Yearly Archives: 2025
You’re Never Too Young to Be Old and Grumpy.
Old habits die hard, no matter who you are.
ere is a case in point. Recently, I conducted qualitative research interviews regarding pharmaceutical websites. One participant was a RN who was also the office manager for a medical practice. She was quite young (at least by my standards) – in her late 20s.
Despite being extremely intelligent, she had difficulty navigating around and finding information on drug manufacturers’ websites. When we discussed why this was such a challenge, she revealed that manufacturers’ websites were not where she sought information. She had other online resources that she used, and those resources were organized differently. She pondered, “I guess I’m just set in my ways.”
She saw an unwillingness to depart from familiar habits as a trait of ‘older’ people. However, she admitted to being exactly that way herself. “I guess there’s a cranky, unteachable old person inside all of us,” she said.”
Being crotchety and incorrigible isn’t just for the old. Everybody gets set in their ways, and for good reasons. Habits are automatic behaviors that reduce cognitive load. They simplify tasks and provide efficiencies. Once you’ve established a habitual way of doing something, you don’t have to think about it.
The key to success is knowing when to stick with what works, and when to depart from that and embrace the new. It’s the difference between ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and ‘if it ain’t broke, break it.’
Habits offer important benefits:
-
They ease mental burden. Habits obviate the need to make decisions, meaning you’re not working as hard between the ears.
-
They lead to predictable results. This is essential to efficiency and productivity.
-
They provide discipline. This creates structure and reduces procrastination.
However, habits also have downsides:
-
They make change difficult. Sometimes we must adapt to new or complex situations. However, habits can foster inflexibility.
-
They can breed boredom and complacency. This can lead to reduced motivation and engagement.
-
They can reinforce negative behavior patterns. When a habit is not helping you, perhaps even making a situation worse, it can be hard to break that pattern.
Ultimately habits – like rules – are surrogates for thought. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes not. Long term success requires evolving over time as circumstances change. When the ground shifts, you need to start thinking. This requires adaptability and intentionality – qualities engrained habits don’t promote.
It’s also important to remember that habits might be hard to break because they can define our sense of identity. As Aristotle once wrote, “we are what we repeatedly do.” When a pattern of behavior becomes closely linked to your self-image, changing that pattern might feel like self-betrayal.
So, while it’s valuable to get in the habit of establishing habits, it’s also worthwhile to get in the habit of breaking habits. Rigidity and complacency are very human traits. Always be on the lookout for them.
Control What You Can. Forget the Rest.
Happy New Year to all! I’m guessing that many of you have made some New Year’s resolutions.
As for me, I have resolved for the new year to focus, to the greatest extent possible, on things I can actually control. I also plan to devote as little attention as I can to things that are beyond my control. This is hardly a new idea – the principle goes back at least as far as ancient Greece. As the stoic philosopher Epictetus once wrote, “Some things are up to us, and some things are not.” He also pointed out that trying to control the uncontrollable is inconsistent with living in harmony alongside nature.
While focusing on what you can control sounds great, it’s more easily said than done. But I’m going to give it my best shot. This resolution has gotten me thinking about what is truly within my control, and I’ve come to realize that this is more complicated than I had originally thought.
For one thing, in my field of qualitative research, it’s well accepted that it is unwise to exert too much control over research conversations and interviews. Only by ceding control can we allow conversations to go in unexpected directions and yield creativity and insight that would otherwise be inaccessible. So, even if you can control something, maybe you shouldn’t.
There are also implications for marketing strategy. For instance, you can’t control how consumers behave and perceive your brand. However, you usually can control the brand experience, which can provide some indirect control over behaviors and perceptions. This illustrates the principle elucidated by the Roman philosopher Seneca that, while we can control our own actions and decisions, we generally can’t control outcomes.
So, what makes the question of what you can control so complex? Here are some factors that I think contribute to this:
-
Control is not a binary thing; it’s one end of a continuum (the other end being chaos). While some elements of a situation are clearly controllable, and others clearly aren’t, many fall into a gray area. You might not be able to ‘control’ something, but you can influence it. This is particularly true in collaborative situations, when success depends on both individual and collective effort.
-
Overly stressing control can hinder creativity. Making a situation too controlled makes it less likely that the unexpected will happen. Remember – the world is a beautifully messy place; my last newsletter touches on the idea of embracing the uncontrollable.
-
Emotions can get in the way – ceding control might not feel good.
-
So can moral values – giving up control might even feel wrong.
Let’s return to my New Year’s resolution. While there are countless ‘controllable’ things to choose from, I’ve decided to focus on just three in 2025:
-
How much time I devote to the people I care about.
-
My willingness to change my opinion about something.
-
How much effort I make to discover new ideas and build new skills.