"Keep your distance, and watch out for idiots and maniacs"

"Keep your distance, and watch out for idiots and maniacs".  What father gives this advice to his 16 year old son?  I do.

I'm teaching my 16 year old son how to drive.  A couple of months ago, we were driving to Chicago to visit colleges.  Traffic got very light on I-65 between Indianapolis and Chicago.  I decided this would be a great chance to give my son his first experience driving on a highway.

But I wondered what coaching to give him before I'd let him hurtle down the highway at 65 mph.  I'd been reading in the book "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength" by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney that it is exhausting to make lots of conscious decisions.  Once you get exhausted, you start to make mistakes.  I knew that my son has not yet had time to develop good driving habits.  He doesn't yet do anything on "auto-pilot".  How could I simplify his decision making so that we'd make it to Chicago alive?

First, I told him to be antisocial.  "Keep your distance from all the other cars.  Drive for space.  If someone keeps driving right next to you, speed up or slow down until you have space around you."

Next, I passed on the wisdom of the late, great comedian George Carlin who is pictured above.  In his classic "Idiots and Maniacs" routine, George said, "Have you ever noticed that everyone driving slower than you is an IDIOT!  And everyone driving faster than you is a M-A-N-I-A-C!!!!!"  See this clip on You Tube:  Idiots and Maniacs.

I told my son, "Keep your distance, and watch out for idiots and maniacs.  When the maniacs come racing up behind, look for a chance to let them pass you.  And when an idiot in front of you makes you slow down to a crawl, look for a chance to pass them."

A simple enough strategy, but I waited until I knew he could tell the difference between an idiot and a maniac before I pulled into a Rest Area and handed him the car keys.

Decision Free Driving

I just finished driving for 2 and 1/2 hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  And the only reason I have the energy to write in this blog right now is because I practiced "Decision Free Driving".

Whenever possible, I drove in the "Decision Free Lane".  That's the middle one.  In the left lane, I have to keep deciding whether to change lanes to let the guy behind me pass by.  In the right lane, I have to decide whether to speed up or slow down to let someone merge.

I drove at "Decision Free Speed".  I went with the flow of the traffic in the center lane most of the time.  I didn't need to constantly judge whether I was risking a speeding ticket.  Plenty of "police bait" kept passing me on my left.

When traffic got very light, I couldn't "go with the flow of traffic".  There was no flow.  Just my car in long stretches.  So what speed should I drive?  I let "cruise control" take over.  Speed limit plus 5 so that, again, I didn't have to think about speeding.

I listened to "Decision Free Radio".  Pandora.  Commercial free music so that I wouldn't feel compelled to switch from one station to another.

The older I get, the more I realize that saving 5-10 minutes per hour by pushing my speed, changing lanes, watching for cops with my foot hovering over the brakes in case I see one is exhausting.  The book on willpower that has been the subject of my last few posts has made it clear that all these little driving decisions sap energy and willpower.  On a long drive alone at night, I'd rather conserve my energy by keeping things simple.

Willpower: when to work it, when to rest?

When I started reading Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, I was confused at first.  The first few chapters talked about how all people get drained if, over an extended period, they exercise willpower or make many decisions.  Baumeister was one of the top researchers in this field of psychology and coined the term "ego depletion" to describe how we increasingly lose our ability to push ourselves, to resist temptation, to make good decisions, if we make too many decisions or push our willpower too long in one sitting.  He describes judges from Israel who heard prisoners plead for parole all day long.  Early in the morning, the judges were fresh.  They granted parole, on average, 65% of the time.  But granting parole is a risk.  What if the felon repeats the crime?  By late afternoon, the judges found it easier to play it safe.  They granted parole just 10% of the time.

What confused me is this:  are the author suggesting that we avoid making decisions?  Should we avoid pushing ourselves?  Should we avoid doing anything difficult because, as the authors say, we have a limited amount of willpower to use for all the tasks and decisions in the day?  Should I just go for the easy way all day long so that I've conserved my willpower for emergencies?

The answer is both yes and no. 

• Yes, I should conserve willpower.  It helps to be aware that willpower and good decision making are both limited resources.  Best to not waste them on things we don't really value.  An example for me is driving in the center lane of the highway so that I don't need to make decisions about letting faster cars pass me or whether to speed up or slow down so that cars entering the highway can merge.  Better to stay fresh for tough decisions at work or at home in which it matters to me to be at my best.
• But, no, I should also exercise willpower.  Later in the book, the authors describe "Willpower Workouts".  Research shows that willpower can be strengthened if you take on just 1 or 2 things at a time that require willpower.  For example, students in a study who were told to stand up straight or sit up straight whenever they thought about it ended up with improved willpower in all areas of their lives versus a control group.  Without being told to do so, they ended up studying more, exercising more,  amd eating better.

So the bottom line is, don't make 20 New Year's Resolutions because that isn't realistic for almost anybody.  And, yes, don't make trivial things like driving too complicated and draining because you are better off saving your limited willpower for things that matter more.  But it is always a good idea to have SOMETHING, some part of your life that you are pushing yourself to change.

e-mail fatigue

So THAT'S why I hate e-mail!  Decision fatigue!

Lately, I've been writing posts based on the book Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney.  I've been blown away by the author's explanation of "decision fatigue", the fact that any long, uninterrupted series of decisions--if we don't get a rest and maybe a bite to eat before we continue--is going to drain us.  Big decisions with a lot at stake are the most draining, of course, but even trivial stuff like which lane to drive in on the highway saps our energy.

So now I know why I hate e-mail.  At my job I get at least 100 e-mails per day--not including the junk mail that I know I can delete instantly.  All the others require decisions.  Do I file this for later?  Can I just delete it?  What's this guy asking for?  All too often, people want something--expect something--but they don't just come out and say it.  I have to DECIDE what they want, and now I know why this drains me.

And then there are the tiny decisions:  sort by date?  by author?  by subject?  If I sort by subject, I wonder if I'm neglecting something urgent.  If I sort by date, I wonder if I'm missing the chance to respond to and then delete 10 messages that are all part of a chain.  So I go back and forth but research has shown that even these small decisions are draining.

And then if I let my inbox get too big, and it's often well above 300, I repeat decisions on the same e-mails for weeks.  I see again that old e-mail.  I didn't know what to do with it yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that, and I don't know what to do with it today.  But now I've struggled with decisions multiple times for the same e-mail.  This is why many time management experts such as David Allen with his "Getting Things Done" system urge you to get the inbox to zero almost daily.

This is my current 30 day goal.  Started 6 days ago with my inbox at 380 at 9 am.  Started to graph the size of my inbox every morning at 9 am.  Showing the graph to a friend each day.  I told him he's holding me accountable to improving every day.  He didn't volunteer for the job.  But I told the poor guy he has the job now because he sits next to the printer.  Every day I show him the graph and I feel compelled to have progress each day.  He just laughs at me, but my inbox is already down to 220.  And I don't dare to walk past him on any day with a graph that shows anything less than progress.