Four Seconds

Peter Bregman

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780062372437
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Éxito personal

Peter Bregman, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller 18 Minutes, offers strategies to replace energy-wasting, counter-productive habits that commonly derail us with truly effective ones.

The things we want most—peace of mind, fulfilling relationships, to do well at work—are surprisingly straightforward to realize. But too often our best efforts to attain them are built on destructive habits that sabotage us. In Four Seconds, Peter Bregman shows us how to replace negative patterns with energy boosting and productive behaviors. To thrive in our fast-paced world all it takes is to pause for as few as four seconds—the length of a deep breath—allowing us to make intentional and tactical choices that lead to better outcomes. Four Seconds reveals:

• Why listening—not arguing—is the best strategy for changing someone's mind
• Why setting goals can actually harm performance
• How to use strategic disengagement to recover focus and willpower
• How taking responsibility for someone else's failure can actually help your team

Practical and insightful, Four Seconds provides simple solutions to create the results you want without the stress.

1   Reflect

Quash Your Bad Habits by Knowing What Triggers Them

JEFF WAS THE CEO OF A HIGH-TECH, FAST-GROWTH COMPANY, AND he had a reputation for losing his temper. He once threw a telephone across the room—and a chair. But mostly, he raised his voice and criticized. Not always—but often.

I was at a two-day offsite meeting with his leadership team, where we were discussing the company’s strategy and addressing several issues that seemed to be limiting its execution. Nick, the COO, was at the front of the room, facilitating the conversation when, suddenly, Jeff erupted. Red in the face, he threw his hands in the air and decried Nick’s lack of accountability.

“One minute I was fine,” Jeff later told me at dinner, “And the next I was yelling.” He paused, thoughtfully, shaking his head, “I did not see that coming.”

“That’s interesting,” I told him, “I did. I watched your anger build for ten minutes before you blew up.”

Jeff was astonished. “What did you see?” he asked.

Like Jeff, we all develop counter-productive habits—like blaming others, engaging in self-criticism, arguing, or even setting goals (which sounds productive but often backfires disastrously). But we can replace these with more effective alternatives.

Here’s the thing: It doesn’t take long to change a habit. But it’s hard. Really hard.

It’s wildly challenging to shift direction when you’re in the heat of the moment, when your heart is beating, your adrenaline is flowing, and you’re on the spot. Subverting a knee-jerk reaction that is following a well-worn and familiar track isn’t something that comes easily.

So how do we stop?

Here’s the thing: We have no hope of changing anything that we’re not aware we’re doing. That’s why the first step is to pause and reflect. If we can pause for even a few moments, we can subvert the immediate reaction that follows on the heels of our adrenaline rush. That reaction comes from the part of our brain—the amygdala—that once helped our ancestors evade saber-toothed tigers. It stimulates the fight-flight-freeze reaction that, in our relatively safe environments, is grossly over-used.

The hard part is that, once ignited, a knee-jerk reaction has the momentum of a runaway train.

So here’s the key: subvert the reaction before it ignites. A moment of awareness and reflection needs to precede your reaction—not happen during or after it.

Which means you have to be prepared. What are the kinds of things that set you off? Who are the people who trigger responses in you that you later regret?

Once you’ve identified those, keep moving in reverse. Consider the warning signals that precede those events. What are the earliest signs that you’re about to be in one of those situations? That one of those people is about to set you off?

That’s when your moment of awareness and reflection can be most productive.

I knew that Jeff would ask me what I saw, which is why, during the meeting, I had documented his minute-by-minute buildup. I pulled out my notes:

Minute 1: Nick steps to the front of the room (I knew Jeff had an issue with Nick’s lack of accountability so, as soon as Nick stood to facilitate, I knew Jeff was at risk of losing his temper).

Minute 3: Jeff starts tapping his foot.

Minute 4: Jeff starts tapping his pen on his pad.

Minute 6: Jeff’s breathing changes. He is taking deeper, exasperated, audible breaths—like sighing.

Minute 8: Jeff is shifting in his chair. He can’t sit still. He is physically uncomfortable with what’s going on.

Minute 9: Jeff stops breathing. He is literally holding his breath.

Minute 10: BOOM!

What are some things you do that lead to outcomes you don’t like? Think of your reactions like a train, which makes a number of stops before it arrives at its final destination (e.g., yelling, criticizing yourself, judging others, etc.). Usually, you sleep through all the stops and wake up just in time to dash off the train, forgetting your bag.

Instead, identify five or six stops before you get to that destination. Like Jeff’s foot tapping, his breath changing, and his shifting in his seat. Identify your stops, learn what they look like and feel like. Recognize them as you approach their stations. This increases your awareness.

Your best shot at subverting your counter-productive habits is to get off the train at the earliest stop possible. It takes practice, and you’ll miss the early stops the first few times. But don’t despair: Each time you notice—even if it’s after the fact—you are building your awareness muscle, your capacity to reflect before reacting.

The next day, at his request, I sat next to Jeff in the meeting room. Nick presented again but, this time, we were prepared.

When Nick rose, I leaned over to Jeff and whispered: “He’s getting up. Breathe.”

“I got this,” Jeff responded.

Five minutes into Nick’s presentation, I leaned over again, “Jeff, you’re tapping your foot.”

Jeff surprised everyone during Nick’s presentation by making clear points without raising his voice once. Here’s what was most amazing: When Jeff reacted more calmly, Nick took accountability like none of us had seen before.

Which is the point. Our unproductive behaviors are, well, unproductive. If we change them, we can change the negative outcomes they are producing. The trick is to catch them early.

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Start to notice your counter-productive habits. When do they happen? What triggers them? Let those triggers prompt your reflection before the habit ignites.

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2 Resist

Four Seconds to Pause, Breathe, and Course Correct

THIS MORNING, LIKE EVERY MORNING, I SAT CROSS-LEGGED ON A cushion on the floor, rested my hands on my knees, closed my eyes, and did nothing but breathe for twenty minutes.

People say the hardest part about meditating is finding the time to meditate, which makes sense. Who these days has time to do nothing? It’s hard to justify.

Meditation brings many benefits: it refreshes us, helps us settle into what’s happening now, makes us wiser and gentler, helps us cope in a world that overloads us with information and communication, and more. But if you’re still looking for a business case to justify spending time meditating, try this one: meditation makes you more productive.

How? By increasing your capacity to resist distracting urges.

Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance.¹ If you can resist your urges, you can make better, more thoughtful decisions. You can be more intentional about what you say and how you say it. You can think about the outcome of your actions before following through on them.

Our ability to resist an impulse determines our success in learning a new behavior or changing an old habit. It’s probably the single most important skill for our growth and development.

As it turns out, that’s one of the things meditation teaches us. It’s also one of the hardest to learn.

When I sat down to meditate this morning, relaxing a little more with each exhale, my concerns drifted away. My mind was truly empty of everything that had concerned it before I started meditating. Everything except the flow of my breath. My body felt blissful, and I was at peace.

For about four seconds.

That’s how long it takes to take one breath. And within one breath, thoughts came flooding in. I felt an itch on my face and wanted to scratch it. A great title for my next book popped into my head, and I wanted to write it down before I forgot it. I thought of at least four phone calls I wanted to make and one difficult conversation I was going to have later that day. I became anxious, knowing I only had a few hours of writing time. What was I doing just sitting here? I wanted to open my eyes and look at how much time was left on my countdown timer. I heard my kids fighting in the other room and wanted to intervene.

Here’s the key though: I wanted to do all those things, but I didn’t do them. Instead, every time I had one of those thoughts, I brought my attention back to my breath.

Because, while four seconds is all it takes to lose focus, that’s all it takes to regain focus too. Four seconds—one breath—is all it takes to stop yourself from a counter-productive knee-jerk reaction. And four seconds is all it takes to make a more intentional, strategic choice that’s more likely to get you where you want to go.

Sometimes, not following through on something you want to do is a problem, like not writing that proposal you’ve been procrastinating about or not having that difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding.

But other times, the problem is that you do follow through on something you don’t want to do, like speaking instead of listening or playing politics instead of rising above them.

Meditation teaches us to resist the urge of that counter-productive follow-through.

Later in this book, I will suggest that it’s easier and more reliable to create an environment that supports your goals than it is to depend on willpower, but sometimes you do need to rely on plain, old-fashioned, self-control.

For example, self-control is useful when an employee makes a mistake and you want to yell at him even though you know that it’s better—for him and for the morale of the group—to ask some questions and discuss it gently and rationally. Or when you want to blurt something out in a meeting but know you’d be better off listening. Or when you want to buy or sell a stock based on your emotions even though the fundamentals and your research suggest a different action. Or when you want to check e-mail every three minutes instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Each time you meditate, you will be proving to yourself that temptation is only a suggestion. You are in control.

Does that mean you never follow an urge? Of course not. Urges hold useful information. If you’re hungry, it may be a good indication that you need to eat. But it also may be an indication that you’re bored or struggling with a difficult piece of work. Meditation gives you practice having power over your urges so you can make intentional choic...