How to Minimize Home Buyers Remorse:

Why is it that we experience buyers remorse when we purchase a new home?  One of the reasons could be that everything is unfamiliar about the new house.  I recently moved into a new house and had questioned the decision for a very long time.  Last night, I was driving home listening to the radio when I realized that I was driving the route to my house without thinking about it.  It occurred to me that when I first moved in, I had to think about every stoplight and every turn as I was learning the quickest path.  This process of learning is a cause of frustration in itself.  Whenever you learn something new, your mind is literally being rewired as you practice the new task.  After a while, you become proficient at the new task and you mind can work on auto pilot, allowing you to focus on other things and reducing the anxiety.  You can learn more about this concept in an earlier article that I wrote about How People Learn.

When you purchase a new home, every single task that you took for granted has to be re-learned.  The location of the silverware drawer, where you keep your keys, even where the toilet paper is in relation to the toilet.  While your body and mind are learning to coordinate each of these activities, you will naturally feel frustrated.  This felling of frustration compounds any other doubts that you may have had about the home that you chose such as did you pick the right school district and is the commute too long.  After you have learned your way around the house as well as the path to common destinations such as the grocery store and work, you can begin to function on auto pilot and the new home owner feeling begins to subside.  Your body begins to work from muscle memory as you perform tasks in your new environment without thinking about it.

So what can you do to minimize this initial frustration?  The short answer is that repetition is the only cure so you need to begin to standardize on the way that you do things as quickly as possible.  Even before you start putting dishes away in the kitchen, put labels on the outside of the cabinets and drawers for commonly used items.  Mark the silverware drawer, the utensil drawer and where you put the glasses, plates and pots and pans.  The labels will provide support until you can automatically reach into a drawer and find what you are looking for.

The same goes for other areas of the house.  Decide early what each of the rooms will be used for and how you will refer to them.  Is the spare room called the guest bedroom, the den or the play room?  Put tape over the door handles of any doors that might not be needed that often such as a hallway door that holds the water heater but looks like it might be a closet.  Put labels where other things may be installed or placed on the floor as a placeholder for where they will go.  This makes it clear what work has to be done and starts to give you some sense of orientation in a room that may only have a pile of boxes.  I like to use blue painters tape with a black Sharpie for this task.  The black on blue is a good contrast and the blue tape is designed to peel off without leaving any residue.  Another good use for the tape is to put tape over any light switches that are not critical.  That way you don't waste time turning on the garbage disposal when you are trying to find the kitchen light switch.

Real estate agents can also help with the task of orienting clients to the new neighbor hood.  After the new house is in escrow, take some time to drive with your clients around to common destinations.  The client should drive their car, while the agent sits in the passenger seat.  Make a list of destinations to drive to and then make a series of mini trips starting from the house each time.  Choose places such as the grocery store, a good place for dinner and the school if applicable.  For each trip be sure to start and end at the house so the patch to the new location can be determined.  Be sure to drive through the parking lot to the front of the building so any minor annoyances such as no left turn areas can be flushed out.  Driving together will not only give the homeowner the chance to learn the routes, but will also give the agent a chance to point out other stores that the homeowner might find useful such as a bank or drug store.

Buying a new a home is a major commitment that can produce financial and social anxiety.  This anxiety is compounded by the amount of new things that you must learn.  Only repetition can make the uncomfortable feel comfortable so get started living in your new environment.  With time you will have settled in and can't imagine living any place else.

How to Fall Asleep

I recently had trouble falling asleep because I was thinking about work too much.  I then remembered that the mind has trouble concentrating on more than one thing at a time so I searched for a way to distract myself from the worries of the day.  I came up with a solution that hopefully will work for you.  The solution consists making up nonsense words in your mind preventing you from thinking about other things.   Eventually, your mind drifts off.  I will explain in more detail below, but first, there are two important steps you may want to consider when you have trouble sleeping because something is keeping you up.  This posts assumes that you have a normally busy day and the reason you can't sleep is because you mind is active not because your body is not tired.

First, read Dale Carnegie's book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.  This book is required reading for the Dale Carnegie course and a must read for anyone who is gripped with fear about what may happen in the future.  If you are still unsure, you may want to consider that 193 reviewers out of 237 gave it five stars on Amazon.

Second, keep a notebook by your bed.  When you have trouble sleeping, it is often because you are not sure how a particular event is going to unfold.  While you may not be able to control the outcome, you can control your actions.  Create a what-if scenario and then create an action plan if each scenario occurs.  Then, write down the top three actions that must be performed depending on the outcome.  Once you have clear path of action, you can relax because you know what must be done.  You may not like taking a particular action, but in your heart, you know that it must be done.  Then when you start to worry about the particular event, you just think about your action plan and you know what steps need to be taken.

Now comes the interesting part.  The goal is to distract your mind so that no other thoughts can enter your head.  You do this by creating up nonsense sounds or words in your mind that have no meaning and no connection except perhaps rhyming.  For example, you would begin to say, "ba, ma, sa, tee, wee, pee, knee, nin, pin, rin...".  The words should not tell a story or have any association with real life. As soon as you say one word, begin to say the next.  If you find your mind wandering to a concrete thought, refocus so that you get back to saying the words.

When I first started to use this trick, the tempo of the words began to increase until the sounds came rapid fire and became distracting.  I then realized that the sounds were much faster than my breathing.  By slowing down the creation of new words to match my breathing everything came together.  With each breath, I would create a new sound and this would be relaxing, my breathing would then slow with the relaxation and so would the speed of new sounds.  Eventually, I was not aware of either my breathing or the sounds and I was asleep.

The solution works because you conscious mind does not know how to interpret the words you are saying.  Your mind is engaged but there are no follow on thoughts that go in circles leading only to more worry or frustration.  You are literally creating static or white noise for you brain.  The brain is keeping busy but it does not know what it is doing.  With no clear action direction, your consciousness begins to lose control and you enter into Stage 1 Sleep which is the transition from consciousnesses to un-consciousnesses.  If your conscious mind can not track the thoughts in your head, it it cant be aware of whether you are awake or asleep.  This then allows you to enter the other stages of sleep automatically.

In conclusion, if you are having trouble sleeping because you worry too much, two things you should do are read "How to stop worrying" and create an action plan about what you should do.  The third trick that I recommend is to distract your mind by making up words that don't make sense   When you time these words to your breathing, your mind and body are in harmony and you will soon enter the next stages of sleep.

If this technique works for you or if you have another technique that works better, please share it in the comments section so that my readers may benefit from your success.

How People Learn

I recently started a new job and the first couple of months were very frustrating   Although I was very excited in the beginning, I soon became frustrated at not knowing my way around the company and who to call to resolve problems.  I then remembered the Situation Leadership II model that I had learned by Ken Blanchard.  The model states that people go through four stages of learning and as a manger you, should change your management style to match the stage of your employee.  First, they are excited but clueless, next, they are frustrated and lost, in the third stage they are competent but do not realize it then finally they are successful and confident.  This concept is similar to the adage about high-school students.  As a freshmen, you think you know everything but you know nothing, as a sophomore, you know nothing and you realize it.  When you are a junior you know everything but do not realize it and as a senior you know everything and you know it.

The Situational Leadership II Model

A managers style changes with the progression of the employee

Source:

As the employee progresses through the stage, the manger varies the amount of encouragement and direction.  In the beginning the employee needs little encouragement but a lot of direction.  In second stage, the employee needs clear direction as well as a great amount of emotional support.  In the third stage, the manager should provide strong emotional support but less direction.  Finally, the employee can work independently with little guidance from their manager.

This model is very similar to the concepts in the book called "Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment  by George Leonard.  The book describes a similar pattern path that people take to reach success.  In the beginning, you are excited, then you as you begin to practice, you get frustrated because the task is hard.  If you stick with it, you become competent but reach a plateau.  Finally after months of practice, with no change in results you have a breakthrough and reach a new level of mastery.  Unfortunately, many people tend to stop at the second stage when things get tough.  Imagine the person taking up golf.  They go to the store and buy all the right clothes and the best set of clubs and after the first lesson they quit because they can't hit the ball.  Mr. Leonard refers to this type of person as the "Dabbler".  They get excited about something new and then when they realize it is hard they quit before they have a chance to develop the skill.

The "Dabbler" quits when a new task becomes too hard.

Source

So why is it so hard to learn something and why do we get so frustrated in the early stages?  The answer lies in two concepts, Muscle Memory and Procedural Memory.  When you first start to do a task like swinging a golf club, you brain needs to direct every muscle in your body involved with the task.  At the same time your brain is recording each of the actions.  With so many things going on at once, there are bound to be problems and you rarely hit the ball in a straight line.

With consistent practice, your brain records the movements until they become second nature.  You can then perform the task without thinking.  Over time, your brain has literally become rewired.  It is this rewiring process that causes so much pain and frustration.  The same thing happens with Procedural Memory.  When you drive the same route to work, you brain creates an internal map.  After several weeks of commuting, you can leave your office and arrive home and not recall where you have been.  Your brain has been working on autopilot making turns without your conscious input.

The important thing to remember from all of this, is that it is the repetition that leads to mastery.  When you first start a task, your body and brain must focus all it's energy in order to be successful   This concentration can even be mentally and physically draining.  Without a good coach, you may fail at your task and become discouraged from trying again.  With positive feedback, your body continues to refine the model and create a stronger and stronger internal ability.  Eventually, you can perform the task without engaging your active brain and you are able to focus on higher levels of strategy to be successful.

Many products seem to ignore these stages of learning.  How many times, have you tried a recipe from a cookbook once and if it did not come out correct, you gave up?  Only by trying the same recipe several times can you become successful.  To help you along this path, products should encourage the customer to repeat a process until they have become successful.  For example, a cookbook could only have five recipes   On each page there are boxes where you can record the date you tried the recipe, how it came out and what you would do to change it next time.  After cooking the same recipe for five times, the person should be able to do the recipe without looking at the book.  There could be a series of such books. The first would be soups, the next casseroles, then breads and so on.

The smartphone is a perfect feedback system to encourage people to continue practicing a new task until they have achieved mastery.  The trick is to limit the task so the person can become successful in a small number of tries, provide some kind of feedback so the person can learn from their mistakes and to encourage the user when they are frustrated and want to give up (hint- have people upload their frustrations to a social network, it may prove very therapeutic).

By recognizing the stages that people go through when learning a new task and helping the user along the journey as their mind and body is transformed, companies can help people achieve goals that the person never thought they were capable of.

How do you get salesmen to measure their blood pressure?

For a recent consulting project I was asked to find a way to get medical equipment salesmen to use a particular blood pressure monitoring device.  The problem is, blood pressure monitoring is similar to measuring someone’s weight.  You can’t just run a contest like, “The Biggest Loser” because some people may already be at a low weight and it would not make sense for those people to lose any more weight.  Additionally, there may be particular reasons why it is hard for some people to lose weight or lower their blood pressure.

One solution is to create some incentive for people to use the actual device.  For blood pressure monitoring, people could take their blood pressure and then email the results.  Unfortunately, salespeople are somewhat comfortable providing information even when that information does exactly match actual recorded data.  To enforce integrity, the participants could be required to email a picture of the actual number that also shows some kind of date stamp such as the calendar from a cell phone.

Such methods start to get complicated and more time is spent collecting the data then understanding it.  A better solution is to use the Behavioral Science concept of Overconfidence Bias.  In this bias, people tend to believe that their skills or judgment is better then it actually is.  For example if you ask a room of 20 people if they think they are better than average drivers, more then half of the group will say yes.  Salesmen are particularly vulnerable to this bias.

Here is how the program would work.  Each salesman would be given a blood pressure monitor.  Instead of asking for periodic updates, a contest would be held at defined times.  At the time of the contest, each person would be asked to guess what his or her blood pressure is.  Then their pressure would be measured.  Points would be awarded based on how close the person guesses to their measured pressure.  Under this model, the participants would have an incentive to measure the pressure on their own and to remember that number.  They would also start to learn what impacts that pressure.  Does it go up after coffee?  Is it higher in the morning or in the afternoon?

By creating a competition based on the Overconfidence Bias, the salesmen would not only use the device on their own but they would also have a better understanding of what their own number is and what impacts that number.  Whether the participant chooses to take steps to reduce high blood pressure is up to them but knowledge of a problem is always the first step.

How to design a healthy refrigerator.

Think about the last time you were hungry. If you are like most people you open the refrigerator and look to see what you have.  The top shelf may have eggs, meat or cheese. The middle shelves may have unlabeled Tupperware with aging soup from several days ago. You may even find take out Chinese food or a doggy bag. Now look at the bottom of your refrigerator, this is where the food that you should be eating is stored. Inside of the two drawers is where you keep your vegetables. Lettuce, tomatoes, celery, onions and carrots, for some reason all of these vegetables are the hardest to get to. Not only is the healthy food hard to reach, but it is also hidden behind drawers creating a further barrier to choosing these foods.

In a typical refrigerator, the unhealthy foods are at eye level.

Given this arrangement, it is no wonder why the food that you choose to eat is the meat or cheese when you are snacking and you ignore the veggies until they become a rotting mess in their bag and you have to throw them out.

Behavioral science has an explanation for this type of behavior called Availability Bias. You encounter this bias the day after you buy a new car. As soon as you start driving your car, you realize how many other cars there are on the road that look exactly like yours. You notice things that are familiar and ignore things that are out of sight. Grocery stores have this down to a science. Foods that they want to sell with higher margins are placed on the top shelves while generic brands and non-impulse items are placed lower. Most people with children make frequent trips to the store just to purchase milk. Rather than make life convenient by placing the milk near the front of the store, it is placed in the back of the store causing people to pass all the isles of food. If you really want something, you will find it but it is hard to pass up the other foods that are at eye level.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book “Nudge” share an example from school cafeterias. One cafeteria changed the location of the food in the cafeteria line and recorded what foods where chosen. They found that they could directly influence what foods people ate merely by changing the order of the food. Foods that were placed first were chosen over foods that were placed near the end of the line regardless of teenagers’ natural aversion to veggies.

If a manufacturer really wanted to make a healthy refrigerator, they would make it easier to find the healthy foods. Instead of placing the veggie drawers at the bottom of the refrigerator, they should be placed on the top shelf at eye level. Furthermore, the crisping drawers should be eliminated. Instead some sort of automatic opening mechanism should be created that opens a door when the main refrigerator door is opened. This way, the food would be fresh but still easy to access. 

The veggies should be placed at eye level in your refrigerator.

Next time you open your refrigerator, think about where things are placed and try to keep your healthy food at eye level and hide the unhealthy food in the drawers at the bottom.

How to beat jet lag.

I recently flew from San Francisco to Zurich on a non-stop flight and realized that airlines are missing a golden opportunity to improve customer value. Currently airlines feel that their only responsibility is to transport you from A to B in the most economical and comfortable fashion. I argue that people feel the impact of the flight for up to three days after the flight in the form of jetlag and it is here where airlines could improve their service. By implementing an anti-jetlag program, airlines can create differentiation and improve the value offered to their customers with no additional costs.

Time: From the second that you step on the plane, everything should be done as if you were in the new time zone. If it is dark at the destination, the lights on the plane should be dimmed and the blinds drawn. Soft music will also help remind people that it is quite time. The old time zone should not be displayed anywhere and only the new time zone used. For the rest of the flight, everything should be done according to the new time zone such as lights and meals.

Food: Meals should be referred to by their name in the new time zone. The 9:00 AM meal should be called breakfast even if it is served at 10:00 PM at the origin. Also, save the pasta or chicken for the dinner and use the egg dish for breakfast. A nutrition scientist may even be consulted to find out what foods are more conducive for encouraging sleep or to wake people up.

Chemistry: could also be used to regulate people’s circadian rhythms. Chamomile tea or other calming beverages should be served in the evening to promote sleep while coffee should be served with the morning breakfast. Even if people fall asleep for a nap later, their body is starting to receive signals about the new time zone.

Behavioral Science: In additional to physical things such as light and the timing of food, Airlines should apply behavioral science, namely framing. Passengers should be told prior to boarding that the airline is executing an anti-jetlag strategy and reminded periodically during the flight. People who are aware of the program and looking forward to it will be more receptive to the techniques. Pre-flight jetlag tips can also be mailed out prior to the flight to help people start the program early. One tip is to have people wake up at 5:00 AM the morning of a flight East. Not only does this help people get used to waking up in the new time zone earlier but it also helps people to fall asleep on the plane quicker at the new time zone.

Anchoring is another behavioral technique that can be used. By encouraging everyone to set their watch to the new time zone at the beginning of the flight people will quickly forget the old time zone.

By using light, food and behavioral science, airlines can improve the value for their customers by helping people fight jetleg. While the length of the flight will be the same, people will have more effective time on their trip because they will adjust the new time zone quicker.