The You Experience — #10: Masterful Hesitation
The goal of this article is to help you apply your UX skills to the way people experience you. Hesitating can be influential to better human experiences but must be done with purpose and precision. I will reveal how masterful hesitation can lead you down two very different paths — both of which significantly affect how others experience you.
Understanding Hesitation
The most popular apps and websites are designed to intentionally hold our attention — long enough to buy something, long enough to interact, long enough to plant the urge to return and consume the digital content again and again.
Using centuries of research and psychological human behaviors, today’s product teams know how to deliver content that is useful, relevant, and seemingly essential to human existence.
What’s more, those who best hold our attention know how to leverage our hesitation in a masterful, uncanny way.
Social media apps know right where you’ll place your thumb, how long you’ll read a post, and when you’re likely to start scrolling. Then, you’ll scroll, and scroll and scroll. Words are set at just the right font size, the images at a precise position on the screen and the buttons are meticulously thought out for size, titles, and placement.
You’ll hesitate and tweak your photo to perfection using their carefully thought-out editing tools— and only when you’re absolutely certain it’ll impress the world — you post it.
They are experts at understanding human hesitation, how to capitalize on it and how to use it to their advantage.
Ecommerce powerhouses are likewise masters of hesitation. Should you remain too long on a page, chatbots reach out to help. If you attempt to leave the page, attractive shipping offers will surface to keep you on the purchase path. Any hesitation on a product description page is accounted for by providing raving 5-star reviews, engaging customization options and countdown timers for incentivizing deals.
Recognize the clever use of hesitation in design and you’ll uncover the blueprint to exceptional user experiences.
The Hesitating Human
Your tendency to hesitate is worth evaluating too if you want to affect how others experience you. As I’ve observed, hesitation in the human experience has both the power to propel us forward or hold us back; to keep us safe or to get us into trouble.
To hesitate means:
To pause before saying or doing something, especially through uncertainty.
By definition, hesitating is not altogether bad. In fact, I’d argue hesitation does us a lot of good. Hesitating at a precise moment in your car could keep you safe at an intersection. Hesitating in basketball is used to “fake-out” the competition. Hesitating to say aloud the thoughts in your head could save a relationship. Anticipation builds as music artists hesitate to drop a good beat.
Conversely, hesitating could be a sign of pure human uncertainty, fear, doubt, and a limiting belief we have within ourselves. Often, a feeling of paralysis consumes us when faced with difficult decisions and our only recourse is to hesitate.
How often do you find yourself telling someone they’re over-analyzing something? The over-analyzer is likely hesitating to make an important decision by over-thinking the details.
Anytime I find myself hesitating for too long or become indecisive, I do a quick internal check to understand the hesitation. The following three questions tend to unearth any deep-seated reason I have for hesitating:
- Why am I hesitating?
- How long have I been hesitating?
This next question really hits home when you consider the experience others are having of you. The next time you find yourself hesitating for too long, ask yourself:
Who or what is being affected by my hesitation?
Hesitation in Real Life
Let’s take the scenario of hesitating at the intersection in your vehicle and apply the three questions outlined above:
- Why am I hesitating? — To avoid a collision, an accident, possible injury or death
- How long have I been hesitating? — Seconds
- Who or what is being affected by my hesitation? — I’m safe, the other driver is safe, the pedestrian crossing the street is safe, my kids in the back seat are safe
In this scenario, the hesitation was justified and appropriate for the situation. The result of hesitating was a safe experience on the road.
Now another scenario.
Assume you’re at a point in your career where you’re unsatisfied with your job. You dread Mondays, you don’t feel like you’re contributing to the team, and your coworkers don’t value your ideas. You hesitate to bring up your frustrations with your manager and you hesitate to put yourself out there to look for another job. Sound familiar?
- Why are you hesitating? — You’re nervous you’ll offend your team, your boss or coworkers. You don’t want to experience rejection for other job offers. You’re afraid you’re not qualified for something better.
- How long have you been hesitating? — Months
- Who or what is being affected by your hesitation? — Your health, stress and anxiety levels. Other teams that could benefit from your experiences. Your friends and family that could benefit from a happier, more content you.
For this scenario, the words of Shakespeare cut deep:
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. — William Shakespeare
In the first scenario, the hesitation was necessary to avoid injury and possible death. In the second scenario, hesitation could be holding a person back from finding success in life, or as Shakespeare puts it, our doubts actively and sneakily work against us, causing us to “lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
The truth is, we need hesitation. Another truth is, hesitation could be the very reason you’re not seeing the results you want to see in life.
The Two Hemispheres of Masterful Hesitation
At some point in our lives, we arrive at a place where we become masters of hesitation. Intuition, repetition, and subconscious thoughts fuel our actions and hesitation becomes second nature.
But here’s the problem.
Masterful hesitation exists in two very different hemispheres. In one hemisphere, you can get so good at it that it becomes a downward spiral of negative emotions and beliefs about yourself. In the other hemisphere, you can use hesitation as the catalyst to achieving extraordinary results in life.
Hemisphere 1 — The curse of masterful hesitation
Those who live in this hemisphere experience what I call the curse of masterful hesitation. Living here, they allow hesitation to negatively affect all aspects of their personal and professional life.
- You hesitate to give feedback in a design critique and your opinion goes unmentioned
- You hesitate to ask for a promotion and never move forward
- You hesitate to put in your two-weeks notice and hate your job
- You hesitate to write and publish your work for fear of its quality and never push out any content
- You hesitate to ask, “why” and never get to the source of problems
- You hesitate to speak up when something doesn’t feel right and end up doing what isn’t right
- You hesitate to say, “no”
- You hesitate to say, “yes”
- You hesitate to take a leap of faith, missing out on great opportunities
- You hesitate to avoid failure or rejection which results in an internal feeling of failure and rejection
Hemisphere 2 — The superpower of masterful hesitation
The Latin root for master is “magister”, which is, “chief, head, or director.”
Think about that!
To practice masterful hesitation and live in this hemisphere is to be the chief, the head, the director of your hesitation. It is to take control, take the wheel and take the lead. It is to master your hesitation so it works for you and not against you. Live in this hemisphere of masterful hesitation and it will become your superpower.
- You hesitate to interrupt a conversation and listen first
- You hesitate, gather your thoughts, then speak
- You hesitate to flood recruiters with job applications by first understanding the role and applying to each job deliberately
- You hesitate and resolve not to speak ill words towards a company or coworker
- You hesitate and boldly reject doing work that is ethically wrong
- You hesitate to offend, hurt, or cause harm to an individual by deeply caring for their emotional safety
- You hesitate to consider outcomes then act in a timely manner
- You hesitate to lie and replace words with honesty
- You hesitate to point the blame and take full responsibility
- You hesitate to tap the “snooze” button once more, but resolve to get up, get going and make a difference today
The You Experience Takeaway
Masterful hesitation can be a curse or a superpower. Living within each hemisphere has direct and lasting consequences to the way others experience you. Above all, hesitating should be accompanied by this vital question:
- Who or what is being affected by my hesitation?
My hope is that we will all find ways to master our hesitation for good and influence others to do the same through our actions.
The You Experience is a series of tips and career-changing advice I’ve uncovered in my pursuit to help others design the way they are experienced. Ignited by the words of Mariah Hay, Head of Practices at Pluralsight, my mission is to help you, “Apply your UX skills to the way people experience you.”
- Part 1: Energy Matching
- Part 2: Having 20/20 Social Vision
- Part 3: What’s in a Name?
- Part 4: The Art of Listening
- Part 5: Self SWOT Analysis
- Part 6: Shine
- Part 7: Gratitude
- Part 8: Share Your Journey
- Part 9: The Halo Effect & Your Personal CTA
- Part 10: Masterful Hesitation
