"If you want to change the world, start by making your bed."

Admiral William McRaven, University of Texas-Austin 2014 Commencement Speech

I recently watched this video on Youtube, and found it very much in line with my recent quest to optimize my workflow and processes.  It is an interesting concept, and something that appeals to people within all professions: teachers, parents, and business executives.  The concept is called behavior momentum.  Admiral William McRaven goes on to state that "If you make your bed every morning, you'll have accomplished the first task of the day"  thus making it more likely you will continue the other tasks you have yet to accomplish.

Behavior momentum is a theory that has been studied for decades in the field of behavior analysis, featured in studies focused on working on task completion with individuals with developmental disabilities (Mace et al., 1988.), and described by Nevin, Mandell, and Atak (1983) as a "persistence of behavior."  To take it a step further, Mace and Belfiore (1990), defined behavior momentum as a persistence of behavior following a shift from high probability behavior (easy task) to a low probabilty behavior (hard task).  

Fast forward from the 80s and 90s to present day, where Admiral William McRaven provided this salient advice to the graduating class of the University of Texas-Austin.  By doing one task per day that is automated (easy, high probability), your behavior will persist to the harder tasks on that daily checklist (see "The Art of the Checklist").

I encountered this first-hand when I started working on developing my own business.  My schedule was extremely chaotic, and I had many tasks to complete throughout the day.  Though I was familiar with the use and benefits of a checklist to organize my tasks, there seemed to be too many on the page to complete, and I felt extremely overwhelmed.  Soon, nothing was accomplished, and my performance decreased rapidly.

That's when I turned to behavior momentum as a strategy to help automate some of my routine, so I would be more motivated to take on the harder tasks.  I created an ideal schedule of what I wanted my day to look like--scheduling blocks of time with tasks from when I woke up to when I went to bed.  I made sure to put the easy tasks in the beginning of the day (walk/feed the dogs, make breakfast/coffee), and as I moved through my schedule, I could focus on the more complex tasks.

 By using behavior momentum and scheduling my day with those blocks of time, I was able to perform more and more complex tasks throughout my day, thus increasing my performance and productivity!

References:

Mace, F. C., Hock, M. L., Lalli, J. S., West, B. J., Belfiore, P. J., Pinter, E., & Brown, D. K. (1988). Behavioral momentum in the treatment of noncompliance. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 21, 123-141.

Mace, F.C, Belfiore, P (1990). Behavioral momentum in the treatment of escape stereotypy. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 23, 507-514

Nevin, J. A., Mandell, C., & Atak, J. R. (1983). The analysis of behavior momentum. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 39, 49-59.

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