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.

Dear Crucial Skills,

I tend to procrastinate overwhelming work projects until the last minute and know this bad habit is keeping me from advancing in my career. I feel like I’ve tried everything, but nothing has helped. I don’t know how to change. Can you help me?

Habitual Procrastinator

Dear Procrastinator,

Funny you should ask. I’ve managed to put off writing my response to you for three weeks now! But I’m flying home from Chicago and our editor, Angela, is firmly but politely requesting I get off my rear—so here goes.

We recently found that procrastination is a pretty pervasive problem. In fact, it is one of the top three Career-Limiting Habits we identified in a recent study. For some, these habits have cost them pay or promotions. But even those who can’t count an absolute cost of the habit acknowledge they could have achieved significantly more in their career if it hadn’t been for this chronic weakness.

I fall into the category of people who can point to specific losses caused by procrastination. At age seventeen, a partner and I wrote one of the first accounting applications for the newly emerging microcomputer industry. It was an instant success with our immediate clients, and I knew that if I would invest time standardizing the software and creating high-quality documentation for it, we could make millions. I didn’t. And within a year, a competitor went to market in that uncontested space and cashed in. Live and learn, eh?

But the good news is I’ve discovered a few simple sources of influence that have a remarkable effect on my energy, focus, and productivity in these crucial moments. I also got an enormous number of responses on our Crucial Skills blog and on Facebook from clever readers who have found their own ways to kick this habit.

Without further delay, here are some ideas:

Make It Motivating.

• Make it a game. Even noxious tasks become engaging when we give them the characteristics of a game: focus, time limit, and a scoreboard. When I sit down to work, I make my scoreboard. I write down the number of things I want to get done before I relax. I limit my list to the number of things I can reasonably accomplish. It’s remarkable how motivating it is to check things off my list. Several readers actually use a timer. I think that’s a great idea to increase the “game” sense of focus, and to link the experience to a promise of reward.
• Repeat motivating statements. A couple of readers keep motivating statements at hand that help them reframe the decision they’re making in their crucial moment. Suzy said, “My favorite procrastination advice is, ‘If you have to eat a frog today, do it first. If you have to eat three frogs today, eat the biggest one first.’” Donald added, “I put this note on my PC: ‘Production Before Perfection’ to remind myself to create something even if it is imperfect and then focus on perfection.”

Build Skills.

• Read a book. Lots of people have found useful tools in books that help them increase and focus their mental energy more effectively. Some favorites were The NOW Habit by Neil Fiore, The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel, and Getting Things Done by David Allen.
• Treat productivity like a skill. Pick a small amount of time to focus your attention, then stop. Brett said, “Here’s a mantra I’ve found very effective at battling my own tendency to procrastinate. It’s four simple words: Make progress every day. Once I get started on something, even if it’s with the mental goal of saying ‘I’m only going to do this one thing for fifteen minutes’, it often leads to more. When it doesn’t, at least I have the satisfaction that I did indeed make some progress that day.”

Get Support.

• Find a friend. Barb shared an experience where she learned from a friend: “You can learn to overcome [procrastination] by pairing with someone who has a different style. My boss, the ultimate procrastinator, and I worked together for many years. We made a great team. Instead of being a thorn in one another’s side, we used one another as a means of support and a sense of balance in how we approached our work. He knew he could count on me to develop a quick plan and start executing. I learned there are advantages to letting some things percolate so you don’t have to retrace old ground as projects often get redirected midstream.”
• Set boundaries with others. One reader recommended setting aside time to deal with problems: “A large part of managing yourself is managing who is allowed to interrupt you and when. One of the techniques I now employ is a ‘problem hour.’ As e-mails, phone calls, or other issues interrupt me, I push them to my problem hour. If the issues arise after my problem hour, it’s assigned to the next day’s problem hour.”

Reward Yourself.

• Plan fun. Cecelia uses rewards to motivate herself: “My two favorite ways to deal with procrastination balance short- and long-term rewards. Sometimes going to my home office to work feels like being sent to my room. To change that mindset, I focus on how much better life is going to be once the task I’d rather avoid is over.”
• Pick a treat. Erin rewards herself by taking a break: “Dedicate an hour to a difficult task and then reward yourself by going to get a Starbucks coffee, or by having a chat with a coworker as a break.”

Structure for Success.
Lots of readers used structural tricks to help make productivity easier. In fact, you’ll recognize lots of structural ideas even in the other sources of influence I listed above. Here are some favorites:

• Break it down. Divide big things into manageable amounts, then decide what manageable part you will accomplish next. Jim shares this story: “My mother died eight years ago and I received forty boxes of stuff to sort through. Three months ago, I started filing or discarding one box a week.” Thinking about one box is motivating. Forty is overwhelming.
• Leave some fun for next time. One trick I use with writing tasks is to never stop until I am on a roll. I make sure that, when I pause my writing, I know what I want to write next—so getting restarted will be easier. If, on the other hand, I finish a complete idea, I’ll have to start next time with the painful experience of figuring out what is next. Pause your work at a place that makes restarting feel motivating.
• Make an appointment with yourself. Erin also recommends you “Schedule slots of time into your schedule similar to a meeting time. Then make sure that time is dedicated only to the task. Schedule the most unwanted tasks first thing. By the afternoon, you are out of energy and more likely to procrastinate.”
• Build fences. Create an environment where you won’t be distracted. For example, turn off e-mail notifications, put your phone where you can’t see or hear it, close your door, and put in earphones. Some people even use software that shuts down internet access to help reduce wandering impulses.

Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to do everything on this list at once—just pick an idea or two, experiment with it, and act like a scientist examining your own behavior as you see what makes you feel more motivated and productive.

It’s worked miracles for me. I never made millions on microcomputer software—but I finished this column!

Thank you to everyone who shared suggestions. If you have any other ideas you’d like to share, please post them on the blog.

Best wishes,
Joseph

  Dear Crucial Skills,

Kerry’s recent article, Confronting Workplace Sarcasm, unfortunately resonated with me as someone who uses sarcastic humor and often fails to see the negative impact it makes. I am intrigued by Kerry’s assertion, “And so, I said goodbye to that part of me” and wondered if it was as easy as that statement sounds? Did you have to tell everyone you were trying to eliminate this habit and give them permission to call you on it? I, too, have had similar feedback from my wife, but I have failed to take the next step—much to my chagrin.

Chagrinned

  Dear Chagrinned,

You’re right. Nobody rids him- or herself of the “fun” use of sarcasm in one clean swipe. In my case, employing sarcasm wasn’t a mere tic that I had picked up along the way—such as saying “umm” too often or picking my teeth with a matchbook cover—and heaven only knows I have dozens of such tics. In my case, sarcasm was a finely crafted tool I honed and enjoyed for decades. It had all the short-term perks and tantalizing allure of any bad habit and was not going to go quietly into the night.

At first, I did exactly what you said. One day, after I had been particularly derisive with my wife, she informed me that my “sharp tongue” wasn’t something she admired. This revelation came as a total shock to me in that we were newly married, we had reared no children as of yet, and I still held a rather high opinion of myself. Shocked that my wife didn’t share in my love for irony, I swore that I would no longer hurl sarcastic remarks at her. In return, she hugged me, vowed to hold me accountable, and threw a party.

This method of influence helped a little, but eventually turned out to be insufficient because it required far too much monitoring on my wife’s part and didn’t get to the underlying causes of my problem. At its root, I preferred using irony to taking part in an honest and direct discussion. I was good at sarcasm. It brought me pleasure. Plus, I didn’t always see the negative effects of my verbal assaults. Sure, some of the people I put down would flinch a smidgeon, but more often than not, others around me would laugh out loud at my “clever” remarks or even high-five my efforts.

Then one day I said to my wife, “Oh I’m sorry, is vacuuming the living room beneath Your Highness?” She didn’t flinch. Instead, a tear came to her eye as she yanked the vacuum away from me and stomped into the next room. The tear got me. What was I thinking? Did I really need to get a cheap laugh or try to win an argument by using derision and irony—at my sweetheart’s expense?

I wasn’t perfect with my wife from this moment on—but I tried to be.

But then there was everyone else out there. I was raised in a university environment where professors routinely mocked their students for making naïve or inane responses. And being the team player that I am, I honored this fun university tradition.

“It appears to me, Mr. Johnson, that you missed the part of your undergraduate education where they taught logic and reason.”

I said something to this effect during an MBA lecture—everyone laughed hardily—and then I saw Mr. Johnson. There was no tear running down his cheek, but he looked quite wounded. And once again, my wife’s face flashed before my eyes.

Drat! Now I had one more place where I would be on my best behavior. I apologized to Mr. Johnson at the beginning of the next class period, and much like a twelve-stepper, I admitted to my flaw and promised not to use sarcasm with the students again. It was a big step. I now start every college class with a promise to push the students to their best and most careful thinking—but also to respect them.

I was on the mend. First my wife, next the classroom.

And then I had teenagers. If sarcasm is the effect, teenagers are the cause. As my own children grew into their “spread their wings” years I found myself constantly looking for ways to advise, teach, correct, and discipline them—and sarcasm was such a handy tool.

Fortunately, something came into my life right around the same time my children were coming of age and at least partially shielded them from my verbal stings. My research partners and I started studying the interpersonal skills associated with high-stakes conversations where emotions run strong and opinions vary. As you may have guessed, when it comes to holding these high-stakes conversations, using sarcasm is a no-no.

As our studies unfolded, I found a replacement for caustic comments. I learned how to calmly and respectfully describe a problem and ask for input. I learned how to distinguish a motivation from an ability problem. I learned how to motivate with natural consequences and enable others through jointly brainstorming possible solutions. In short, I learned several skills that enabled me to talk directly and effectively rather than tangentially and ironically.

Without these replacement behaviors, I’m quite certain I would have continued to heap on the sarcasm and use other indirect, punitive, and ineffective methods with my teenage children (and anyone else who let me down and then fell under my crosshairs).

Other tools have helped keep me on the path of dialogue. With one of the clients I worked with on a corporate turnaround, the execs used sarcasm so frequently and aggressively that they crafted and wore their own campaign buttons. The graphic on the buttons consisted of a red circle with a line through it. The word behind the line was SARCASM. Wearing these “no sarcasm” badges actually helped the team (and me when I was with them) remember to be on our best, most professional behavior.

On another consulting assignment, the leadership team I worked with created an “abuse jar.” Like the “swear jars” many people use as a tool for punishing foul language, members of this particular team required that each member put a dollar in the glass container every time he or she used harsh humor, threats, sarcasm, or other forceful means. One day when I said something that positively oozed with irony, one of the VPs required me to pony up a dollar. In retrospect, a sarcasm jar would have been a nice tool in my change arsenal.

Focusing on the consequences of my actions, contracting with others, developing alternate skills, creating visual reminders, building in financial incentives—all of these influence tactics helped me strip my repertoire of sneering remarks—but this wasn’t all that I did nor did I eventually eliminate sarcasm entirely.

To help ease my transition from wise guy to normal citizen, I learned how to apply sarcasm in a way that doesn’t harm others. I use it on myself. When teaching classes or writing articles, I make myself the target of ridicule and derision—and heaven only knows I give myself plenty of ammunition. This way I get it out of my system but at no one else’s expense.

And that, my friends, is the caboose to this rather lengthy train of thought.

Kerry

I received a very interesting question from a reader whose career is being held back by procrastination. Have you had the same problem? And if so, what have you done that has helped you overcome procrastination? I’ve had the same challenge and look forward to blending your best practices with mine.

Share your suggestions by posting a comment below!

Thanks in advance!
Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,

I need to improve my writing skills, but I’m too busy writing to take the time. My job is in marketing and I write position papers, sales materials, and product descriptions. My long-term goal is to write a nonfiction book, but I don’t have time to take a writing class. Being a better writer will launch my career and get me closer to achieving my dream. Help!

Writer’s Block

  Dear Writer’s Block,

Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to improve your writing skills without enrolling in a regular class. The time it takes to become a better writer is not driven by the number of hours spent in a classroom, but by the number of hours spent in deliberate practice. Mounds of recent research shows the predictor of mastery of almost any skill you can imagine—surgery, writing, mountain unicycling, chess, public speaking—is not some genetic endowment but rather the number of hours you spend in a very specific kind of practice.

A classroom can be a useful place to get deliberate practice, but unfortunately, many teachers get in the way of this process as much as they enable it. So don’t despair that you can’t take the time to head to night class right now. You can still get started. Here’s what you have to do to use deliberate practice to accelerate your progress toward your dream.

1. Break the skill into small parts. In other words, don’t practice “writing,” practice a specific aspect of writing that you think is important to your advancement. For example, you may decide that your use of language is too dull and you want to spice it up. The subset of “writing” you want to work on is using more vivid language, metaphors, or engaging prose. Later, you could pick another sub-skill of writing, but find one place to begin.

2. Practice in short, intensive intervals. The great thing about deliberate practice is that it doesn’t take long periods of time. In fact, if you’re doing it right, you can’t really practice for more than an hour or so at a time. I once watched world-class dancers from the Royal Ballet in London working on some of the discrete parts of a particular dance. Rather than practice the entire performance, they worked on one 30-second segment that was giving them challenges over and over again. They also forced themselves to quit and take a break after about 20 minutes of very intense practice.

You should do the same by creating a small, structured practice opportunity. For example, decide that each day, you will write a one-page essay on something that happened at work. You’ll take some anecdote from your day and bring it to life such as: “Strategies I used to keep alert during a two-hour project review.”

3. Get feedback against a clear standard. In order to turn practice into deliberate practice, you need clear and immediate feedback. The Royal Ballet dancers didn’t simply go through their routines again and again, they had a coach—a master dancer—who literally stopped them after a single jump and gave immediate feedback about the angle of their head or the bending of a wrist. They immediately did the jump again and you could see instant progress. Far from being disruptive, this kind of real-time feedback allowed them to analyze and adjust their performance far more rapidly, resulting in substantial improvement.

You can do the same with your practice. I encourage you to get a coach—a trusted friend who is also a good judge of writing—who will read your one-page paper and be mercilessly honest with you about verbiage that is trite, clumsy, or uninteresting, and tell you when you have nailed it. After you receive feedback rewrite that single page—focusing on one specific aspect of your writing—and watch how quickly your skills improve. I had just this kind of coach early in my writing career. His name is Kerry Patterson, my long-time friend and coauthor. Go find your Kerry!

Many people want to be writers. The difference between those who become good writers and those who don’t is summed up by a sign a colleague kept in his office—Writers write.

Don’t wait for a sabbatical, a class, or until some other grand moment arrives. Just start deliberately practicing. Today!

Best wishes,
Joseph

According to a study we recently conducted, three out of five parents fail when trying to help their kids lose weight.

The research found that parents and children alike have far less control over their behavior than they think they do because they’re blind to the influences keeping them stuck. Parents can’t change their behavior, much less their child’s, until they understand the six sources working against them and marshal the sources to influence their behavior for good.

Here are some tips for reversing childhood obesity by changing bad behavior:

Change their impulses: Help your kids change the way they think about what they currently consider to be unpleasant behaviors such as healthy eating or exercise. For example, show them how healthy habits are important to their favorite sports hero.

Overcome ignorance: Teach your kids skills for making and keeping new habits like enrolling them in a new sport or teaching them about the food pyramid. For example, in an experiment to resist eating a marshmallow now for two later, 50 percent more kids were successful at earning two marshmallows when they were taught distancing tactics to distract them while waiting.

Turn accomplices into friends: Don’t underestimate the power of your kids’ peers. Bad habits are a team sport. Encourage your kids to spend time with friends who model good behavior.

Call in a coach: Coaches are crucial to behavior change success. While you might be a great cheerleader, enlist the power of an external coach to support your child, such as a sports coach. Research shows those with a half dozen coaches or mentors are almost 40 percent more likely to succeed than those without a half dozen coaches.

Reward small successes: When used in moderation, rewards can motivate kids to keep good habits. For example, if your kids meet their weekly goal of exercise, reward them with their favorite game, small treat or additional time with you.

Restructure your home: Make physical changes to your home that enable new behaviors. Put out healthy snacks instead of junk food. Schedule active family time, such as bike riding, as opposed to TV watching.