[英]《小決心》作者Caroline Arnold：你的決心為什麼總是以失敗告終（圖靈訪談）

Caroline L. Arnold是華爾街投行裡為數不多的女性技術部門高管，現為高盛董事總經理。在此之前，她在摩根士丹利工作了21年，從開發人員做起，逐步做到了董事總經理。她領導的團隊曾為Google的首次公開募股（IPO）搭建拍賣系統，這是當時最大規模的IPO。她不僅是一位事業有成的職業女性，也是一位盡職盡責的妻子和母親。但和許多人一樣，她也屢屢經歷下定決心與決心往往落空的惡性迴圈，這促使她開始了一個不同以往的新嘗試，不是下大決心或下更大決心，而是制定一個小決心。她把自己的經驗總結成《小決心》和更多的人分享，越來越多的人開始實踐小決心，而所有的實踐都得出同一個結論：小決心確實奏效。

iTuring: Your approaches are based on your personal experiences, successful ones as well as failed ones? Would you mind to share some of these experiences that originate important ideas of your book?

After many years at failing at New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and exercise more, one year I decided to try a different resolution that I thought would be easier. My resolution was “to be organized,” and I went out and bought a bunch of desk organizers, color-coded my files, caught up on old business and congratulated myself on having finally kept a resolution. But two months later my desk was once again piled high with papers. I was so mortified to find that I had failed at my “easy” resolution that I refused to give up. Instead I focused on one small behavioral change that would make me more organized – I began taking all my notes in one notebook. Surpisingly, even this small change in behavior was a challenge to sustain, but it was so reasonable that felt that I just had to succeed, so I stuck with it. And after about four weeks of sticking to this single organizational behavioral change I found that it had become a habit and that I was, in fact, more organized.

Based on my success with the “notebook” habit, I decided to see if I could apply my new approach to diet, where I had failed so many ties before. I examined my eating behaviors and zeroed in on a single change in behavior – to stop eating the cookies in conference rooms where I worked. My company often serviced rich cookies in meeting rooms in the afternoon and I always ate one, and sometimes two. For my second microresolution, I resolved never to eat a conference room cookie again. I could bring my own cookies if I wanted a treat, but I wouldn’t give into the temptation to eat cookies just because they were on the table. I never ate a conference room cookie again.

These were the microresolutions that helped me discover that I could make real progress by keeping my willpower focused on just one or two behaviors at a time. It sounds slow,but making two microresolutions at a time and keeping them for 4-6 weeks before taking on new ones allowed me to make around 20 behavioral changes a year. I lost 22 pounds, became fit, more organized, neater, more punctual, saved more money, managed to get more sleep and improved personal and professional relationships by practicing this method. My friends and colleagues began practicing the microresolution system and also got tremendous results. I refined my system so that I could use the dynamics of personal change to my advantage and also began reading a lot of behavioral, willpower, and habit science to understand why it was that the system I had stumbled on worked so well.

iTuring: Have you heard any interesting or impressive feedback about how people are implementing the approaches in your book?

The very best part of wiritng the book is hearing about people’s microresolution successes, I get a lot of mail on my website SmallMoveBigChange.com. I heard from a musician who always hated to practice until he made a microresolution to practice just 15 minutes twice a day; I heard from another person who had struggled with clutter and made a microresolution never to leave a room without doing something to tidy it; someone else wrote to tell me how their relationship with their spouse was transformed by making a point of immediately connecting on coming home, rather than just rushing to change clothes, make dinner, check on kids. I’ve received scores of letters about weight loss, fitness, career improvement, organization, and relationships. What’s so inspiring about these stories is that they reinforce that real change comes when we examine our own behavior closely and make a marginal change, rather than just trying to be a new person overnight.

iTuring: What are the fundamental reasons that behind the failure of a determination?

The reason that over 90 percent of people fail at their New Year’s resolutions is that they generally make grand, abstract pledges to be different – thin, fit, assertive, kind, thrifty, on time, neat, organized – and then count on willpower to force this global change through. Willpower is too limited and habit too powerful for these resolutions to succeed. Small Move, Big Change is about taking the opposite approach – the focus is on doing something different, not being different. A microresolution directs willpower against a narrow behavioral change that is concrete and absolutely achievable. Because the behavioral change is reasonable, it’s possible to be successful every time until the resolver expects to succeed. And what’s most surprising about making microresolutions is that you discover there is nothing “micro” about them – there is no such thing as an insignificant behavioral change. You probably cannot make yourself a neat person overnight, but you can pledge to always hang up your coat when you come home. If you can build that one pattern consciously, you will find yourself hanging up all your clothes over time. Whereas, if you are a slob and you pledge to be neat you will probably abandon your resolution within a month, without making any progress at all.

iTuring: What type of person is especially difficult to make changes? What will help them conquer their old habits?

I think changing behavior permanently is challenging for everyone. We are all running on a kind of personal autopilot that manages most of our daily activities, and even our attitudes, for us. We don’t have to devote conscious effort to finding our way to the bus stop, or to make a cup of coffee, or to tie our shoes – autopilot does it for us. Autopilot is efficient precisely because it is mindless. Once you decide to change a behavior or attitude in autopilot you are going to have to devote consciousness and energy to it, and that’s both frustrating and fatiguing. So, changing autopilot is hard for all of us, not just some of us. I suppose that for people whose mental health depends inordinately on the comfort of routine and repetition that change is harder for them, but it is achievable.

iTuring: If a plan someone made would cause anxiety, does it mean that the move he/she scheduled is not small enough?

This is a great question. It’s a matter of degree. All behavioral changes, no matter how small, feel awkward and cause stress at first, so the fact that a new behavior feels weird doesn’t necessarily mean that you have over-sized your microresolution. The signs that a microresolution may require tuning is that you just can’t get it done, or while you’re doing it feels like a heavy lift. In such cases, scale back – if your microresolution was to do 30 sit-ups on every odd day and you can’t make it happen, try 30 sit-ups every Monday. It’s consistency that produces change, not bursts of activity that cannot be sustained.

iTuring: Is willpower an inevitable factor in achieving goals? If once in a while bad mood compromises willpower, how does one make moves?

Willpower is an essential ingredient in making personal change, but willpower is a very limited resource. Many people think that when their willpower collapses and they give up their goal it is because they have a weak character, but willpower is not a function of character. Willpower is a limited mental resource that gives out when tapped too often. Willpower, active initiative, and decision-making are actually all part of a single mental resource pool – when you draw down any of theses resources, you deplete the pool for all three. That’s why after a long day of getting things done and making decisions you are much more likely to give up on a resolution. Few people break a diet in the morning, for example, it’s far more likely that they will break the diet at night, when their willpower is depleted. The key to personal change is learning how to use willpower in a strategic, targeted way so that you don’t run out of willpower before you reach your goal That’s what microresolutions are all about.

iTuring: Many people nowadays are losing the ability to deeply focus on something, do you think meditation would help people to calm down and concentrate? What activities or exercises would you recommend to help people to be more focused?

It’s an interesting question, because both mindfulness and mindlessness are important factors in making personal change. To change a personal behavior, you have to be hyper-mindful. For example, if you are trying to improve your posture and you decide that as a first step you are going to stop crossing your legs when you sit, that is going to require focus. You are taking a behavior running mindlessly in the background on autopilot and moving it into the foreground of your thinking, giving it focus and mindfulness. But – here’s the paradox – you are doing this so that in a few weeks your new behavior of sitting without crossed legs can become mindless autopilot, where you don’t have to think about it consciously any more. So to change your behavior your focus your attention on it in a very dedicated way so that it can ultimately become habit, autopilot,mindless. Once your new behavior sticks you can then shift your focus to another personal goal.

It’s amazing what you find out about yourself when you become hyper-mindful of a single behavior. When you try to change a lot, at once, it’s hard to understand why you feel so uncomfortable or why you give up. But when you are just focused on one or two changes, you can really discover the source of your resistance to change, and that helps you to overcome that resistance and succeed.

So, to come back to your question, every microresolution is a mindfulness exercise that reveals something new about yourself. You could also have a microresolution focused on meditating for five minutes a day, doing one yoga pose daily, or slowing down and appreciating an activity that you tend to rush, such as eating.

iTuring: Some people believe that sharing one's goals with friends will help achieving objectives, while some others' conclusion are quite the opposite. What is your opinion on the matter?

I think certain goals lend themselves extremely well to group support, such as an exercise program you do with friends, such as agreeing to walk together to work, or take an exercise class. A buddy can increase the fun and in some cases, keep motivation from flagging. But most of personal change takes place when you’re on your own, and the commitment you are making is to yourself, not others.

iTuring: Sometimes new changes we make contradict with our old self description or identity, family and friends may fail to understand and question these new habits (such as being a vegetarian) . What can we do to reassure our confidence and alleviate their doubts?

Changing what you do changes who you are, and it can sometimes take awhile before the old image we have of ourselves catches up to our new way of doing things. For example, it might take months after losing weight to think of oneself as a thin person. And friends and family often try to lead us back to the comfortable, old behaviors that we used to share with them. For example, if you stop eating bar food, you might end up drinking less and leaving the bar scene early to eat dinner, and this could change the dynamic between you and your pals. If you make sleep a priority, your partner might feel lonely watching late night TV alone. So the first part of change is learning to do things differently, and the second part of change is embracing who we become after changing our behaviors. It’s a process.

iTuring: As a manager, have you tried to influence your colleagues with your idea? If so, how is it going?

Yes, I’ve given a lot of talks at work and I use the principles of change outlined in my book at work all the time, but I don’t call it out specifically. It would probably be very annoying to my colleagues if I were always quoting from my book! I was recently coaching someone who is very smart, capable, but who doesn’t have the influence he should because he constantly defers to others in discussions. When I pointed this out to him he told me that his parents were schoolteachers and that he learned to raise his hand and to wait patiently before speaking. He said that jumping into a conversation went against his nature. “All right,” I said, “but can you at least show the others that you have something to say through your body language and by responding to what they are saying with facial expression, rather than just waiting calmly for your turn. Because it isn’t clear to other that you have something you’d like to say, you are sitting there so quietly.” He said he thought he could give that a try, and this small behavior change proved absolutely transformative. Once people could see that he was eager to engage but just not speaking they made more room for him. I never told him to “make a microresolution” but I observed the source of the difficulty he was having and tried to come up with a small move that would make a big change. I also think about my teams and the small shifts that would makes us more productive and effective. So, yes, I am thinking about how to get leverage at the margin, all the time at work.

---

更多精彩，加入圖靈訪談微信！