#Tweak September 5

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For September I am participating in the 30-Day Literary Lesson Coach4aday Challenge. The concept is to profile a lesson a book, article, or written words has taught you. Today I am focusing on what happens when we TWEAK a choice.

University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler studies behavioral economics and finance as well as the psychology of decision-making. I got to listen to him on a podcast last week discuss the power of small changes or a TWEAK in our life. He won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for Economics.

A small TWEAK can often give people a nudge to make a change that delivers dramatic results. Thaler actually wrote a book with his co-author Cass Sunstein that is titled NUDGE.

Literary Lesson

The authors talk about how a small tweak on how a choice is framed can actually change a person’s decision. They give two specific examples.

One is that changing the choice for school kids as it relates to eating apples. When a school changed the choice from picking up a whole apple or a baggie with sliced apples that nudge resulted in 70% more consumption of apples. Dan and Chip Heath talk about this concept in their book SWITCH: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. They talk about you have to pave the path for change. A tweak just might involve removing some small obstacle to make change happen.

The second simple tweak was reversing the choice at a Fortune 500 company for employees to sign up for a 401k. The previous choice was to declare you wanted to enroll in the 401k by filling out multiple forms. The tweak was that new employees would automatically be enrolled unless they opted out. The enrollment rate went from less than 50% to 86%.

Sometimes in our lives we can serve as a “Choice Architect” for others or even ourselves.

Video

Here is a 3-minute YouTube Video on a Thaler’s concepts.

Final Thought

It is not science but a strong personal belief that God works in our lives with TWEAKS also. A simple nudge to decide to open our heart, change our outlook, or decide to become grateful can have us experience a life of greater meaning and purpose.