example: pay off my highest-rate credit card, pay off my car, or pay off my student loan. Then dedicate your savings to that goal alone.
• Select a very specific purchase that your debt-reduction target will make possible. Don’t make this an “optional expense” like a vacation. Instead, make it mandatory, like dental work, tires, or a replacement car. This target will be your North Star, a motivator and a guide when your mood is dark.
• Think deeply about what will happen if you don’t make your savings goal—if you can’t get your dental care or new tires, or if you can’t afford medical care for your loved ones.

Create a personal mission statement

• Write down your saving and spending plan and note why it is important to you. Have every family member sign it, then keep copies you can see and read when you feel tempted to overspend.

Make it a game

I like to build four elements into a savings game: a reasonable challenge, clear rules, social interaction, and immediate feedback. Below is an example:

• Set a weekly goal. Perhaps you could decide on a set figure to pay toward a credit card.
• Establish clear rules. Maybe establish different rules each week. For example, “This week our payment has to come from new money one of us has earned. Next week it has to come from saved money, and it has to come from our food budget.”
• Use cooperation or competition. For example, “This week, we’ll cooperate to jointly achieve our goal. Next week, we’ll compete to see who can reach their part of the goal first.”
• Give feedback and fabulous prizes. Make a big chart that shows your progress. Create magnificent, but free, prizes like paper crowns and towel capes for the Sultan of Savings. Celebrate your very real achievements by writing notes to each other and putting them into a scrapbook.

These are a few ideas to try. None of them are magic and none are tailored to you and your unique situation. In addition, they only deal with two of the six sources of influence. I encourage you to select, modify, or invent your own tactics. Make sure you include actions within each of the six sources of influence and make them big, high-leverage actions.

Best wishes,
David