Read this story today and wanted to share it with you all… Thought it’s a neat trick to add to our list of strategies on Influence…
"Shrink the Change"
After returning from work, wife saw that kitchen sink was filled with a lot of vessels, waiting to be washed.
She called her husband and asked, “Can you just clean the Tea-Pan, glasses, tea-filter and the extra-large steel cup? So that I could prepare tea. It won’t take much time. I will wash the rest of the vessels after some time”.
Husband, with a lot of resistance, pushed himself hard and reached the Kitchen sink. He began washing the Tea pan and other related utensils. After an hour, he finished washing all the vessels.
After a couple of days, again there were too many vessels lying to be washed and his wife called and asked him, “Dear, Can you wash only the Tea-Pan and related vessels” - Again Husband went to clean only the Tea-pan and related vessels. But he ended up again washing all the vessels.
After cleaning, he was about to leave the Kitchen and something from one of the kitchen-shelves caught his eye. It was the book titled ’Switch’ by Chip and Dan Heath. He was surprised to see the book there and thought “How come this book was outside the bookshelf when I am yet to read this”.
He opened the book and saw the bookmark kept in a particular page under the chapter “Shrink The Change”.
-How to motivate people to do things by shrinking the change and the following paragraph was highlighted in the book.
“House is in mess? Feeling dread to clean? Then go to the worst room in your house-the one you’d never let a guest see-and start cleaning only one room. Only one room. How bad can it be? You can reassure yourself. You can stop cleaning as soon as one room is completed. Starting an unpleasant task is always worse than continuing. So once you start cleaning your house, chances are you won’t stop at one room and soon you would be surprised to see you cleaning the entire house.”
Under the paragraph, his wife had scribbled “Let’s try with Vessels”.
Husband was shocked and looked worriedly at the bookshelves - There are some eighty more books in those bookshelves which he is yet to read.
Many thanks to Nagaraj for sharing this with me.
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