Page 54 - The Power to Change Anything

Find Vital Behaviors 43

gence, and he won’t try to play catch-up by eating too little or
exercising too much. Instead he’ll return immediately to his
updated health plan and follow it carefully.
Finally, Henry will conduct dozens of mini experiments
to learn what actually works for him. Rather than try any one
thing and bet on it, he’ll play with different exercise techniques,
recipes, shopping patterns, restaurants, and so forth until he
finds what suits him best.

SUMMARY: SEARCH FOR VITAL BEHAVIORS

Search for Behaviors. Take care to ensure that you’re search-
ing for strategies that focus on behavior. Don’t let experts pass
off outcomes as behaviors. You already know what you want to
achieve; now you want to learn what to do. Be leery of vague
advice. If you can’t immediately figure out what the expert is
telling you to do, then the advice is too abstract and could
imply a number of possible behaviors—many of them wrong.

Search for Vital Behaviors. Master influencers know that a
few behaviors can drive big change. They look carefully for the
vital behaviors that create a cascade of change. No matter the
size of the problem, if you dilute your efforts across dozens of
behaviors, you’ll never reach critical mass. If your problem is
common, odds are the research has already been done for you.
When behaviors must be customized to your personal or
local circumstance, look for vital behaviors by studying posi-
tive deviance. Look for people, times, or places where you or
others don’t experience the same problems and try to determine
the unique behaviors that make the difference.

Search for Recovery Behaviors. People make mistakes, and
yet some find a way to quickly get back on track rather than
sink further into despair. Henry, for example, learned that fail-
ing to follow his dietary plan one day should cue him to look
for where he went wrong and then to take corrective action—