NOTE: This post is about the theoretical underpinnings of my approach to helping people follow through better. If you’re not interested in knowing what’s “under the hood,” you may want to skip this post.
I’ve always been intrigued by what we can learn about one field by studying another field that seems on the surface to be totally unrelated.
That’s why years ago I decided to read a physics textbook just to see if physics might shed light on how to help people follow through on their own good intentions. To be honest, as I flipped through the pages, I stopped often to question my sanity. What could I possibly learn about following through in a physics book? What, if anything, do physics and follow through have to do with each other?
But guess what? I learned a lot.
The mechanics of human behavior: physics and follow through
Yes, there are uncanny parallels between what we know about a subfield of physics known as Mechanics, and the principles that drive human behavior.
While Mechanics uses terms like force, resistance, friction, momentum, and inertia to explain, predict, and influence the behavior of objects, these very same terms can be used to explain, predict, and influence human behavior. In the simplest example, the more resistance you feel to doing something you intend to do, the more force it’s going to take to get you to do it.
What I found especially helpful was learning about simple machines that benefit from mechanical advantage.
Simple machines, like the lever and the inclined plane, reduce the amount of force or effort required to get a given amount of work done.
The lever allows you to get a larger amount of work done by applying a smaller amount of force or effort at the right point or in the right way. (Just picture a child and an adult on a playground slide. If the adult is sitting much closer to the fulcrum than the child is, the child can lift the much heavier adult.) And the inclined plane (a ramp or a staircase) makes it possible to lift a heavy object to a desired height by allowing you to approach that height incrementally rather than all at once.
Paving the way
Thinking about tools like these paved the way for me to eventually develop specific follow through strategies and general follow through principles. But perhaps even more importantly, they first helped me understand why we so often do such a lousy job of following through.
We humans often fail to follow through because we rely directly on our willpower to overcome the resistance we feel to doing what we intend to do. This is a big mistake because, as a force, our willpower is seldom strong enough on its own to get the job done. In a very real sense, relying on willpower directly is as foolish as trying to lift a car with your bare hands instead of using a jack.
Accomplishing more with the willpower you have
I discovered that a key to following through is to apply willpower in a way that allows us to benefit from something akin to mechanical advantage in physics. We do this whenever we deliberately create situations that make it easier – require less willpower — to do what we intend to do and/or make it harder – require more willpower — to violate our intentions.
To illustrate, if you intend to eat healthier snacks, don’t just try to follow through. Instead, use leverage to amplify what you can accomplish with the willpower you have. If you use your willpower to deliberately make the wrong snacks harder to get and the right snacks easier to get, you’ll need less willpower to act in accord with your intention.