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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.

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  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:

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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

Dear Crucial Skills,

My job in sales means that prospects and customers call me all the time and want quick responses. As a result, I become very reactive—responding to urgent problems. Sometimes this short-term focus comes at the expense of long-term priorities, such as building and developing large accounts. How can I learn to be proactive instead of reactive?

Reacting

Dear Reacting,

Great question! I’d have replied sooner, but I was responding to short-term priorities and urgent problems. Know what I mean? I think we all have this career-limiting habit to some extent, and it’s a perfect place to apply our Change Anything approach.

I’ll use myself as an example: I know I need to be far-sighted and proactive, I want to be far sighted and proactive, and yet I find myself stuck in a short-term and reactive pattern. I sail along down my comfortable, reactive groove responding to e-mails and answering calls until I’m blindsided by an important milestone I somehow missed. Then I beat myself up for not having the willpower to stay focused on what’s truly important. I get caught in the Willpower Trap.

I blame my failures on my willpower—my character. I blame myself for being a weak person. But at the Change Anything Labs, we’ve discovered what you and I are facing isn’t a willpower problem; it’s a math problem. It turns out we are surrounded by influences that we don’t even see. We are blind and outnumbered. Our world is perfectly organized to perpetuate our status quo behaviors, and we don’t even realize it.

Avoid the Willpower Trap. If I want to become more far-sighted and proactive, I’ll need to recognize the sources of influence that keep me in my short-term, reactive track and pull them over to my side. Here are a few ideas:

• Personal Motivation. I realized I feel a comfortable sense of accomplishment when I respond to people’s urgent requests, but don’t even think about my long-term projects until I’ve missed them. To fix this, I’ve placed a sticky note on the bottom of my computer screen that lists the four most important long-term projects I need to accomplish. It captures my attention each day and helps keep my top priorities in front of me as I respond to new requests from people by e-mail or phone—mostly short-term urgent requests. This simple reminder motivates me to focus on my long-term projects as well as finishing my rewarding short-term projects.
• Personal Ability. I’ve learned a script for responding to these day-to-day “urgent” requests. I say something like, “I’ve got your request. I will need about 24 hours to dig into it. I’ll get back to you by end-of-day tomorrow to let you know when it will be done.” This gives me time to understand it, prioritize it against my other tasks, and figure out how to fit it in.
• Social Motivation & Ability. I’ve learned to delegate a lot of my short-term urgent tasks. The fact that I can do them and sort of enjoy doing them doesn’t mean I should do them. One of the rules of delegating is to delegate the tasks you—and potentially others—are most skilled at. And these often include the short-term urgent tasks that distract you from more important priorities. Use these tasks to help others build their skills, get client contact, and gain valuable experience.
• Structural Motivation. I created a work plan that lists projects, shows the steps I need to complete for each project, and the dates I need to complete each step on a 3×5 card. In effect, I’m taking long-term projects, breaking them into pieces, and turning them into a series of short-term urgent tasks. This sounds pretty simple, but it works—probably because it is so simple. It also works because I’m motivated to cross each task off my list.
• Structural Ability. Many of my longer-term projects require periods of uninterrupted thought, planning, and writing. I can’t do them effectively if I allow my e-mail and phone to derail me. So, I schedule a couple of hours each day when I won’t read e-mails or answer the phone. I have specific goals for these periods, and they have become some of the most productive hours in my day.

Be the Scientist as well as the Subject. Begin by developing ideas in each of the six sources of influence. Then, try them out in combination to see what works for you. Know that your progress won’t be perfect. It’s nearly impossible to develop the perfect plan the very first time.

Instead, progress comes when you turn bad days into good data. Acknowledge your setbacks, but don’t let them get you down. Use them as data points. Ask yourself, “Why did I fail?” and “What can I do to prevent a similar failure in the future?” Analyze and adjust. Refine your plan. Soon, you’ll see a path of steady progress.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

Soon after I read Change Anything, I created my change plan and was so happy when I was making progress pretty quickly. Then I went on vacation and lost track of my plan. It’s been discouraging to come home and feel like I have to start back at zero again. I have another vacation coming up this month. Do you have any suggestions for how to stick with my plan when I’m not in a “normal” mode?

Thank you,
Flux Happens

 Dear Flux,

You’ve put your finger on the number-one reason the wheels come off of most people’s change attempts. Something changes—and their plan doesn’t. You get sick. You change jobs. You move. You go on vacation.

The sad truth is that this is an entirely solvable problem, but since people don’t solve it before it happens, these circumstantial changes suck the unwitting changer back into the “Willpower Trap.” For example, you commit to improving your mind through regular reading. You knock down a couple of books and feel great about yourself. Then you go on vacation and lose the habit. When you get back, you’re so behind on work that you fail to pick up the previous change plan—and within days you feel like a mental slug. Now you’re not only not making progress, you’re deriding yourself for not having the gumption to stick with your previous plan. And since it’s a gumption problem you’re back to thinking the root cause is your withering will, rather than your insufficient plan.

Here are four tips to make sure this doesn’t happen to you:

Plan for change. I just moved into a new house with a fancy new heating and air conditioning system. When Todd, the HVAC expert, trained me on my new thermostats, he took special care to point out the vacation button. It’s a nifty feature that lets me explain to my air conditioner how long I’ll be away and what I want it to do differently when I’m gone. I can also tell it exactly when I return home so that it cools the house down just the way I want it an hour before I walk in the door. Successful changers have just this kind of button built into their plan. They think about all of the crucial moments they’ll face that could be their undoing, and they create a plan for exactly those moments. For example, if you’re working on a fitness goal, you might want to plan in advance for what you will do in case of illness. Or bad weather. Or extensive business travel. These “changes” are often predictable, so think in advance about how you need to adapt.

Right-size your results. The first thing you may want to adjust for these crucial moments is your aspiration. If, for example, you’re trying to read a book a week as part of your self-improvement plan, you may need to revise that goal when you are on vacation and allow yourself to read fewer books. This isn’t always the case, of course. For example, I actually exercise more consistently when I am traveling for business because I have fewer distractions when I’m not at home. However, if your crucial moments will make it harder for you to make progress toward the results you want, be realistic about that, and adjust your goals during these moments. It’s better to aim for 50 percent of the results and hit your goal than it is to aim for 100 percent and discourage yourself into giving up.

Create special vital behaviors. Sometimes, you need special responses to the special circumstances in the form of a new vital behavior. For example, a friend who is trying to lose some weight noticed that he had deviated from the “Starve a cold, feed a fever” adage. Instead he would “Feed a cold. Feed a fever. Feed a paper cut.” This wasn’t working. So he created a special vital behavior for sick days: Plan every meal and snack the day before. He says this helps him be mindful about his eating when he is idle rather than his default pattern of grazing whenever he feels like it.

Rethink the six sources. New circumstances often take you away from sources of influence you rely on or put you under the spell of new sources of influence. For example, if you’re going on vacation, you may not have access to a gym, an alarm clock, a running buddy, a computer, or other resources that help you stay on track. Or, you may be subject to powerful temptations like people who encourage you to misbehave, or even structural inducements—like twenty-four hour buffets on a cruise ship. Before you drop yourself into the middle of this influence maelstrom, do your best to anticipate what the new influence landscape will look like and develop your six source plan to offset it. For example, you may decide to choose your meal plan before you enter the dining room. Or, you could find someone on the ship with whom to exercise on the first day of the cruise.

The essence of Change Anything is that we need to learn to not just be “subjects” of the influences around us. We need to be the “scientists”—engaged, intentional learners who accept the fact that the six sources of influence WILL influence you—and all you can do is understand how and take steps to make them work in your favor. When stuff happens, you can bet the sources of influence have changed. The wisest thing to do is be attentive to the effect of these changes and proactively address them in your own best interests.

I hope these ideas help you turn bad days into good data. Setbacks are inevitable on the path to change, but surrender is entirely optional. If things aren’t working, the problem is not you, it’s the plan. Learn what you need to learn from your last vacation and the next one will go much more smoothly.

Best wishes,
Joseph

Over the past eight years, I used a variety of fad diets and exercise approaches in an attempt to lose weight. My biggest problem wasn’t that I couldn’t lose the weight. It was that as soon as I’d start to have success, I’d grow lax on healthy behaviors and fall off the wagon.

When I turned forty-five, I realized I had failed to take care of myself while climbing the corporate ladder. I loved my job, but my hard work only resulted in more assignments and hours spent at the office. I had nurtured my career but ignored my health. I realized I needed to spend more time on me.

That’s when I was introduced to changeanything.com—a website that helps people create and execute change plans mapped to their most pressing challenges and desired goals. I wanted to introduce the site to my company for use in corporate wellness, but realized I needed to put it to the test first.

The first step in my change plan was to clearly define my goals. What I thought was simply a goal to lose twenty-five pounds became a more important goal: to be truly healthy. I wanted to feel energized, confident, and happy.

The next step was to identify the vital behaviors I wanted to influence,the behaviors that if done consistently would lead to my success. My vital behaviors included:

• Tracking daily my caloric intake and exercise using an application on my iTouch.
• Planning my exercise routine before scheduling work activities.

After I identified these vital behaviors, changeanything.com helped me create a six-source plan to reach my goals.

Source 1: Love What You Hate — I needed to change the way I thought about success. Part of me didn’t believe I could reach my goal. To overcome the doubt, I visualized what it would actually look and feel like to step on the scale and see my goal weight register. These daily visualizations helped me not only change my underlying negative perceptions, but also stay motivated.

I also turned to a popular podcast called “Inside Out Weight Loss” to stay motivated. The host encouraged listeners to be realistic about weight loss and realize that, while everyone falls off the wagon, the goal is to decrease the frequency of your falls as well as the amount of time and intensity with which you get off track.

Source 2: Do What You Can’t — Changeanything.com helped me track my weight loss goals and strategies. I also turned to a popular workout program that taught me how to perform exercises that used muscle confusion to increase calorie burning.

Sources 3 & 4: Turn Accomplices into Friends — Through changeanything.com, I invited two valuable coaches to track my progress. Both of my coaches held me accountable to reaching my goals. I reported to these friends whether I succeeded or failed, so I was really motivated to do the work and give a positive report.

The winner of The Biggest Loser Season Four was one of my coaches. He reviewed my change plan and encouraged me to break up my twenty-five-pound goal into realistic five-pound increments. His coaching was instrumental in keeping me on track. He also encouraged me to increase the intensity of my exercise routine.

Source 5: Invert the Economy — I stayed motivated by planning rewards for each five-pound increment. For example, I posted a new outfit I wanted to buy on my change plan so my coaches could encourage me to earn that reward.

Source 6: Control Your Space — I realized one of the largest barriers to my success was the extra time I spent at work. So I prioritized my time at work and became very protective of even small pockets of time I could reserve for exercise. I even learned to build fences and say “no” in order to protect the time I had set aside for my health.

I also learned that when I drank coffee after 3 p.m., I had a hard time falling asleep and woke up tired and exhausted. My coffee breaks were also an attempt to raise my energy level by consuming additional calories. When I stopped drinking coffee after 3 p.m., I saw tremendous improvement.

When I put all of these strategies into play, through the help of changeanything.com, my goals became reality. I not only reached my goal of losing twenty-five pounds, but I also became the happy and healthy person I always wanted to be.

Editor’s Note: If you have an inspiring story of personal change, please send it to editor@vitalsmarts.com and include “Change Anything Story” in the subject line of your e-mail.