The Perils Of Auto-Pilot Behaviour
Edition #155
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation here.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
How To Stop Living On Auto-Pilot
Kiki Fehling is a psychologist and author from Massachusetts, USA. In this article, she writes about why some people feel stuck, empty, unfulfilled, etc. She has shared a guide that provides a framework for building a more fulfilling life.
Here are some key thoughts that can help us understand the issue more profoundly and overcome this syndrome better:
“The reality is that behaviour change is hard, and many people have not been taught effective goal-setting. Also, humans often fall prey to the planning fallacy, a tendency to underestimate the amount of time and effort a task will take. Many people set unrealistic goals and then give up or blame themselves for ‘failing’ when they struggle to reach them.”
Some practical steps are suggested:
Spend time reflecting on your likes, passions, and values. Identify your personal values. Knowing your likes and dislikes, as well as your values, is necessary for determining larger life goals.
‘Draw a picture’ of your Life Worth Living. For example, if knowledge is an important value for you, a Life Worth Living goal might be: ‘I will routinely be learning something new.’
Choose one to four goals to focus on right now.
Make each goal specific, realistic and linked to what matters.
Take action steps towards your chosen goals.
Read the entire article here.
What’s The Goal Of The Goal?
Dan Heath is an American bestselling author, speaker, and fellow at Duke University's CASE Centre. His new book, RESET: How to Change What’s Not Working, is out now.
Here are interesting thoughts and ideas from a chapter of the book that can trigger your thinking and inspire you to explore more:
Dan provides an interesting perspective on the goal you are trying to accomplish, which we usually may not pay too much attention to: “When you're trying to change the way things work, you can't change everything at once.”
Dan raises a counterpoint about what happens when metric or the measure itself becomes the target: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Dan talks about a provocative thought worth contemplating: the number of times companies or people in the companies sometimes do something (about the goal): “A goal that's inconsistent with the real mission.”
When you ask, "What’s the goal of the goal?” It triggers some interesting thoughts. It helps you see the destination and why the goal is important and worth pursuing. It also gives you leverage points to broaden the context around the goal and narrow the reasons you want to pursue it.
You can listen to the entire episode on:
Djokovic Unmasked
This is a fantastic documentary from the Australian Open about the incredible sportsman Novak Djokovic.
Here are some snippets for you to think about from the documentary:
Early failure and losses don’t deter legends. The mental resilience they exhibit when they lose at the early stage of their career, just when they are starting, provides better lessons to be learnt than from their wins. It’s their belief and dreams that keep them going.
Learning to enjoy what you do is crucial to stay at the top.
It is important to remember that many want to be the best in what they do and succeed, but only a few do. So, you must have the right attitude, try harder and stay consistent.
In the course of your career, there could be many one-time prodigal upstarts, but the ones who end up at the finish line as legends seem unfazed by such sudden upsets as they can bring relentless focus and consistency to overcome them.
Learn to become a fan of your profession if you want to excel in it.
“Nobody is going to remember you for the number of finals you played but the number of titles you have.’
Have a dream and a goal you want to accomplish. Keep moving the goalpost every time you reach closer to that milestone. Then, find a way of looking back at the dream with every step forward and every moment of your life.
“There is no reason to think about the end to the career.” Unretire.
You can click on the above link and watch the video.
The Perils Of Auto-Pilot Behaviour
One of the leading indicators of people or individuals working or living on an auto-pilot at the workplace or home is as follows:
Workplace: Indifference to customer queries, rising volume of complaints, poor customer service or satisfaction scores, consistent delays in meeting committed deadlines, repeated errors or the same mistakes despite interventions, increasing resignation or attrition counts within teams or offices, galloping product failures, customer attrition, etc., are early indicators of things being executed on auto-pilot.
Home: On the personal front, the lead indicators could be taking relationships and choices for granted, lack of understanding and empathy, ignoring the other family member’s point of view, being insensitive to other’s needs and requirements, forcing others to comply with decisions, lack of frequent and agendaless conversations, etc.
As you can see from the above examples, the outcomes of an auto-pilot life are devastating. The irony is that auto-pilot behaviour affects the person and the people they serve, work with or live with. This leads to indifferent attitudes, slow turnaround times, not being proactive and a lack of belief and conviction in what they do.
What are the root causes for people behaving in auto-pilot mode?
Misalignment with what they want and what they do.
Not spending enough time understanding what or where their interests lie.
Doing things or being forced to do things against their personal values.
Unwilling to live with the financial consequences of pursuing what they are interested in. Living beyond their means and hence financial commitments.
Giving in to the pressure of money ahead of self-respect and expertise.
They lack the personal will to walk away if what they do is not fulfilling them enough and to find alternatives, however difficult they may be.
Work or live in a ‘pressure cooker’ environment where they lack the independence and freedom to express their views or thoughts. This leads to emotional scars, making them cynical and indifferent.
Choosing to do things that have the path of least resistance.
In their minds and heads, they cannot reconcile the colossal effort needed to be put in and the risk associated with their professional interests and dreams.
Inability to come to terms with the interest-talent deficit gap that they may have and overcome them.
Unable to make peace with themselves in case they find limited success.
Therefore, they settle for operating on auto-pilot and continue on a downward spiral, leading to poor attitude, indifferent behaviour, broken relationships and poor performance.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
People underestimate the amount of time and effort needed to make a behaviour change.
When measures and metrics become the target, the mission ceases to exist or gets lost in the numbers.
Learning to enjoy what you do is crucial to stay on top. Just having the right attitude, trying harder and staying consistent is vital.