A Learning a Day

This week’s book learning is the first of a 8 part series from The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely. (Part 1)

Can increasing the psychological distance between a thing and money increase the “fudge factor”, meaning people cheat more?

Dan Ariely tested this in the communal refrigerators in MIT dorms. In half the dorms, his team placed 6 cans of Coca Cola and in the other half, a plate with six 1 dollar bills. The Cokes disappeared within 72 hours while no one touched the money. They could easily have taken the $1 bill, walked over to the vending machine, and bought a coke. But, they didn’t!

To test this further, Dan and team revisited the matrix experiment with a new “token” condition. When students finished solving the matrices, they now received a token/plastic chip stating the number of problems they had solved. Once they received the token, they walked 12 feet to another table and exchanged it for cold hard cash. The difference from the normal condition was that collection of money was one step removed from telling the volunteer how many problems they solved.

Cheating increased to twice the normal amount.

Sketch by EB

These experiments explain the shrinkage problem in companies – employees are more likely to take expensive stationary home than money lying around in the office. Our moral compass slips when the “fudge factor” increases. Would the famous credit default swaps have been used to disastrous ends by banks if they looked like dollar bills?

It brings up the next interesting question. How does the cheating process work in our heads? Next week, same time, same channel..

Relationships have a big transactional element. The strength of a relationship is typically directly related to the willingness of the two individuals involved to give more than take. It is something we all are aware of at some level (the degree is self awareness dependent).

The funny quirk here is that the moment you consciously think of a relationship as a transaction, you have sealed its fate. Perhaps it is because the thought of the word transaction has us focus on “what’s in it for me?” 

The trick is to approach giving in relationships like lunch. You do it every day. It’s good for you and you don’t think about it.

(And, similarly, approach ‘taking’ like an unhealthy midnight raid of the fridge – I realize this analogy doesn’t apply if you are a university student…)

Work on a project that requires consistent effort.

Phone habits break down over time. Email habits last longer but are not as rich as an actual conversation.

Working on a project, however, changes everything. These projects can be varied – a coach-pupil type project designed to improve a skill or embed a habit, or a team project that involves you building something cool. That commitment to something beyond “staying in touch” ensures that the minimum of staying in touch is achieved.

Besides, it’s fun.

Tip: If you’re working on creating a project-like engagement, start with a definite time state and keep renewing it (e.g. 6 months). Committing to a project till the end of time isn’t an arrangement that’s going to work, either.

My synthesis of an insightful part of “The Startup of You” by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha.

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The biggest reason for following your passion being irrelevant advice in this day and age is that your passion could be for an industry that might not exist in 10 years. The rate at which industries are being disrupted means that, even if it does manage to survive the next ten years, it’s unlikely it’s going to be anywhere as lucrative or attractive as it is now. What then?

Much better to focus on skills that will be useful and to be so good they can’t ignore you. And, much much better to focus on being flexible with plans. Never stop planning, but don’t be too wedded to plans either. One opportunity well utilized always leads to another i.e. a “break”. ‘And, you can’t possibly map all this out with one existential question – “what have I been put on earth to do?”

Start on the road with all enthusiasm, energy, and a desire to be the best you can be. Don’t worry about the middle.. by the time you get there, it will be different anyway. Successful careers in today’s age are in permanent beta.

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Makes sense.

Copy this poem, print it, and keep it somewhere near you. Read it time and time again till some of the verses become subconscious.

I think of this poem every once in a while. I remember a few of the lines, especially the ones in bold. Having a couple of instant boosts of inspiration near you/in your memory helps. It could be Desiderata, Invictus, Do it anyway, or this masterpiece by Rudyard Kipling.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son!

Sleep 8 hours.

A few other accompanying thoughts on some recent habits/routines that have felt positive.

– There’s nothing like starting the day with exercise. After a new year commitment to fix my exercise habit and move from 3 sessions/week to 7, I’m slooowly beginning to make progress. The last 3 weeks have been much better in this regard. Exercise makes us feel good about ourselves. And, starting the day with that feeling is wonderful.

– Accompanying exercise is book reading. Nice to do this first thing in the morning. While the usual average was 30 minutes/day, the added exercise time means reading an hour a day. Loving it. More reading and more book bytes.

– A new addition to the day has been meditation. Inspired by Jerry’s interview, I reached out to him regarding an app he would recommend. I’ve been using “Headspace” over the past 3 weeks and have enjoyed the experience. I just signed up to the 1 year subscription as I’m keen to give this experiment a real go. I don’t want to jump to conclusions on it’s effects yet. More to follow on this..

– 3 hour breaks between checking email, reader, and social media is really helpful. This habit has been building over the past 3 months and I like the idea of regulating these distractions. (I literally mark out the times on my daily to do list – e.g. 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and check them as I finish)

– Inbox zero is awesome. I’ve struggled with it a bit in recent weeks and I think of it like keeping your home clean – it’s not easy, it’s not necessarily fun (unless you’re my fiance – yup, I’m engaged. :-)), but it’s something you need to do!

– Noting an idea or thought down the moment it comes to mind is liberating. Evernote has never worked for me. I write them on my notes and email them to myself. Works like a charm.

– And, of course, the daily R15 game.

I’ll conclude with the point I made up-front. None of these would work nearly as well without enough sleep. I think the most effective GTD book of all time would probably have just one word in it – Sleep.

That book wouldn’t be written by me, of course. I just used 395 more words to say just that. Will I ever learn? :-)

The “How is it going?” question can be a request for either facts or assurances.

When a boss or client asks the question, he/she typically wants both – the facts accompanied with the assurance that it will be okay.

It’s tempting to skip the facts and just give the assurance. Like most other things, giving assurances can become a habit, both personal and organizational.

The assurance culture is why large organizations fail to move unless they are threatened with extinction (some fail to move even then.). When that happens, you can be sure that the assurance culture has taken over. When everyone around says everything is okay, why would you believe otherwise? And, if you did continue to question the belief, you’d probably just get yourself fired.

The difficulty with making fact-giving a habit is that it requires a willingness to listen, to repeatedly dive in to solve problems, and to repeatedly brace yourself for news you may not want to hear.

The flip side is that it leads to better communication, faster problem solving and, a habit of actually doing something instead of simply talking about doing things. The facts may not be pretty, but we learn to see things as they are rather than how we would like them to be.

This week’s learning is the first of a 8 part series from The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely.

(This book is about how we cheat others, especially ourselves, and was a fascinating read + wake up call. Since reading this book, I’ve been catching myself lie to myself more often. :-) As a result, I’m really excited about this 8 part series. Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did.)

2 groups of participants were asked to solve some “matrices” (puzzles) in a given time period.

“Control condition” Group: Finish matrices in given time and submit answer sheet to the coordinator.
“Shredder condition” Group: Finish, shred the answer sheet, and tell the coordinator how many were solved.

The shredder condition was a test of honesty and of the prevalent economic belief that assumes cheating would increase if the incentives were huge. So, test the incentive theory, different participants were offered different incentives. Some were offered 25 cents per right answer while others were offered $1, $2 or $10.

The results – The magnitude of cheating was almost exactly the same – on average, they said they answered 2 additional matrices in the shredder condition. In fact, it was slightly lower when they were promised a higher amount.

Why didn’t cheating increase? Why was it even lower in the highest incentive case?

The answer here is that cheating is a not a result of a cost-benefit analysis. We like to cheat “just a little bit” so we can still feel good about ourselves! Hence, we never cheat if it’s obvious. However, if there is a bit of ambiguity, there is high likelihood, we use it to our advantage.

Dan Ariely calls the ambiguity the “fudge factor.” So, does an increase in the fudge factor result in more cheating? Coming up next week..

I read Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney recently. Great book. I wrote to Roy Baumeister right after asking him for an interview for the Real Leaders Project earlier this week. He happened to be traveling to Adelaide himself with a 5 hour stop over in Sydney. He didn’t have a phone that worked here so we vaguely arranged to meet for an interview at a coffee shop at the domestic terminal this morning.

And, wonders of wonders, we did manage to find each other. We went on to have a 20 minute conversation in a very noisy cafeteria. It was a ton of fun and I’m already looking forward to releasing the interview in a few weeks.

It wasn’t perfect. The Real Leaders Project has never been perfect. We’ve never done a high quality HD video interview in noiseless surroundings. We’ve been lucky to meet with some really inspirational folk – most online, some in person. We’ve had some prior contact with a few of them so that’s helped our rejection rate rise to a respectable 50%. It’s been scrappy, failure ridden, desperate at times, but we’ve motored along somehow. We’ve been working as a team for a year now – it’s only now we’re getting to a website (do check out the beta version and give us feedback. It’s 50% done).

But, we’re glad we’ve done something. Granted – it’s not resulted in a hundred thousand views per video. We don’t have a gazillion subscribers on our YouTube channel. Most of those who watch are from the small community on this blog. So, why do this?

Because you can sit down and wait for the conditions to become perfect. Or you can go out and make the best of what you have. You just have to be prepared to tell yourself “this might not work” and keep plugging away. What you do may come to something some day. There’s a big chance it might not. It might go on to make a massive difference to world. Then again, it might not.

The funny thing is that we often set out looking to change something by investing time, sweat and effort but what we change most is ourselves.

And, besides, this whole interview experience with Roy Baumeister – not perfect.. but what a great story!

The harbour bridge shut down movement of trains last evening in Sydney due to a technical failure. That’s a huge deal in this city as it is the only real connecter between the north and south. The consequences were pretty dire – traffic jams all around, thousands of people on the street looking for taxis to head back home, etc. Word was that there were a thousand people in the taxi queue at the airport with the average waiting time being two hours. Goodness knows how many folks trying to make it to the airport missed a flight last night..

I got out of the station to catch a taxi myself. The guy in front of me got hold of a taxi. As they were about to leave, the taxi driver called out to me and asked me to join – he said he would take both of us as long as we both our fees (the other guy’s place was on the way). This was an example of a win-win-win since the taxi drive earned 2x the normal fare.

However, he took to telling us that he had “saved us” for nearly the entire duration of the trip. He kept pointing to the many waiting for a taxi on the streets and rubbed his hands with glee at the thought of making a ton of money after he dropped us off. I could barely wait to get off the cab..

I learnt a few lessons from this experience –

1. Your bad day is almost always someone else’s good day, and vice versa. The ten minute delay of your train might have helped someone else get to an important meeting and rain during your holiday might have helped a whole legion of farmers.

So, next time you are having a bad day, think of those you unintentionally made happy. It won’t change the experience but it might just make you smile.

2. If you are having a great day, ditch the manic high. Ditch the announcement on Facebook on the day of your big bonus. Share it with a few people who really care. There might be a few on your Facebook friends list who just got let go.

The taxi driver’s family might have been able to share his joy. Both his passengers just felt he was obnoxious celebrating when many were in all sorts of trouble (like those trying to get to a hospital).

3. If you do someone a favour, don’t keep reminding them of it. That just makes you, as the Brits would say, a twat.

3. You never know if a good day is a good day. A good life learning. The privilege of being allowed to play this game is to just play..