When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing(27)
Suppose you and your team are about to embark on a project. Before the project begins, convene for a premortem. “Assume it’s eighteen months from now and our project is a complete disaster,” you say to your team. “What went wrong?” The team, using the power of prospective hindsight, offers some answers. Maybe the task wasn’t clearly defined. Maybe you had too few people, too many people, or the wrong people. Maybe you didn’t have a clear leader or realistic objectives. By imagining failure in advance—by thinking through what might cause a false start—you can anticipate some of the potential problems and avoid them once the actual project begins.
As it happens, I conducted a premortem before I began this book. I projected two years from the start date and imagined that I’d written a terrible book or, worse, hadn’t managed to write a book at all. Where did I go awry? After looking at my answers, I realized I had to be vigilant about writing every day, saying no to every outside obligation so I didn’t get distracted, keeping my editor informed of my progress (or lack thereof), and enlisting his help early in untangling any conceptual knots. Then I wrote down the positive versions of these insights—for example, “I worked on the book all morning every morning at least six days a week with no distractions and no exceptions”—on a card that I posted near my desk.
The technique allowed me to make mistakes in advance in my head rather than in real life on a real project. Whether this particular premortem was effective I’ll leave to you, dear reader. But I encourage you to try it to avoid your own false starts.
EIGHTY-SIX DAYS IN THE YEAR WHEN YOU CAN MAKE A FRESH START
You’ve read about temporal landmarks and how we can use them to fashion fresh starts. To help you on that quest for an ideal day to begin that novel or commence training for a marathon, here are eighty-six days that are especially effective for making a fresh start: ? The first day of the month (twelve)
? Mondays (fifty-two)
? The first day of spring, summer, fall, and winter (four) ? Your country’s Independence Day or the equivalent (one) ? The day of an important religious holiday—for example, Easter, Rosh Hashanah, Eid al-Fitr (one) ? Your birthday (one)
? A loved one’s birthday (one) ? The first day of school or the first day of a semester (two) ? The first day of a new job (one)
? The day after graduation (one)
? The first day back from vacation (two)
? The anniversary of your wedding, first date, or divorce (three) ? The anniversary of the day you started your job, the day you became a citizen, the day you adopted your dog or cat, the day you graduated from school or university (four) ? The day you finish this book (one)
WHEN SHOULD YOU GO FIRST?
Life isn’t always a competition, but it is sometimes a serial competition. Whether you’re one of several people interviewing for a job, part of a lineup of companies pitching for new business, or a contestant on a nationally televised singing program, when you compete can be just as important as what you do.
Here, based on several studies, is a playbook for when to go first—and when not to: Four Situations When You Should Go First
1. If you’re on a ballot (county commissioner, prom queen, the Oscars), being listed first gives you an edge. Researchers have studied this effect in thousands of elections—from school board to city council, from California to Texas—and voters consistently preferred the first name on the ballot.2
2. If you’re not the default choice—for example, if you’re pitching against a firm that already has the account you’re seeking—going first can help you get a fresh look from the decision-makers.3
3. If there are relatively few competitors (say, five or fewer), going first can help you take advantage of the “primacy effect,” the tendency people have to remember the first thing in a series better than those that come later.4
4. If you’re interviewing for a job and you’re up against several strong candidates, you might gain an edge from being first. Uri Simonsohn and Francesca Gino examined more than 9,000 MBA admissions interviews and found that interviewers often engage in “narrow bracketing”—assuming small sets of candidates represent the entire field. So if they encounter several strong applicants early in the process, they might more aggressively look for flaws in the later ones.5
Four Situations When You Should Not Go First
1. If you are the default choice, don’t go first. Recall from the previous chapter: Judges are more likely to stick with the default late in the day (when they’re fatigued) rather than early or after a break (when they’re revived).6
2. If there are many competitors (not necessarily strong ones, just a large number of them), going later can confer a small advantage and going last can confer a huge one. In a study of more than 1,500 live Idol performances in eight countries, researchers found that the singer who performed last advanced to the next round roughly 90 percent of the time. An almost identical pattern occurs in elite figure skating and even in wine tastings. At the beginning of competitions, judges hold an idealized standard of excellence, say social psychologists Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer. As the competition proceeds, a new, more realistic baseline develops, which favors later competitors, who gain the added advantage of seeing what others have done.7
3. If you’re operating in an uncertain environment, not being first can work to your benefit. If you don’t know what the decision-maker expects, letting others proceed could allow the criteria to sharpen into focus both for the selector and you.8