Tip 17 - An easy way to develop a ‘Better Path’ to success
Do you eagerly and frantically check items off of your ‘to do’ list? Are there things you are forcing? Are there places where you could ease up? We often don't slow down enough to pay attention to an easy and appropriate alternative.
Here’s a different approach that ...
As all women who have ever shared a toilet with a man can attest, men can be especially spacey when it comes to their, er… aim. In the privacy of a home, that may be a mere annoyance. But, in a busy airport restroom used by throngs of travellers each day, the unpleasant effects of bad aim can add up rather quickly. Enter an ingenious economist who worked for Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam. His idea was to etch an image of a black house fly onto the bowls of the airport's urinals, just to the left of the drain. The result: Spillage declined 80 percent. It turns out that, if you give men a target, they can't help but aim at it.
In the grand sweep of global affairs, dirty bathrooms may be a relatively minor problem. But, by placing fly images on its urinals, the Amsterdam airport was using a technique with broad applications in the world of business. The technique is called
"choice architecture." A choice architect is anyone who influences the context in which people choose - say, by deciding what order to put menu items in, or what path to encourage shoppers to take through a supermarket, or what information to give investors about their retirement savings options, or what to tell patients deciding how to deal with a medical problem.
Because seemingly tiny changes in the environment can influence behaviour, choice architects wield immense power. Theirs is a gentle power, since they merely nudge rather than coerce. But their nudges can have major effects.
Do you notice how you have been nudged by your environment?
From an article in The New Republic Wednesday, April 09, 2008 by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
