As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of the personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly, and I was particularly enthralled by a recent guest post (by Ramit Sethi, whose own blog is I Will Teach You To Be Rich). Ramit’s post on the psychology of passive barriers (subtitled “Why your friends don’t save money, eat healthier or clean their garages”) really struck a note with me. Ramit picks up on ideas promoted in some recent bestsellers like Freakonomics and The Tipping Point, and gives some powerful examples of the ways in which seemingly small barriers can lead to success or failure. As Ramit says, “I think the source of 95%+ of barriers to success is…ourselves. It’s not our lack of resources (money, education, etc). It’s not our competition. It’s usually just what’s in our own heads. Barriers are more than just excuses — they’re the things that make us not get anything done. And not only do we allow them to exist around us, we encourage them. There are active barriers and passive barriers, but the result is still the same: We don’t achieve what we want to.”
Many of his examples made a lot of sense to me on both a personal and a professional level. When I started running again after my daughter was born, I joined a running training club and the coach gave some excellent suggestions of how to eliminate passive barriers to exercising: before you go to bed, put your running clothes on the bathroom floor so that you step on them in the morning; put a list of running routes of various distances on your front door so that you don’t have to think about where to go; make a running date with a friend that is so early in the morning that you wouldn’t dare call them to cancel for fear of waking up the whole household at 5:30 AM. Passive barriers also go the other way, as in Ramit’s example of freezing your credit card in a block of ice; if you say you’re really only going to use it for emergencies, why not keep it where it takes some effort to get at it? After reading this article, I realized that this phenomenon is one reason why our family watches very few movies; we own only a few DVDs and don’t have Netflix, so procuring a movie involves biking or driving to the library or video store. Normally when I’m confronted with that option, I just choose to do something else.
I think that we can apply these passive barrier techniques to many aspects of freelance translation work too. In my case, I habitually avoid doing banking tasks and accounting because I just despise them. Because I despise these tasks, I seek out passive barriers that are “preventing me from getting the job done.” Can’t find the calculator, don’t have any more deposit slips, etc. This habit got so bad that I came within a couple of dollars of bouncing a check from my business account at the same time that I had over $4,000 in payment checks sitting on my desk. So, I created an “accounting kit” which is within arm’s reach of my desk. In it I keep my business account checkbook, deposit slips, envelopes, stamps, a calculator and (the clincher) my favorite roller-ball pen, which I only allow myself to use for doing accounting. A little gimmicky? Sure! But it gets the job done; I find that now, I don’t enjoy accounting any more than I used to, but at least I do it.
Any thoughts on the passive barriers that you need to add to or remove from your work life?
Your accounting issues sound familiar; for me the numbers differ and are expressed in different currency units, but the problem is the same. For many processes in a shared office, I find that “psychological engineering” is essential. For example, we had a computer dedicated for account management purposes and project scheduling, which had previously been managed by one person alone. The result of “easy” access by anyone in the office is that nobody found time to do the administrative tasks any more. Getting up and walking across the room to use another computer proved to be a significant psychological barrier in an environment with a heavy workload and constant deadline pressure. The only thing that worked was a network solution accessible from the individual translation workstations. This accommodated constant interruptions better.
I have a related technique. What I do is use Schedule Wizard (www.authordirect.com). It is a complete scheduler with pop-up reminders. It also launches programs. When there is a task that I particularly do not like doing such as reminding clients to pay, I have SW make the New Message pop up on a particular day and a particular time and then I am “forced” to write it then and there. It really helps things get done.
Hi Corinne,
I’m catching up on my blog reading after a very busy month.
This is an awesome post, possibly even more cogent than the original post you reference. I’ll have to think about this more, but the passive barrier that springs to mind is related to recording my expenses. I used to be really good at this and then about 2 years ago I just fell off the wagon, became one of those people who scrambles before tax time to record all my expenses for the year. I think the solution is 2-fold: put as many expenses on my business card as possible and possibly change my accounting software/system so as much as possible is automated. That of course is yet another passive barrier to overcome!
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