Fogg on Habits, Future of Work, and Quantum Confusion
Three stories from last week that I found interesting:
BJ Fogg is the founder of the Behavioural Design Lab at Stanford, and is perhaps one of the most recognised experts on habit formation. He has written a book called Tiny Habits on the topic, and while the book is in my queue of books to read, I also found his interview in The Knowledge Project quite informative. While he talks about quite a few things on habits, I found his views on cultivating habits in groups quite useful. Essentially, if you have to change behaviours in groups there are two ways to do so. Either you join a ‘destination group’ where everyone already has the habit that you want to instil in yourself. For example, if you are in school and want to study harder, then join the group of students who already study regularly. On the other hand, you could join ‘journey group’ where everyone is a novice and you all course on the journey to form a new habit together. Looking back, my behaviour change journeys were mostly alone and in the few cases when I joined groups, I found joining ‘destination groups’ more useful than the ‘journey group’. This was simply because folks in the destination group have already sorted things out and can guide you in an effective way. On the other hand, in the journey group there are chances of varying motivation taking the speed of learning of the whole group south.
Organisational psychologist Adam Grant mostly writes short pieces but his writing is more telling than long essays on the same topic by others. A case in point is this essay that he recently wrote in The Economist on the future of work in post-Covid world. For instance, he argues that workforce finding jobs in this recession will have higher job satisfaction even in the decades ahead. This is because research has proven that, ‘having begun our careers during a recession, we are grateful to have a job at all’. Moreover, we will be grateful for our workplaces where we can escape the tediousness of working from home and get to meet our colleagues again. While some firms will thrive, others who have let their employees go will find it hard to attract talent again. Layoffs reduce costs but hurt productivity as well, and therefore the firms of the future will either shift towards protecting jobs or provide a safety net to those who lose their jobs. Finally, the role of leaders will change. Micro-managers will be disfavoured and replaced with trusting macro-managers. They will be expected to be more compassionate and open to accept new ways of working preferred by the employees (though he doesn’t believe that organisations will whole-heartedly accept year around remote-working).
As I am reading and learning more about quantum mechanics these days, I found this short piece from Sean Carroll, written last year, quite useful to understand all the confusion that prevails on this subject. Titled quite provocatively, the piece claims that, ‘physicists seem to be O.K. with not understanding the most important theory they have’. Why so? Well, the most important research in this field was done half a century back, and since then nothing significant has been discovered. Moreover, the funding for new research is surprisingly difficult to score. The argument against new research is simply that the theory of quantum mechanics works and that, ‘scientists can use quantum mechanics with perfect confidence’ without being fully able to understand the underlying why’s and how’s. Strange you’d think. I thought so too but this analogy helped: ‘Physicists don’t understand their own theory any better than a typical smartphone user understands what’s going on inside their device.’
A quote that I came across last week:
The two skills of modern business: Storytelling and spreadsheets. Know the numbers and craft the narrative.
