5: The Habit of Success
The chapter opens with an anecdote about a kid from a broken home, who never learned basic work ethics or human interaction, but who became a success as an employee and later store manager for Starbucks. It's noted that the coffee shop chain provides training in life skills for employees, and focuses on the topics of habits and willpower.
The firm recognized that getting people to pay a high price for a cup of coffee had to do with the environment and culture of the store, and that employees were the foundation of that culture. The phrase "we're not in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business serving coffee" reflects that basic job skills are less important than behavior. And the key behaviors are focus and emotional control. These were traits cannot be faked, nor can they be something practiced only during working hours, but had to be genuinely ingrained in the entire lives of employees.
This notion has spread to a number of other larger firms as well, particularly those who hire unskilled laborers into their first professional job - mostly retail and food service. The main problem with employee failure is self-discipline. Tardiness, absenteeism, inattentiveness, rudeness, and a host of other problems are all the result of lacking self-discipline.
Another extended anecdote deals with elderly patients recovering from surgery to their legs - knee, ankle, and hip injuries cause a great deal of pain, and successful recovery requires physical therapy almost immediately after surgery to prevent scar tissue from paralyzing the joint. It doesn't help that most of the patients are elderly, set in their life routines that are generally quite sedentary.
As part of the therapy, one hospital provided patients with workbooks to log exercise and set daily plans. This was optional, but it was found that those who used the workbooks recovered about twice as quickly as those who did not. Also, among those who completed the workbook, success was higher among people who provided more detail about what they would do each day - including very meticulous things such as when they'd use the bathroom, what they would eat, and what they would wear. Some of them had minute-by-minute schedules. Others had contingency plans for how to deal with any obstacles that arose.
Back to Starbucks, essay-writing is a component of their employee development. Rather than telling employees how to deal with a rude customer, they ask them to write a plan for how to deal with a rude customer. It also provides them with written routines to follow. In essence, this is teaching people routines to follow and to recognize the cues when those routines should be activated.
It's alter suggested that this kind of approach makes employees feel more engaged: they have come up with their own plans, guided and coached by their employer, rather than being told what to do and having to comply with instructions into which they have had no input. A study at "a manufacturing plant in Ohio" noted a 20% increase in productivity, shorter breaks, less absenteeism, and reduced errors after employees were allowed to design their own uniforms and had input into their work shifts.
A UP study of eighth graders is mentioned, attempting to correlate personal characteristics to academic success, and found that self-discipline was more closely correlated to academic and professional performance than any other characteristic, including intelligence.
There's reference to the Stanford Marshmallow experiment, suggesting a correlation between self-control and success.
There's a bit about characteristics and skills: a skill is the technical knowledge of how to do something, but does not provide the motivation to do it. Chances are everyone knows how to exercise and eat a healthy diet, but they choose not to. It is not enough to teach people how to do something or provider them tools to make the task simpler - it's about giving them the motivation to do it at all.
There's mention of Muraven's experiment, in which subjects were told to skip a meal before a session in which they'd be presented with two plates - cookies and radishes - with half the group told to eat one or the other. When asked to work a puzzle afterward, the cookie-eaters were willing to work twice as long as the radish-eaters. From this, it's theorized that willpower is a limited resource: those who had to eat the radishes and ignore the cookies had exhausted their supply of willpower and had less stamina for the puzzle.
It's theorized that this is the reason that people who seem highly intelligent and disciplined make painfully stupid mistakes: their willpower is exhausted, and they make bad judgments. It's very similar to the way in which a person who is subjected to hard labor loses their manual dexterity through muscle fatigue.
Another experiment (Oaten and Cheng) is mentioned, in which a group of participants was required to exercise for extended periods of time, increasing as the experiment went along. In their personal lives, it was found that as the experiment progressed, they started showing willpower in other areas as well: they ate a healthier diet, smoked and drank less, and so on. This was not required or even asked of them - but it was felt to show that self-discipline is a general characteristic, not something that can be temporarily practiced, and that it spreads into all facets of a person's life.
The same pair did a similar experiment, this time requiring financial self-discipline rather than physical endurance. The same results were found: people who were attentive to finance and pursue savings goals also began to exercise more, eat healthier, smoke and drink less, etc. A third experiment that focused on improving study skills also yielded the same secondary results.
The analysis of these studies suggested that when a person learns self-discipline in one area of their lives, it changes the way they think in general, and this is what causes the spill-over into other areas of their lives.
It's suggested that this is a reason that those who participate in extracurricular activities, such as music or sports, also tend to perform better academically. It's not about becoming a talented artist or a star athlete, but developing discipline in an enjoyable activity that provides immediate feedback (the growth in ability) changes the mindset of the individual so that they develop discipline in the academic pursuits as well.
It's noted that a number of firms have attempted to use "extracurricular" activities to motivate their workforce, but the problem is that participation in these programs is generally very low: it's difficult to go to class or the gym after a full day of work, and if a person isn't already self-disciplined, chances are that they'd rather go home and vegetate. So a lack of discipline prevents them from getting training in being more disciplined.
Another experiment is mentioned that required participants to focus on a rather boring stream of numbers on a computer screen and to press a button when a specific sequence appeared. Those who were treated kindly by the test proctor maintained accuracy in the task far long than those who were treated in a cold and sterile manner. The author suggests this is because their willpower was taxed by dealing with a disrespectful proctor (EN: this brings to mind the principle of reciprocity - that people will do more to please someone they like. I don't expect it's one or the other, but both factors come into play.)