New Thoughts on an Old Idea

Looking through my various news feeds, I came across a recent reprint of an article published at Inc.com in 2017. It was called “How to Change Your Life in 5 Seconds” and gives a simple tip on how to avoid procrastination. By merely counting backward from five to zero, mimicking a NASA countdown, you can overcome the inertia that results from feeling unmotivated to do whatever comes next in life, simple decisions like getting out of bed or starting a project.

The thought behind the countdown suggestion references a Harvard Business article from four years earlier that, in turn, presents an interview with a Harvard professor who published a book in 2003, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market. The book is about how to ensure your marketing message gets through to potential customers, based on years of research and “drawing heavily on psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and linguistics.”

So what does that have to do with procrastination, or anything else for that matter? The key discovery is “that 95 percent of our purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind.” In fact he suggests, “95 percent of all cognition occurs in the subconscious mind.” In terms of buying behaviors, we leap before we look. Decisions in general are not based on logic or rational thought. “They're based on emotion, on how a person feels about the action.”

It follows that if you give yourself time to think about not feeling like getting out of bed or not feeling like doing whatever needs to be done next, the result is procrastination. The countdown is a conscious effort to block those feelings and, in those 5 seconds, it’s possible to be out of bed already or taking the first step toward any other task that lies ahead.

But this practice could go beyond the simple, everyday decisions. According to the original source, the same appears to apply to buying decisions as well – and we don’t only buy material goods, we buy ideas and opinions.

Take as an example the common tips for selling a house. Some include: half-empty closets; turning on all the lights; clean or new curtains, door handles and cabinet hardware; inexpensive shrubs and brightly colored flowers for curb appeal; cut flowers or cookies in the entryway instead of the more typical coatracks and key hooks. All this is superficial. It targets the emotions, the feelings, the 95%. It’s manipulative, and it works.

This goes far beyond buying a house. Retailers study how they can get us to buy more: One site lists 15 tricks such as:

• Oversized sales signs;
• Shopping carts at the entrance to inspire larger purchases;
• High profit items at the front of the store so you have walk past them to get to essentials, which are in the back of the store;
• Most profitable items at eye-level;
• Music to make shopping fun;
• Plenty of elbowroom;
• Customer rewards cards;
• Low-cost impulse items at the checkout; and
• Limited time offers, vanity sizing, and other psychological tricks.

One age-old piece of advice to overcome these mind games is to make a shopping list (of items, or features in the case of a larger purchase like a house or car) and stick to it. Also, what if everyone did a countdown before putting something in the cart? What if everyone did a countdown before driving into the car lot? What if everyone did a countdown before believing what we hear or see on social media, on ads from purveyors of health and beauty miracle products, on the national news or in political speeches? 

Use the countdown trick as a safeguard to buy just enough time to let the critical thinking kick in. Make it your trick to defend against their tricks. Use it to protect yourself from the marketing ploys and emotional appeals aimed at that vulnerable 95%.