Nudge Your Way to Success

Inertia is a killer! Just ask that diabetes patient on her deathbed who was going to get serious about eating right and taking her medicine -- next Monday. For the past five years.

Inertia is deadly for those of us in the work-world as well. If only we could get up the momentum to:

• read one critical industry publication every week
• give positive feedback to our star performers
• keep our Outlook folders organized

But inertia works against us. In physics, inertia is an object's resistance to a change in its state. Remember Newton's words: "an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest." And oh, how we love to rest.

Two University of Chicago professors, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in their new book, Nudge, ask this provocative question: "If you design a choice the right way, could a small nudge help people make better decisions?" According to their research, the answer seems to be "Yes!" Get inertia -- or should we call it laziness -- working for ya! Here are some examples:

• In Germany, like the U.S., you have to opt in to become an organ donor. 12% of Germans opt in. In Austria, people are organ donors by default. They have the right to opt out at any time but guess what...they don't. 99% of Austrians are available as organ donors. The momentum of staying "in the program" is stronger than the initiative it takes to opt out. That's Austria's way of putting the "default option" to work.
• Think of that book club or coffee club that keeps sending you books and coffee that you don't need ... and don't even want!... but having to DO something to get them stopped takes more effort than the inertia of accepting them. Can you see the default option at work here?
• Was that 75 cents you paid for the USA Today outside your last hotel room door really what you'd have chosen to spend your money on? Probably not. But sticking the paper into your briefcase was easier than calling the front desk and going through the hassle of trying to get your 75 cents back, wasn't it? Do nothing, accept the paper and the default option is at work once again.

Here's your assignment:

Q.: What could you gently nudge yourself (or your employees) to do, that would get you going in the right direction and then, the momentum would keep you going?

Q.: What's a choice that you know you need to make? Now how could you design that choice so that doing nothing makes it happen? Over and over again.

Photo on flickr by hoobygroovy