What We Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Us…Or Can It?

Have you ever found yourself at a crosswalk, waiting for the walk sign to appear as traffic buzzes by? And even though you press the crosswalk button – maybe multiple times – it seems to take forever for the light to change in your favor? 

How many times do you push that button, hoping it changes the traffic lights? Does pushing the button more actually make it faster?

My husband and I debate on this every time we head out on our tandem, we have to cross one of the major streets in our neighborhood to get to the bike trail. (I’ll push it three times! He thinks I’m being ridiculous.)

Well, it turns out my husband’s correct because I recently learned the answer is NO!

In London, the pedestrian buttons that stop traffic are disabled from 7 AM until midnight across much of the city. A similar thing has happened in NYC as well, (over 3,000 signals have been disabled)!

It got me thinking about why we continue to believe our fruitless actions work. This concept is called “benevolent deception.” Apparently, what we don’t know won’t hurt us – I’m not so sure about that. 

So it got me wondering…how can we dial in on what actions we are taking that actually create the results we want?

How can we take action that is meaningful and creates results? Because standing there pushing the same button over and over again is not getting us the result we want (i.e. a walk signal). 

Most people spend 80% of their action to get 20% of the results and I want to flip that ratio with my clients so 20% of their action creates 80% of their results.

How can we take action that is meaningful and creates results? So we are maximizing our time and resources to achieve our goals faster and more efficiently. 

Here’s a Maximizer’s Tip: One of the best things you can do to maximize your energy is look at the top 20% of things you do that create the most impact. If you double down on those things, you can create 80% impact!