Why do I keep doing the same **** over and over again? And how do I stop?
Humans are lazy creatures of habit. Break free from predictable thinking by collecting more dots and forcing your mind off-piste.
Why Are We So Predictable?
Humans are creatures of habit. We’re lazy and so are our minds. We love efficiency. Given the choice, we would just do the same **** over and over again. All we need is that trigger to kickstart our coded responses. It’s kind of like when the bad guy on the TV show 24 hits return to launch the nuclear missile and you see a bunch of code scroll rapidly down the screen.
Why do we think like that? It’s because our mind drives efficiency by building automated patterns called chains of association. These chains link together mental connections between concepts or ideas based on previous experience. If you hear the word “mother”, you probably visualize your mother. If you hear “Ben Affleck”, you’re probably picturing somebody like me (yes, some woman did apologize for thinking I was Ben Affleck because I must “get it all the time” and yes, my wife did ask me how old she was when I got home).
The same patterns occur with more complicated sequences. During my keynote speeches, I often ask someone in the audience the following question.
Why do you think neurons pass through the parietal faster than the temporal lobe?
I have no interest in the answer. In fact, I stop making eye contact after asking the question and start scanning the room to show my complete contempt for any answer. I’m actually looking to see if any other members of the audience pick up their phones. The reason — to demonstrate a common chain of association. This particular chain of association unravels in the following way:
- He just asked somebody a question.
- He might ask me a question.
- I might not know the answer.
- I’m going to look stupid.
- I must avoid eye contact at all costs.
The chain unravels so fast that it really only feels like 2 stages — the first and the last. You see somebody else in the audience asked a question and you fumble for your phone. You’ve practiced this skill over multiple presentations. It’s gotten you away from danger in the past and now it’s a habit. In fact, over time these patterns form dedicated neural pathways in the mind that become so entrenched that any deviation requires a herculean effort.
It’s gotten you away from danger in the past and now it’s a habit.
These habits extend into our day to day lives. Chances are that your job is way more repetitive than you’d like (thank you Industrial Revolution!). You were probably hired for your high degree of specialization in the first place. You’ve built up historical chains of association for everything you do in the name of efficient execution. New customer signs ups — these are the next 6 steps, competitor drops prices — this is how we respond. These patterns are often reinforced at the organizational level too (after all, companies are great at packing themselves with clones that all think alike).
You’ve probably even been rewarded for such efficient thinking. But, the real problem arises when these old methods no longer work. It’s really tough to break these old habits even when they’re not rewarding anymore (the Pavlov’s dogs effect). This is why dinosaurs like Toys R Us and Blockbusters are so easily disrupted. It costs individuals and their organizations billions of dollars in expense and lost time each and every day. So, how do we break free from predictable thinking? You either get out in front of the problem by broadening your experience base (the long game) or break these predictable thought patterns by using brute force (the short game).
The Long Game
The long game involves broadening your experiences to increase the number of variables in your mind. Let’s go back to our mother example from earlier. If you’re a child whose parents are still married, you’re likely to follow a single conventional train of thought when you hear the trigger “mother”. However, let’s assume your parents were divorced when and remarried other people and now you even have your own children. Now, the trigger “mother” presents three different thought processes. “Mother” could trigger thoughts of your mother, your step-mother or being a mother to your children. You can easily see how different experiences expand potential thinking routes.
Playing the long game is all about collecting more dots, because as Amanda Palmer puts it best:
“We can only connect the dots that we collect”.
We need to collect more dots to provide the variables required to break free from predictable paths. There are two alternatives here — live a disrupted life (which I would not recommend, but you can read my story here) or proactively broadening your experience base. Here are a few places to start:
- Build a truly diverse set of friends.
- Attend conferences outside your domain.
- Read trade publications from other industries.
- Study dual majors.
- Switch careers.
- Travel relentlessly.
It seems like that could be a lot of wasted effort, right? I’m not going to lie, it requires a real commitment on your behalf. However, it’s better than banging your head against a brick wall every time you’re faced with a challenge because your experience base is too narrow and you don’t have the flexibility of thought to think differently. Trust the process and give it time.
The Short Game
Let’s face it, most of us don’t have the luxury to rely exclusively on the long game. Most of us need to break our predictable thought patterns today. Well, fortunately help is at hand. However, it’ll require you to forget about the specialized “logic” that you’ve been using pretty much your entire life and consciously force your mind to go off-piste and break its path dependency. We can do this by using lateral thinking techniques.
Lateral thinking techniques help us to break predictable thought patterns that preserve the status quo. They help us to rearrange a repeatable sequence of neural activity to produce alternatives. They help us to look sideways, using our peripheral vision to broaden our minds. Next time you’re struggling to think differently, reverse the fundamental rules of the game, steal ideas from other domains or take inspiration from unrelated concepts. You’ll be amazed how such random stimulation can help you to think differently (check out our #Hacks to see how we’ve used lateral thinking to help clients innovate).
Wrapping Up
The days of the Industrial Revolution are over. Excessive specialization and its predictable thought patterns are becoming increasingly redundant in a rapidly changing world. Position yourself for the future by developing flexibility in your thoughts. Broaden your experience base and look sideways to discover new paths. It’s time to think different.
