Hello friends, welcome back! 👋 (31st January, 2021)
In last week's newsletter, we talked about the Pareto Principle (a.k.a. the 80-20 rule) and how we can go about flipping it into 20-80 (20% effort, 80% result). How was your experience? Did you see an improvement in your productivity?
Experiencing change
When we experience new change or technique, it often starts with a wave of excitement. 😆 We see the initial improvement and that fuels our excitement even more! 😆 😆
However, as time passes, as we continue to accumulate experience, we start to experience the cost side of change. 😫
In our mini experience on the 20-80 rule; on the first few tasks we may see our productivity improved. However as time goes by, some of us may start to fall back to our original self. We may not be satisfied with our work because we feel 80% means it's not done up to standard. 🤔
If you are experiencing the same, it's totally normal - we are with you too! 😊
The Emotional Cycle of Change
What we experienced in flipping around the 80-20 rule applies to other changes in life also.
In the 12-Week Year book, the author talked about The 5 stages in the Emotional Cycle of Change.
Uninformed optimism
Informed pessimism
Valley of despair
Informed optimism
Success & fulfilment
Image source: https://www.infocusleadership.ca/blog/five-stages-move-emotionally-changing-behavior/
When we first experience change, we are at the Stage 1: "Uninformed Optimism". 😆
Stage 2 - "Informed Pessimism". As we experience more, the cost starts to become apparent and we start questioning ourselves whether it's worth it or not 😔
Stage 3: "Valley of Despair" is where most people give up and revert back to their original self. This is the exact stage that requires us to stick to our change, be persistent and consistent! 💪💪 Having a system and process (week 1 newsletter) helps us get through that.
Stage 4: "Informed Optimism" is when we start to see consistent result BUT the key is not to stop here! 🏃♂️🏃♀️
Stage 5: "Success & Fulfilment". At this stage, we have fully incorporated the change into our routine and the cost is virtually gone. 😌
New insights, new cycle, more confidence 😎
As we complete one cycle, we may discover new insights throughout the journey that can push us to self-improve even further! 🤩
We go through the same cycle of change again BUT with each iteration, we understand ourselves better and are more confident that we can push through it! 😎
So let's keep it up! We are all learning together! 😊 👫
What is your experience?
We hope you find this useful. If you have got any personal success stories you would like to share with the community, we would love to hear and learn from you!
Drop us a message on LinkedIn or Twitter 😊
This week's top 3 #zeroton90 💥
Create 2 - 3 policies for events you frequently encounter 👌 - Julia Galef
Rationale: Create policies and iterate over them so that you get better and better each time you doing the same task. Example policies could be to arrive at the airport 1 hour 20 mins before your flight or a checklist of the things you should bring when you travel
Select one of your projects. Outline the desired outcome. ⭐️ List out the steps or things that are holding you back. Convert these steps / things into daily actions. - Mathew Fraser
Rationale: Overwhelmed when he's thinking of something with too many steps, moving parts or variables. So he writes them down. It could be a simple to-do lists or starting with the desired solution and working backwards thinking about each steps of how I can get there
Review your policies when something went wrong. Ask yourself, "what policy was I following that produced the bad outcome and do I still expect that policy to give the best results overall with occasional bad outcomes?". If yes, carry on! If no, iterate on them! 💪 - Julia Galef
Rationale: Even the best policies will fail some percentage of the time and so we shouldn't abandon them straightaway. Review and iterate over them.
Feel free to check out others too on our LinkedIn page. 😄