Book discussion: Switch! How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath

Overall I highly recommend this book. The points made in the book are backed up by stories and there are several examples supporting each one. The book is easy to follow and highly engaging so I was motivated to read the book all the way through to the end. I actually read it 3 times. The first time was a cursory review, the second I took some notes, and the third time I stopped frequently to make many notes for this review. I had to cut a lot of my material out of this review to limit the podcast to under an hour. The goal is 30 minutes. The podcast and these notes will probably not match 1:1 and that’s OK. In the future I plan to make the notes a blog post, so the podcast will not match it exactly.

Top level summary is that this book was written to help the reader make change in their life, others lives, or organizations. Much of the material found here agrees with and is in sync with other resources in which I have researched that overlap in topic and content. The Heath brothers break down the change components into 3 metaphors: a rider, an elephant, and the path.

The rider is your rational self. It analyzes and decides what to do. The rider is to direct the elephant where to go. If the rider can’t get the elephant to go where it wants. (You overeat, or sleep in) the elephant went against the rider. The problem with the rider, is it can over think things, spin her wheels and not make a decision of where to go. Think analysis paralysis. Also with lack of vision, the rider won’t have a clear goal and will direct the elephant in circles.

The elephant is your emotional self. It wants things now, easy, It is the “emotional self” that causes us to fail, because it doesn’t want to make the short term sacrifices for long term payoffs. It can also have enormous strengths like motivation, compassion, and sympathy.

The path can be described as the environment in which you operate. External environmental factors can influence your behavior. It is up to you to change how you react to these elements. You can create behaviors that will assist in changing behavior. Also people around you are also part of the environment, and they can be influenced as well, and influence you.

The trick to making changes, is to appeal to both, the emotional side and the rational side. A reluctant elephant or wheel spinning rider will get you nowhere. And clear the path of all obstacles so your rider-elephant team can reach the destination.

DIRECT THE RIDER

Willpower is a short supply of shear brute force of the rider. It is limited and replenishable on a daily basis. Willpower is the rider in a tug of war with the elephant. Rider can win only for short time. It’s only a matter of time before the bigger elephant tires the rider.

There was an experiment where people were asked to eat a food then make drawings. Cookie eaters had completed more drawings than radish eaters because the cookie eaters used less will power in the process of eating.

What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. We tend to take the default plan (not always optimal) because of decision fatigue.

Mental fatigue and use of will power can result in decision paralysis. Ambiguity and uncertainty causes anxiety which results in mental fatigue, which is cryptonite to the rider.

FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working (success stories) and clone it. The story of Jerry Sternin and Save the Children (Chapter 2) tackling a problem with minimal help and meager resources moved beyond TBUs to help reduce malnutrition in Vietnam. TBU analysis—“True But Useless.” Bright spot nutrition. Eat 4x smaller vs 2x larger meals a day. Mix in crab and shrimp in kids food. Actively feed kids. Feed them when sick. Using cockpit example to discuss TBU from book Duhigg Smarter, Faster, Better. In the cockpit example WW2 fighters and especially modern jet fighter pilots are ov