Emily Balcetis in her book Clearer Closer Better describes how our visual experiences drives our behaviors. The key point is what we see inspires us and primes us. We can thus orient our spaces and surroundings to align with our goals. The book walks us through her own journey in deciding to learn drums and become a semi expert at one song. Right from deciding what song to master to making changes in her environment, she describes the 4 key strategies that ultimately help her reach our goal.
The 4 key strategies that help us see things differently and in turn affect behavioral changes are a narrow focus, materialising, framing and a wide bracket. I describe each of them below.
When you’re about to start something new, it always helps to narrow the focus down to a few achievable landmarks. Starting with smaller reachable goals improve our own perception of competence and thus making it more likely to continue moving forward. In her own case, she first picked a song with a very complicated drum solo and then later moved to a different song that required much less mastery over the various elements of a drum set. Reducing the focus to one goal also lowers the perception of the challenge. Focussing also requires one to remove the ambiguity of success. In her own case, she invited her friends for a music show in which she would perform that song. This performance was the final goal and the promise of doing it on a specific date, gave her a clear timeline from which to work backwards.
Visualising is a popular technique that requires people to imagine themselves reaching their goals. Materialising can be thought of as visualising++. We materialise reaching our goals by working through how we will go about succeeding – what actions will we take and when and then imagine how those actions will lead us to our goals. One essential part of materialising is anticipation of hurdles and how we will overcome them. An interesting study on voter turnouts bears testimony to the importance of materialising. Two sets of people were asked to confirm if they would go to vote. One set was just asked if they would do it and the other, how would they reach the polling station and what would they be doing after polling. The second group were basically being asked to materialise their intentions. The second group had a 4% increase in voter turnout (which in elections is usually decisive).
This according to me, was the crux of the book. What we see affects our behavior. All ingredients of success like consistency, impulse control, seeking feedback, etc can be somewhat controlled or driven by our visual experiences. The point is whatever you decide to keep in your visual frame, gains attention. This is a problem because it means we are constantly at risk of being distracted. It is also a source of great inspiration. We can change our spaces to suit our goals. The author moved her drum set to a place that she saw regularly and it prompted her to practise more. She calls this adding “visual sparks” to your surroundings.
Being able to read the room is also important in getting feedback. An aspect of visual experience that most of us are not very good at is reading emotions of other people. We generally seek validation from our folks and by ignoring their subtle emotional cues, we ignore the negative feedback that might be coming our way. The negatives are almost as important as positives and we must try and be accepting of them. Impulse control can also be somewhat achieved by moving things around. This was similar to the 20s rule that was discussed in the happiness advantage. More on this in the next point about adopting a wide bracket.
Wide bracket can be thought of as the opposite of narrow focus but with a slight difference. Having a wide bracket means being conscious of many more considerations than what just meets the eye. It is related to being mindful of the unintended consequences too. We can prime ourselves to be thinking of a wider timeline or larger end goal or anything more broad by adding visual sparks. An interesting study on how alluding to the current season, as opposed to today, affected people’s choices and impulse control shows how we can do this with ease.
It is also seen that marathon runners adopt a wide bracket when starting a race and it’s only when they get nearer to the finish line that they adopt a narrow focus to make sure they meet the goal. Tracking and compiling behaviors (keeping a caloric intake for ex) can help in understanding how impulse behavior is detrimental for long term goals. Narrow focus helps concentrate and a wide bracket helps stay on track for our larger goals. A wide bracket also helps in understanding when it’s time to quit. Often times, giving up is hard but necessary.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.