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Thursday, May 10, 2012
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Box Office Preview: 'Avengers' Passing $800 Million Worldwide, Could Hit $1 Billion By Sunday
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Uncover and Manipulate Your Triggers to Optimize Your Work and Life
May 10th, 2012Top StoryUncover and Manipulate Your Triggers to Optimize Your Work and LifeBy Thorin Klosowski
We're talking about the simple, external triggers you run across every day. These triggers can influence your decisions, make you recall memories, or even cause stress. These external, environmental triggers have an affect on your day, and it's possible to use them to your advantage. In short, you can remove the bad triggers and spotlight the good ones. We'll show you how to find and categorize the triggers around you, but let's start with a basic look at how your brain reacts to what you see before we move on to a step-by-step process for optimizing your environment. How Your Brain Responds to Triggers from Objects, Ideas, and Advertising
You see an object or idea that reminds you of an action and then you take that action. Your actions can be positive, negative, or neutral. The triggers aren't inherently good or bad, they just exist, but you can manipulate your triggers so you're weighted toward a more positive outcome. For instance, if you keep cookies on the counter, you're probably going to eat more cookies. If you surround yourself with objects that trigger creative responses (books, pictures, quotes, whatever works for you) you could see an increase in your idea generation. In the case of advertising, triggers are the essence of how products get sold to you. We've talked before about how ads manipulate you, and one of those manipulative tactics is to trigger a need to purchase something you didn't know you wanted. This is done in all sorts of ways, from glorified price dropping ("Buy now, one day only!" or "Buy One Get One Free!") to actually triggering an emotional response that makes you want to buy something. The truth is ads use the same tactics you do to yourself. Your environment is filled with positive and negative triggers—the knick knacks on your desk; the rotten banana in the fruit basket; the unused running shoes—all of these things have a slight impact on your decision making on a daily basis. What really matters is that you can control these triggers to a point. As Psychology Today points out:
With that in mind, let's start tracking and labeling your personal environmental triggers. A Step-by-Step Guide to Tracking the Triggers in Your EnvironmentSince most triggers are entirely subconscious you have to make a mental effort to find where they're coming from. This means you have to dedicate time where you're mindful of your environment and your habits. The end goal is to remove as many of the negative triggers as possible (you can't get them all) and try to find your positive triggers so you can accent your environment with more of them. Step 1: Track Your Triggers
Start by keeping basic notes of your habits, random (but useful) thoughts, and even odd emotions. Keep an eye out for: memories, ideas, habits, and tasks triggered by objects. Write them down in a notepad with as much information as you can. Include the following:
Don't worry about rationalizing any of this data right now. The first step is just collection. Chances are that more often than not you're not going to recognize a trigger, but if you track all the right information you'll start to form a bigger picture. Step 2: Evaluate Your Notes and Figure out the Real TriggersTriggers are not an exact science, and everyone has different triggers with different reactions. The trick now is to take a look at your data and try to find what triggered a reaction. If your notes are anything like mine, they're partly nonsense. You'll have seemingly worthless bits of information like:
If you didn't find a trigger at the time, return to the scene, take a look around, and see if you find something new. In my case, standing in my stairwell and actually paying attention revealed a framed picture that I forgot was there. After thinking about it I realized the picture was likely the cause of the anxiety. Once you have an idea of what the triggers are it's time to decide if they really matter. Step 3: Categorize and Grade the TriggersYou can't control the entire world. Instead, you can decide where to reduce the effect of certain negative triggers and then look at how to integrate more positive triggers with a simple 1-10 scale. Grab your spreadsheet and categorize each trigger as actionable (the picture on the wall, the cookies on the table), or non-actionable (the bad weather, the morning commute). For the actionable tasks, rate them on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is a positive trigger and 1 is a negative trigger. The top and bottom numbers on the list are what you really care about. Say you notice your kitchen is filled with a bunch of triggers that bring out a lot of bad behaviors. That means you need to work on that area of the house. Let's take a look at how to take action on your results and optimize your space accordingly. Optimize Your Environment with the Information You GatherNow comes the fun part. It's time to get rid of all the triggers that create negative habits or emotions and fill up that space with the positives. You can't force ideas with objects, but you can prime your subliminal and give your willpower a break by creating a good environment. The end goal is to create an environment that reflects what really matters to you and get rid of the rest. Revise Your Home and Workplace
Now take a look at your positive triggers. Ask yourself one question: are they located in places you go often or are they hidden away? If they're hidden away, you should move them to fill in those negative spaces. For myself, a lot of this work was done in the kitchen. I moved certain types of pots that were hidden away to a pot rack so I remembered they existed. I picked up a fruit basket so I'd remember to eat my fruits. I completely rearranged my little pantry closet so I'd stop forgetting what was in there. I took small steps like moving my running shoes by the door so I'd remember I like jogging. I also moved a couple instruments out of my little studio so I'd remember to play around every day. Photo by Alexander De Luca. Revise Your Digital Workspaces
Additionally, I'm a huge fan of minimizing the amount of apps on your phone, a process we've shown you how to do before. Doing this systematically gets rid of all the useless junk on your phone that triggers bad behaviors and leaves just the apps that are useful to you. Triggers are also a great way to manage your to-do lists. As Fast Company points out, it's a trick used by Getting Things Done author David Allen:
The idea is the same as the environmental approach: plant ideas in your mind by using lists and objects that trigger a reaction. The last big subliminal trigger is ads online. You can use these to your advantage as well. Sure, you can easily block ads with Adblock Plus, but an even better solution is to replace those ads with a positive triggers. Adlesse and Overapps are both cross-platform extensions that allow you to replace ads with widgets. These widgets include art, famous quotes, or random facts. By the end of all this you'll have a comfortable workspace or home that reflects your real goals. If all goes well, it's a place where your positive triggers—the things that keep you on track for goals—are easily accessible, and the bad ones—the triggers that keep you from those goals—are gone. After doing this for a week myself it's astounding how many things I got rid of or moved around even though I never thought of certain things in my home as negative triggers. I took down pictures, moved others to new places where I would actually see them, and completely rearranged my kitchen. It's hard to say how long this will work, but I imagine a yearly review will keep things fresh and interesting. Have some tips of your own? We'd love to hear them in the comments.  |
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Let's Look More Closely at the Great Assassin's Creed III Gameplay Trailer
May 10th, 2012Top StoryLet's Look More Closely at the Great Assassin's Creed III Gameplay TrailerBy Stephen Totilo
I saw most of the footage used in the trailer during a lengthy gameplay demo a couple of months ago. I wrote about it, but very much wanted you to see the game in action. Now that you can I'll talk you through what you're seeing and pause a few times to point out some of the things you might miss during your first viewing. Enjoy. And if you want us to do a commentary track for more video game trailers, please let me know.  |
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![At this Cafe, Nobody Will Call You "Master"](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vSbtjlsVltecaXuSD-VRs_IqQ7i07xpD1QtUHOmijGtHZJ-JDA5HhrWKG2dnkRySwlUs0L1KQy9XlpnL-XKYwk8KmcPeauQbsu0IxTwpCvvz2YoKcqB2yFPO41wI-a=s0-d "At this Cafe, Nobody Will Call You "Master"")
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