Tag: story

How To Get Out Of Herd Mentality

Neera

Researchers observed an interesting phenomenon on the 86th floor of the World Trade Centre during 9/11.

When the plane struck the twin towers, one group of colleagues on the 86th floor didn’t panic. Nor did they run for their lives. Instead, they gathered in a conference room to discuss their options.

All of them were terrified. And yet all of them regrouped to see what their friends would do.

The same thing was observed when authorities interviewed several airplane crash survivors.

The first thing people do in times of trouble is not panic.

They look at what their neighbors are doing.

If their neighbors are panicking, they’ll panic too. And if their neighbors are calm, they’ll be calm too.

It’s a typical “monkey see monkey do” response.

Doesn’t matter how intellectually savvy we think we are; deep down we have animal instincts.

And animals live in herds.

Like it or not, we are influenced by our peers and adopt certain behaviors on an emotional rather than rational basis.

We copy our neighbors even in mundane tasks.

Professor Jens Krausse of Leeds University conducted an interesting experiment. He and his colleagues gathered a bunch of people in a big hall and instructed them all to walk randomly inside the hall.

But they gave explicit instructions to 5% of the participants to walk a very particular path.

And guess what happened?

The 95% who were asked to walk randomly just followed the 5% who were instructed to follow the particular path and everyone walked on the same path.

Herds are often irrational.

In the 16th century, tulips were imported from the Ottoman Empire to Holland. Just a few years after arriving in Holland, tulips became the most sought-after commodity in the Netherlands.

At the time, tulip bulbs were worth more than gold and were sold for ten times what a commoner made in a year.

Farmers pulled out the potatoes and other crops from their fields and planted tulips, and what followed was appropriately named “tulip mania.”

There was no rationale for replacing food with flowers, especially when the bulbs were expensive.

Needless to say, the bubble burst. So many tulips were produced that their price fell. Several farmers went bankrupt.

Because we copy things until they reach their breaking point.

More recently, when the pandemic hit the world, the rate of unemployment broke all records in every country. And yet, we saw the stock markets rise.

Why would the stock market rise when the economy is performing so poorly?

This thoughtless copying causes the problem. It’s what causes the mismatch between productivity and the economy.

Technically, the economy should grow as productivity improves.

We always take things too far. The herd mentality leads to irrational actions.

How to escape an irrational herd mentality?

Introduce circuit breakers.

A circuit breaker is an automatic switch protecting the electrical circuit from damage. They switch off automatically when excess current passes through the circuit.

How can you do that?

By doing two things.

Change your environment.

It is the easiest way to escape the herd. We humans are not equipped to go against the herd. Whenever we engage in social behavior, our brains release oxytocin which makes us feel blissful. Agreeing with others releases oxytocin and makes us feel warm and safe.

And so, the most effective way to break the circuit and negate this oxytocin bliss is to change the environment.

That’s what Warren Buffett did when he realized he was getting influenced by other stockbrokers. He moved from New York to Omaha, Nebraska. By insulating himself from the crowd, he made better decisions.

What can you do to change your environment?

Develop your cynical muscle.

Question every assumption. And every solution.

You have to dig deeper, which usually takes a lot more effort.

This is often uncomfortable and tiring.

But it’s the only way to know when the herd is wrong.

The Power Of Subtraction

Neera

Richard and Maurice were running a barbeque restaurant in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t doing very well. So they took a brief break to decide what to do.

They audited their sales receipts to see which products were selling more. Once they found out, they wondered: why don’t we focus on these products that are doing well? So, courageously, they slashed their menu from 25 items to a mere 9.

That’s when “McDonald’s Barbeque” actually started growing. The McDonald brothers could improve their food and reduce their costs by reducing their product line. And serve more customers per hour! That’s how Ray Kroc got interested in partnering with the brothers and franchising McDonald’s.

Subtraction is the key to excellence.

Ask a good chef how to make the soup more flavourful, and he’ll tell you to add a few more spices to it. But ask a great chef how to make the soup more flavourful, and he will tell you to boil away excess water.

Ask any Pulitzer prize-winning author, and they will tell you that the art of editing is more important than the art of writing.

Why does subtraction work?

As James Clear says:

There are two paths to improvement”

Option 1: Do more great work.

Option 2: Do less bad work.

Doing less of what is not working intensifies our focus on doing more of what is working. And that is why subtraction helps us succeed faster. By subtracting the inessential, we enable the essential to shine much brighter.

Adding is easier. Subtracting is not.

And that’s because we are hard-wired to add.

Leidy Klotz and his colleagues from the University of Virginia have conducted various experiments that prove that we humans are inclined towards addition.

When an incoming University president asked for ideas to improve things on campus, only 11% of the suggestions involved getting rid of something. Instead, 89% of requests were geared towards adding and doing new things.

In a study where college students were asked to improve their essays and resubmit them, only 17% did so by removing parts of them. 83% of the essays had a higher word count.

Takeaway

  • Subtract the inessential to intensify your focus on what works best.
  • Add monthly reminders to your calendar with a prompt question: “What can I subtract from my workload to focus on core projects?”

How To Turn Minor Frustrations Into Opportunities

Neera

This new age that we live in provides us with medicines, mobile phones, streaming services and much more.

But with all these advances in technology can come a whole range of problems — and problems mean frustrations.

Modern life is frustrating, and it’s usually the small, seemingly insignificant things that, over time, all add up to an even bigger frustration.

These small things have a knock-on effect for the day ahead — another reason they can be so annoying.

A late train might make you late for a meeting, or your phone running out of battery could mean you can’t reply to an important message.

We all cope with many little frustrations every day.

A new study has revealed the 40 things we find most annoying about modern life.

They range from:

  • advertisements without a ‘skip’ button
  • tangled earphones
  • calls from unknown numbers
  • running out of phone battery or data
  • a cracked screen
  • intermittent Wifi connection
  • forgetting passwords
  • late trains
  • paying extra for luggage on flights
  • autocorrect on your phone
  • speed cameras
  • not being able to fast forward the live TV and
  • someone nabbing the social media username you wanted.

Not having enough leg room on a journey, a crying baby on the plane, websites with contact forms instead of email addresses and bars or shops which no longer accept cash payments are also featured on the list.

How many times do you complain on a typical day?

The study also found that during a typical day, adults will complain an average of three times.

Not only that, they almost half admitted to enjoying a whine or moan over the inconveniences modern life throws at them.

Nearly a quarter reckon complaints come from those who enjoy the attention.

Some said it is their national trait to moan and groan. While the study was done in Britain and three in four thought, it’s a typically British trait to have a moan or a groan about things. I am sure if you are an American or an Australian, you are a moaner and groaner too.

People like to whine because it’s easier to whine than find solutions.

It seems like some people have a low frustration tolerance.

What is Low Frustration Tolerance?

Low frustration tolerance (LFT), is a concept used to describe the inability to tolerate unpleasant feelings or stressful situations.

It stems from the feeling that reality should be as wished and that any frustration should be resolved quickly and easily.

People with low frustration tolerance experience emotional disturbance when frustrations are not quickly resolved. Their behavior is then directed towards avoiding frustrating events, which, paradoxically, leads to increased frustration and even greater mental stress.

There could be many reasons for LFT, such as one’s mental makeup. ADHD has been closely linked to low frustration tolerance.

Your expectation levels are also a contributor. But it is the slow build-up that causes the scale to tip.

You can tolerate your partner’s phone notification going off at full volume a few times, but when it goes on day after day, late in the night, and your loved one refuses to do something about it, can get on your nerves.

Low frustration tolerance manifests differently in different people:

  • Habitual procrastination of tasks or activities that cause frustration.
  • Impatience
  • Need for immediate gratification
  • Easily gives up when challenged
  • Easily irritated by everyday stressors.

How To Build Frustration Tolerance

  1. Accept them. Things will go wrong, even those that shouldn’t go wrong. Life won’t always be easy. “Shit happens!” Forrest Gump rightly concluded. So suck it up.
  2. Take a few deep breaths. Breathing helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the calming part of the nervous system. It slows down emotional reactions to the triggers and helps you calm down.
  3. Frustration is the emotional reaction to thoughts. Change your thoughts and manage your reaction.
  4. Turn them into opportunities. Take action. Fix the source of frustration, as Malcolm McLean did.

Malcolm Mclean owned a trucking company in the early nineteenth century. His job was to transport goods to the shipping yard for shipping abroad. Once, he got the contract to transport cotton bales to the port of Hoboken.

He brought the cotton bales but had to wait almost an entire day till dockworkers could load the crates full of cotton onto the ship.

Dockworkers and longshoremen would load and unload crates and barrels by hand. It was a slow, slow process.

So out of frustration, McLean asked himself: why can’t they load entire trucks onto the ships themselves?

And he realized why.

Because it was impractical for a truck owner to lose his truck for weeks at a time while the ship was sailing the seas.

Also, the trucks were heavy and would lead to unnecessary weight being added to the ships.

But McLean didn’t want to keep on putting up with the wait.

He wanted to find a solution.

Not long after, a solution came to him — divide the truck. Break the container from the wheels.

That was it. McLean invented the shipping containers that changed the face of world trade.

What is frustrating you at the moment?

How can you turn it into an opportunity to invent a solution?

Is it not being able to write every day? How can you turn that into an opportunity?

Is it calls from unknown numbers? How can you address it so that they don’t annoy you or waste your time?

Is it the amount of data on your phone? What can you do to keep it under check?

Once you find the solution, you can help several people who are frustrated by the same problem.

You might change the way things are done.

One of my sources of frustration is digital clutter. Here is what I have been doing to tackle it.

  1. Folders and Documents: Once a week, I will spend half an hour deleting old files and documents.
  2. Emails: Delete the ones I don’t want, archive the ones I want to keep, and act. Although I would love to have a zero-email inbox, we all know that strategy doesn’t work. The next best strategy is to organize them in folders. That is what I have been doing. I do them by the sender’s name. This way, I can mass delete emails from Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, and sources like that.
  3. Newsletters: Like everybody these days, I subscribe to several newsletters. But I have unsubscribed, most of them only keeping the ones I read regularly.
  4. Images: I have removed all duplicated images, made physical photo albums of travel pictures, and saved the ones I want to keep in cloud storage.
  5. Social Media: I have restricted social media to once a day, usually at night, while my energy levels are low.
  6. Phone Apps: Each quarter, I go through phone apps and delete any I am not using anymore.
  7. Backup: All my files are backed up on cloud storage.

All these measures have helped me save time, reduce stress, and improve productivity.

A story that will touch your heart

Neera

As you can tell, I am a collector of everyday stories. Here is another one:

One afternoon, Martha Sweeny, was in a coin laundry outside her hometown of stonewall Texas, when half a dozen young motorcyclists suddenly roared up to the gas station next door.

They were all a boisterous, rough-looking lot, and one of them—younger than the other, no more than seventeen—was the loudest and roughest-acting of the bunch.

With several of his friends, the boy entered the laundry, and then something happened when he looked around this small, rural town—and, especially when he notices this older woman observing him.

In one of those revealing moments we’ve all lived through, Martha made eye contact with the boy and saw him hesitate.

Later, after his friends had gassed up their cycles, he told them his starter was on the blink to go on without him. He said he’d catch up.

After the others went roaring off, the boy brought some dirty clothes into the laundry. “His shoulders sagged as if he were terribly weary.

Dust and grease and sweat-stained his shirt and jeans. A beginning beard faintly shadowed his chin and leans cheeks. He turned briefly, our eyes met again. Emotions flickered across his face—doubt, longing, pain?”

Moments later, he ran his clothes through the washer and dryer, then disappeared into the men’s room.

When he emerged ten minutes later, he was wearing clean pants and shirt and he had shaved his scraggly beard, scrubbed his hands and face, and even combed his hair.

He now grinned in Martha’s direction and jumping on his motorcycle, zoomed away.

Not following the others, but going back the way he’d come—back toward home.

Every time I read this story, I get a lump in my throat. And that is the aim of the stories. To evoke emotion. To bring out a single tear.

Everyday Stories

Neera

In the last few posts, I have been sharing everyday stories with you. Ordinary stories from ordinary lives.

Yet they are compelling and stay with us forever.

Some of the best writing—the kind that the readers readily identify with—comes out of all the little happenings in our daily lives.

How little snippets from our daily lives get stored in our memories, percolate there, and then turn into stories, have fascinated me.

A few weeks ago, when I sat down to write my father’s eulogy, the first thing that came to my mind was his hands.

My father had big, soft, and caring hands. The kind of hands a father should have. I started writing about them and out came to a story that I didn’t know existed in my memory vaults.

When I was a little girl, on one hot summer day while playing in a park, I got thirsty. My father led me to a water tap where I tried to drink water with my hand. My tiny hands couldn’t hold much water. Watching me struggle, he cupped his hands, filled them with water, and let me drink from it. My thirst was quenched with just one handful.

Out of millions of such snippets, I was surprised that this one surfaced.

I wondered why. Why didn’t I recall so many other things we did together? Why was nostalgia didn’t take me to the jokes he cracked or the poetry he recited?

Following that, another snippet of memory surfaced. This time he was putting five-years-old-me to sleep by patting my forehead.

Then another one. A photo from my wedding day. He had his hand over my head in the form of a blessing.

It made sense. My father was the symbolic protective hand over me all my life.

But that was not the reason for these memories to come flooding on the morning of his cremation.

It was because he held my hand briefly when he took his last breath, as if reassuring me one last time that everything was fine. He was fine. I will be fine.

The memory of his touch conjured other similar memories.

That is perhaps how everyday stories are formed. One memory recalls another one until they all get interconnected.

Stories are all around us. The trick is developing an active curiosity about them – the way a child does.

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”- Eudora Welty in One Writer’s Beginning.

Better than anything else, that probably summarizes what these personal stories are all about and what they tell us about the diversity and story worthiness of ordinary people.

They speak to our sense of closeness.

Columnist George Will once put it so succinctly:

“It is extraordinary how extraordinary an ordinary person is.”

And even more extraordinary is the number of stories they’re carrying around—waiting to be written.