Time to Write

The power of "Thank You"

First, thank you for reading this blog. 

A new study reveals the power of saying 'thank you,' for both the person who says it and the receipient.

Here's how the experiment was reported in Science Daily:

"Published in Psychological Science, research conducted by assistant professor of marketing in the McCombs School of Business at UT Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley at The University of Chicago asked participants, in three different experiments, to write a letter of gratitude to someone who's done something nice for them and then anticipate the recipient's reaction.

In each experiment, letter writers overestimated how awkward recipients would feel about the gesture and underestimated how surprised and positive recipients would feel."

Professor Kumar noted,  "It only takes a couple of minutes to compose letters like these, thoughtful ones and sincere ones. It comes at little cost, but the benefits are larger than people expect."

If you fear that the recipient would find such a note awkward, think about how you'd feel if you got one.

Good, right?

So, to whom will you sent a thank you note today? 

Might it be a good thing to do once a week?

How about going old-school and making it an actual letter or postcard? I bet that would be something the recipient would cherish.

 

How long does it really take to get into a new habit? (And tips for doing it)

Maybe you've run across the idea that it takes 21 days for a new behavior to become a habit. It's all over personal development scene.

Maybe you've tried it and found it didn't work for you (I have).

There's a reason: It actually takes, on average, 66 days.

That's according to a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Of course, that 66-day figure shouldn't be taken as gospel, either. Only 82 people completed the study, and the difficulty of the new habits people took on varied a lot.

The range of time it took an individual to establish a new habit was large--from 18 days to 254 days (!). So the main takeaway, I think, is that the commonly-cited figure of 21 days is too short for most people.

One encouraging find was that missing a day didn't affect the chances of success.

IMPROVING YOUR CHANCES OF SUCCESS

Here's how you can improve your chances of success in forming a new habit:

Own your decision. Make sure you're picking a new behavior that you value enough to stick with it, even if it turns out to take longer than you thought. This means a behavior you want to do, not just one other people think you should do.

Break a large task into smaller chunks and master one at a time. For instance, if you want to skip dessert in order to lose weight and you find that challenging, start by declaring Mondays (or another day) as dessert-free or make it the day you have a piece of fruit for dessert instead of something high-calorie. Once you're used to that, add another day or two.

Figure out where the time will come from. Not all new habits take time, but quite a few do. For instance, maybe you set out to exercise a half hour every day and you stick with it for a couple of weeks but then a week goes by and you realize you haven't exercised at all. Maybe the reason is that you didn't figure out what you're not going to do any more for 30 minutes in order to have time for exercise. 

Keep track. Use a calendar to mark the days you do the new behavior. The longer you go on, the more likely it is that if you are tempted to stop, the tangible sign of how much time you've invested already will help you continue. 

Use interim rewards. For instance, spending 15 minutes a day learning a new language will pay off in six months when you go on vacation to the country where that language is spoken, but six months can be a long time to delay gratification. Create some small rewards to award yourself at the end of each week that you've done the lessons daily. 

Don't be too hard on yourself if you get side-tracked. It may take a couple of attempts but beating yourself up over it is a waste of energy. Instead, figure out why you stopped, adjust what you need to do, and get back to it. 

A documentary trick that also works for fiction films and novels

What makes a character (or a real person) interesting?

An article on Ozy.com reveals, "For filmmakers Elizabeth Delaune Warren and Danya Abt, quirk is key. The eccentricities and complexities that drive people also drive their documentary filmmaking.

'You take someone who’s a potato farmer in Idaho, and you expect a certain thing from them,' Abt says. 'How do they subvert those expectations?'

For Abt, the answer is in resisting the instinct to simplify and instead focusing on those very traits that don’t seem to fit the usual narrative. She believes this is the point at which a character starts to have dimension."

This works great in fiction as well.

The trick is not to automatically go for the opposite--for instance, the pro football player who is an opera buff, or the granny who rides a Harley-Davidson.

That's not to say that there aren't football players who love opera or grandmothers who ride Harleys, but it feels a bit by rote. Instead, it might be a football player whose hobby is woodworking, or a grandmother who coaches a kids' baseball team.

For inspiration, think about the quirks of your family members, your friends--or your own. 

"Sure I'm a homemaker, but I also enjoy taxidermy. I've got a moose in the basement right now."

 

 

Write it right: eke, eek!

This is one of my favorite misspellings recently:

"While this quaint little monster movie doesn't quite manage to eek its potential out for its whole duration..."

What the reviewer meant was eke (although he may have said eek! during the film).

Dictionary.com defines eke as a verb (used with an object): "to increase; enlarge; lengthen."

The verb phrase eke out means to make a living or support laboriously or to supplement, add to, or stretch - "to eke out an income with odd jobs."

The reviewer also would have done better not to break up the verb phrase: that is, "doesn't quite manage to eke out its potential" rather than "eke its potential out."