Dear Journaling.com Subscriber,
This newsletter is a little long, but stay with me. There are some gems inside.
My name is Rebecca Kochenderfer and I am the Founder & Host of Journaling.com. I am working on my doctorate degree in Life Design. What I am learning is transforming my life and I believe it will transform your life too.
As humans, we have the amazing ability to soul-search, to choose and to create. And yet we have the tendency to accept things as they are — to blindly accept the “defaults” in our life. Why do we do this?
This newsletter explores “the psychology of default “ and how we can break out of default-mode and begin creating a life of our own design.
To start us off I want to tell you about an experience I just had with “default.”
I had gone out to my patio and was thinking to myself, “It might be nice to stretch out on the lounge chair instead of sitting in my usual spot on the swing.” But the lounge chair was set up facing the wrong direction. It was looking away from the grass, and what I really wanted this morning was to face the lawn so that I could see the birds playing in the birdbath. What to do?
I almost “accepted the default” and was about to sit down in the lounge chair as it was, even though I would be facing a wall for the next 3 hours. Why was I willing to do that? The obvious thing to do was just to move the chair to where I wanted it to be. But that would require me to make an effort AND it would also mess up the established arrangement of the furniture (the status quo).
Then a thought came to me. “If I am not willing to change the little things in my life, how am I going to have the courage to change the big things?” So I took a breath and I moved the lounge chair to where I wanted it to be. And of course the change was easy, even though it had felt daunting just a moment before.
How many times in our lives do we “sit facing a wall” — perhaps staying in a relationship or at a job that is not what we want — because change feels too hard?
Several years ago, a company called Cornerstone OnDemand discovered something very interesting. Their mission was to help employers recruit and retain workers. As part of their hiring process, they required job applicants to take an online assessment. When Cornerstone analyzed the data from the 30,000 people who took their online test, they discovered something they didn’t expect.
They discovered that the applicants who used a “non-default browser” stayed on the job 15 percent longer than those who used the computer’s default browser. (The default web browser for Apple computers is Safari and the default browser for Microsoft computers is Internet Explorer. At the time, the non-default browsers included Firefox and Chrome and it didn’t matter which non-default browser the person chose.)
Cornerstone discovered that if a “default browser employee” encountered something about their job that they didn’t like, they would just quit. But the “non-default browser employees” were willing to look for a solution to their problem, in much the same way they looked for a better browser.
Why do we automatically use the default browser on our computer rather than seeing if there might be something we like better? Why was I willing to sit facing a wall for 3 hours, rather than simply move my lounge chair?
It turns out that there are some powerful psychological reasons why we often live by default, rather than by design.
The Psychology of Default
One reason has to do with “decision fatigue.” The average adult makes over 35,000 decisions a day. When I walked out to my patio, my “decision making tank” may have already been running on empty. When our tank is low, we tend to accept things as they are, rather than make any more decisions.
Decision fatigue can also sap our willpower and drive us to the default option. For example, rather than work out on the patio as I had promised myself, if my tank has been emptied by all of the decisions I made that day, I might just plop down on the couch and watch tv. Willpower, scientists have discovered, is a finite resource that can be drained by decision fatigue.
Drained willpower can then lead to what psychologists call “the what the hell affect.” If I feel I’ve already failed because I didn’t work outside as I had planned, I might tell myself, “What the hell. I’ve failed already so I might as well have a big bowl of ice cream and watch TV.” All my designs for the day to work, eat healthy and exercise have just gone out the window.
Or maybe drained willpower isn’t the problem, perhaps I have developed “learned helplessness”. If I failed every time I attempted to “move the lounge chair”, I might eventually give up and never try again. Through the experiences of our life we can come to believe that we are helpless and powerless.
Another reason we live by default and not design may be that we have been “punished by rewards”. Many of us have been conditioned to look outside ourselves for validation and reward (external validation). When I designed my patio, people praised me for how beautiful the furniture placement was. I liked their praise. So even though I was internally motivated to make a change, I was tied to the external reward of praise and I didn’t want to lose their support. (My neighbor, who is a doctor, has fallen into this trap. She is internally unhappy with her work, but she is rewarded financially and socially for being a physician and she is afraid of losing those external rewards.)
There might be one final psychological reason affecting my experience with the lounge chair. Carl Jung called this “collective unconscious”. These are beliefs we hold that are based on what others have taught us. What if I have been conditioned by my culture to believe that moving the lounge chair is for males only? Or for whites or young people only? Sometimes we accept the default because “this is the way things are.” This is how life is supposed to be.
Isn’t that fascinating?!
Living by design, not default is an exciting idea. Your homework assignment (should you choose to accept it) is to notice if there are places in your life where you are “accepting the default”, rather than “moving the lounge chair” and making a life of your own design.
I’d love to hear what you discover about yourself. Feel free to write to me — [email protected]
Until we meet again … keep Living by Design, Not Default.
Rebecca Kochenderfer
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