The Power to Get Things Done: (Whether You Feel Like It or Not) by Steve Levinson & Chris Cooper

Author:Steve Levinson & Chris Cooper
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-28T14:00:00+00:00

CREATE INTENTION-ROUSING CUES

Let’s look at the steps that Eve, the owner of a small retail business, took to keep her intention in the spotlight. After getting some unwelcome but constructive criticism from someone she trusted, Eve decided that from now on she’d make a practice of talking less and listening more to her customers. Although she was quite sincere about her intention, it somehow kept getting lost in the shuffle.

So Eve came up with a strategy to keep her attention focused on listening more. She set out to create a reminder—a cue—something tangible that would capture her attention and remind and urge her to listen instead of talk.

She found a large photo of an ear, wrote “Listen!” on it, placed it in an easel-type frame, and carefully positioned the picture on her desk where she would be sure to see it whenever she was speaking on the phone. Whenever she noticed her cue, it reminded and urged her to listen. In other words, the cue helped arouse an intention that would otherwise have been inactive.

Unfortunately, after a while, Eve was no longer consistently noticing her cue.

Eve learned that it was quite challenging to keep her cue noticeable enough to do the job of keeping her intention at the top of her mind. So whenever her cue started to fade into the background, she had to do something to change it enough to make it noticeable again.

Like Eve, you’ve probably had the experience before of something that initially captured your attention but then soon started to fade into the background. Maybe, for example, there was a poster on the wall that inspired you when you first saw it, but now, even though it’s still there, it’s pretty much invisible. That’s perfectly normal and also perfectly predictable, which is why it’s essential to always find a way to keep cues noticeable.

When Eve exchanged her ear photo for a MotivAider, she associated the message “Listen” with the MotivAider’s vibration signal so that whenever she felt the MotivAider vibrate, she automatically thought, “Listen!” Unlike the ear photo that reminded her to listen only when she happened to notice it, the MotivAider’s vibration signal worked like a tap on the shoulder to get Eve’s attention and keep her focused on listening. Thanks to frequent private taps on the shoulder from her MotivAider, Eve was able to build a solid habit of listening more and speaking less.

If you don’t have a MotivAider or a mobile phone with a MotivAider app installed, don’t worry. You can still make use of the MotivAider concept. Just use anything that’s capable of sending you frequent signals. The trick is to assign a motivating meaning—a personal message—to the signal so that whenever you get the signal, you also get the motivating message that urges you to take the desired action.

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