Quick Spoon: The path of least resistance
What's driving the choices we make at work?
In my conversation with Dr Ryan Kemp, we were talking about addiction and how a person's experience of time can become compressed around the immediate.
Ryan described part of his therapeutic role as helping people with addictions to expand that time horizon — to consider not just the immediate consequences of their actions, but the medium- and longer-term implications.
That got me thinking about something I see quite often in my own work: the path of least resistance.
We avoid the difficult conversation.
We put off the thing we know we need to do.
We go for the quick win.
We choose what's going to make today a little easier.
And sometimes that's absolutely fine.
But sometimes the short-term gain comes at the expense of something that matters more in the longer term.
So here's your Quick Spoon:
Am I choosing this because it's what matters, or because it's the easiest option right now?
A small question that might just help you widen the time horizon before you act.
🎧 This Quick Spoon comes from my conversation with Dr Ryan Kemp, When the future gets smaller: Dr Ryan Kemp on addiction.
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Transcript
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[:[00:00:10] And part of my task as a therapist, as a clinician, is to expand that time horizon, to stretch it out so that they're seeing not [00:00:20] just the immediacy of, their actions, but what are the medium and longer term, implications.
[:[00:00:27] interesting Ryan, because [00:00:30] thinking about just general behavior and, and workplace behavior that I, I work with, often see people taking that path of least [00:00:40] resistance for short-term gains
[:[00:00:42] Ross: rather than thinking about how or who do I want to be in the long term
[:[00:01:01] Ross: In this conversation, Ryan and I were talking about the way addiction can pull our attention towards the immediate
[:[00:01:16] We put off the thing we know we need to do We go for the quick [00:01:20] win
[:[00:01:26] but sometimes the short-term gain comes at the [00:01:30] expense of something that matters more in the longer term
[:[00:01:35] The next time you're faced with the choice between the easy option and the more difficult option, [00:01:40] ask yourself this
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