http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html
Seven steps to remarkable customer service
By Joel Spolsky
Monday, February 19, 2007
As a bootstrapped software company, Fog Creek couldn’t afford to hire customer service people for the first couple of years, so Michael and I did it ourselves. The time we spent helping customers took away from improving our software, but we learned a lot and now we have a much better customer service operation.
Here are seven things we learned about providing remarkable customer service. I’m using the word remarkable literally—the goal is to provide customer service so good that people remark.
1. Fix everything two ways
Almost every tech support problem has two solutions. The superficial and immediate solution is just to solve the customer’s problem. But when you think a little harder you can usually find a deeper solution: a way to prevent this particular problem from ever happening again.
Sometimes that means adding more intelligence to the software or the SETUP program; by now, our SETUP program is loaded with special case checks. Sometimes you just need to improve the wording of an error message. Sometimes the best you can come up with is a knowledge base article.
We treat each tech support call like the NTSB treats airliner crashes. Every time a plane crashes, they send out investigators, figure out what happened, and then figure out a new policy to prevent that particular problem from ever happening again. It’s worked so well for aviation safety that the very, very rare airliner crashes we still get in the US are always very unusual, one-off situations.
This has two implications.
One: it’s crucial that tech support have access to the development team. This means that you can’t outsource tech support: they have to be right there at the same street address as the developers, with a way to get things fixed. Many software companies still think that it’s “economical” to run tech support in Bangalore or the Philippines, or to outsource it to another company altogether. Yes, the cost of a single incident might be $10 instead of $50, but you’re going to have to pay $10 again and again.
When we handle a tech support incident with a well-qualified person here in New York, chances are that’s the last time we’re ever going to see that particular incident. So with one $50 incident we’ve eliminated an entire class of problems.
Somehow, the phone companies and the cable companies and the ISPs just don’t understand this equation. They outsource their tech support to the cheapest possible provider and end up paying $10 again and again and again fixing the same problem again and again and again instead of fixing it once and for all in the source code. The cheap call centers have no mechanism for getting problems fixed; indeed, they have no incentive to get problems fixed because their income depends on repeat business, and there’s nothing they like better than being able to give the same answer to the same question again and again.
The second implication of fixing everything two ways is that eventually, all the common and simple problems are solved, and what you’re left with is very weird uncommon problems. That’s fine, because there are far fewer of them, and you’re saving a fortune not doing any rote tech support, but the downside is that there’s no rote tech support left: only serious debugging and problem solving. You can’t just teach new support people ten common solutions: you have to teach them to debug.
For us, the “fix everything two ways” religion has really paid off. We were able to increase our sales tenfold while only doubling the cost of providing tech support.
2. Suggest blowing out the dust
Microsoft’s Raymond Chen tells the story of a customer who complains that the keyboard isn’t working. Of course, it’s unplugged. If you try asking them if it’s plugged in, “they will get all insulted and say indignantly, ‘Of course it is! Do I look like an idiot?’ without actually checking.”
“Instead,” Chen suggests, “say ‘Okay, sometimes the connection gets a little dusty and the connection gets weak. Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get the dust out, then plug it back in?’
“They will then crawl under the desk, find that they forgot to plug it in (or plugged it into the wrong port), blow out the dust, plug it in, and reply, ‘Um, yeah, that fixed it, thanks.’”
Many requests for a customer to check something can be phrased this way. Instead of telling them to check a setting, tell them to change the setting and then change it back “just to make sure that the software writes out its settings.”
3. Make customers into fans
Every time we need to buy logo gear here at Fog Creek, I get it from Lands’ End.
Why?
Let me tell you a story. We needed some shirts for a trade show. I called up Lands’ End and ordered two dozen, using the same logo design we had used for some knapsacks we bought earlier.
When the shirts arrived, to our dismay, you couldn’t read the logo.
It turns out that the knapsacks were brighter than the polo shirts. The thread color that looked good on the knapsacks was too dark to read on the shirts.
I called up Lands’ End. As usual, a human answered the phone even before it started ringing. I’m pretty sure that they have a system where the next agent in the queue is told to standby, so customers don’t even have to wait one ringy-dingy before they’re talking to a human.
I explained that I screwed up.
They said, “Don’t worry. You can return those for a full credit, and we’ll redo the shirts with a different color thread.”
I said, “The trade show is in two days.”
They said they would Fedex me a new box of shirts and I’d have it tomorrow. I could return the old shirts at my convenience.
They paid shipping both ways. I wasn’t out a cent. Even though they had no possible use for a bunch of Fog Creek logo shirts with an illegible logo, they ate the cost.
And now I tell this story to everyone who needs swag. In fact I tell this story every time we’re talking about telephone menu systems. Or customer service. By providing remarkable customer service, they’ve gotten me to remark about it.
When customers have a problem and you fix it, they’re actually going to be even more satisfied than if they never had a problem in the first place.
It has to do with expectations. Most people’s experience with tech support and customer service comes from airlines, telephone companies, cable companies, and ISPs, all of whom provide generally awful customer service. It’s so bad you don’t even bother calling any more, do you? So when someone calls Fog Creek, and immediately gets through to a human, with no voice mail or phone menus, and that person turns out to be nice and friendly and actually solves their problem, they’re apt to think even more highly of us than someone who never had the opportunity to interact with us and just assumes that we’re average.
Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to actually make something go wrong, just so we have a chance to demonstrate our superior customer service. Many customers just won’t call; they’ll fume quietly.
But when someone does call, look at it as a great opportunity to create fanatically devoted customer, one who will prattle on and on about what a great job you did.
4. Take the blame
One morning I needed an extra set of keys to my apartment, so on the way to work, I went to the locksmith around the corner.
13 years living in an apartment in New York City has taught me never to trust a locksmith; half of the time their copies don’t work. So I went home to test the new keys, and, lo and behold, one didn’t work.
I took it back to the locksmith.
He made it again.
I went back home and tested the new copy.
It still didn’t work.
Now I was fuming. Squiggly lines were coming up out of my head. I was a half hour late to work and had to go to the locksmith for a third time. I was tempted just to give up on him. But I decided to give this loser one more chance.
I stomped into the store, ready to unleash my fury.
“It still doesn’t work?” he asked. “Let me see.”
He looked at it.
I was sputtering, trying to figure out how best to express my rage at being forced to spend the morning going back and forth.
“Ah. It’s my fault,” he said.
And suddenly, I wasn’t mad at all.
Mysteriously, the words “it’s my fault” completely defused me. That was all it took.
He made the key a third time. I wasn’t mad any more. The key worked.
And, here I was, on this planet for forty years, and I couldn’t believe how much the three words “it’s my fault” had completely changed my emotions in a matter of seconds.
Most locksmiths in New York are not the kinds of guys to admit that they’re wrong. Saying “it’s my fault” was completely out of character. But he did it anyway.
5. Memorize awkward phrases
I figured, OK, since the morning is shot anyway, I might as well go to the diner for some breakfast.
It’s one of those classic New York diners, like the one on Seinfeld. There’s a thirty page menu and a kitchen the size of a phone booth. It doesn’t make sense. They must have Star Trek technology to get all those ingredients into such a small space. Maybe they rearrange atoms on the spot.
I was sitting by the cash register.
An older woman came up to pay her check. As she was paying, she said to the owner, “you know, I’ve been coming here for years and years, and that waiter was really rather rude to me.”
The owner was furious.
“What do you mean? No he wasn’t! He’s a good waiter! I never had a complaint!’
The customer couldn’t believe it. Here she was, a loyal customer, and she wanted to help out the owner by letting him know that one of his waiters needed a little bit of help in the manners department, but the owner was arguing with her!
“Well, that’s fine, but I’ve been coming here for years, and everybody is always very nice to me, but that guy was rude to me,” she explained, patiently.
“I don’t care if you’ve been coming here forever. My waiters are not rude.” The owner proceeded to yell at her. “I never had no problems. Why are you making problems?”
“Look, if you’re going to treat me this way I won’t come back.”
“I don’t care!” said the owner. One of the great things about owning a diner in New York is that there are so many people in the city that you can offend every single customer who ever comes into your diner and you’ll still have a lot of customers. “Don’t come back! I don’t want you as a customer!”
Good for you, I thought. Here’s a 60-something year old man, owner of a diner, and you won some big moral victory against a little old lady. Are you proud of yourself? How macho do you have to be? Does the moral victory make you feel better? Did you really have to lose a repeat customer?
Would it have made you feel totally emasculated to say, “I’m so sorry. I’ll have a word with him?”
It’s easy to get caught up in the emotional heat of the moment when someone is complaining.
The solution is to memorize some key phrases, and practice saying them, so that when you need to say them, you can forget your testosterone and make a customer happy.
“I’m sorry, it’s my fault.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t accept your money. The meal’s on me.”
“That’s terrible, please tell me what happened so I can make sure it never happens again.”
It’s completely natural to have trouble saying “It’s my fault.” That’s human. But those three words are going to make your angry customers much happier. So you’re going to have to say them. And you’re going to have to sound like you mean it.
So start practicing.
Say “It’s my fault” a hundred times one morning in the shower, until it starts to sound like syllabic nonsense. Then you’ll be able to say it on demand.
One more point. You may think that admitting fault is a strict no-no that can get you sued. This is nonsense. The way to avoid getting sued is not to have people who are mad at you. The best way to do this is to admit fault and fix the damn problem.
6. Practice puppetry
The angry diner owner clearly took things very personally, in a way that the locksmith didn’t. When an irate customer is complaining, or venting, it’s easy to get defensive.
You can never win these arguments, and if you take them personally, it’s going to be a million times worse. This is when you start to hear business owners saying, “I don’t want an asshole like you for a customer!” They get excited about their Pyrrhic victory. Wow, isn’t it great? When you’re a small business owner you get to fire your customers. Charming.
The bottom line is that this is not good for business, and it’s not even good for your emotional well-being. When you win a victory with a customer by firing them, you still end up feeling riled up and angry, they’ll get their money back from the credit card company anyway, and they’ll tell a dozen friends. As Patrick McKenzie writes, “You will never win an argument with your customer.”
There is only one way to survive angry customers emotionally: you have to realize that they’re not angry at you; they’re angry at your business, and you just happen to be a convenient representative of that business.
And since they’re treating you like a puppet, an iconic stand-in for the real business, you need to treat yourself as a puppet, too.
Pretend you’re a puppeteer. The customer is yelling at the puppet. They’re not yelling at you. They’re angry with the puppet.
Your job is to figure out, “gosh, what can I make the puppet say that will make this person a happy customer?”
You’re just a puppeteer. You’re not a party to the argument. When the customer says, “what the hell is wrong with you people,” they’re just playing a role (in this case, they’re quoting Tom Smykowski in the movie Office Space). You, too, get to play a role. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.” Figure out what to make the puppet do that will make them happy and stop taking it so dang personally.
7. Greed will get you nowhere
Recently I was talking with the people who have been doing most of the customer service for Fog Creek over the last year, and I asked what methods they found most effective for dealing with angry customers.
“Frankly,” they said, “we have pretty nice customers. We haven’t really had any angry customers.”
Well, OK, we do have nice customers, but it seems rather unusual that in a year of answering the phones, nobody was angry. I thought the nature of working at a call center was dealing with angry people all day long.
“Nope. Our customers are nice.”
Here’s what I think. I think that our customers are nice because they’re not worried. They’re not worried because we have a ridiculously liberal return policy: “We don’t want your money if you’re not amazingly happy.”
Customers know that they have nothing to fear. They have the power in the relationship. So they don’t get abusive.
The no-questions-asked 90-day money back guarantee was one of the best decisions we ever made at Fog Creek. Try this: use Fog Creek Copilot for a full 24 hours, call up three months later and say, “hey guys, I need $5 for a cup of coffee. Give me back my money from that Copilot day pass,” and we’ll give it back to you. Try calling on the 91st or 92nd or 203rd day. You’ll still get it back. We really don’t want your money if you’re not satisfied. I’m pretty sure we’re running the only job listing service around that will refund your money just because your ad didn’t work. This is unheard of, but it means we get a lot more ad listings, because there’s nothing to lose.
Over the last six years or so, letting people return software has cost us 2%.
2%.
And you know what? Most customers pay with credit cards, and if we didn’t refund their money, a bunch of them would have called their bank. This is called a chargeback. They get their money back, we pay a chargeback fee, and if this happens too often, our processing fees go up.
Know what our chargeback rate is at Fog Creek?
0%.
I’m not kidding.
If we were tougher about offering refunds, the only thing we would possibly have done is pissed a few customers off, customers who would have ranted and whined on their blogs. We wouldn’t even have kept more of their money.
I know of software companies who are very explicit on their web site that you are not entitled to a refund under any circumstances, but the truth is, if you call them up, they will eventually return your money because they know that if they don’t, your credit card company will. This is the worst of both worlds. You end up refunding the money anyway, and you don’t get to give potential customers the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, so they hesitate before buying. Or they don’t buy at all.
8. (Bonus!) Give customer service people a career path
The last important lesson we learned here at Fog Creek is that you need very highly qualified people talking to customers. A salesperson at Fog Creek needs to have significant experience with the software development process and needs to be able to explain why FogBugz works the way it does, and why it makes software development teams function better. A tech support person at Fog Creek can’t get by on canned answers to common questions, because we’ve eliminated the common questions by fixing the software, so tech support here has to actually troubleshoot which often means debugging.
Many qualified people get bored with front line customer service, and I’m OK with that. To compensate for this, I don’t hire people into those positions without an explicit career path. Here at Fog Creek, customer support is just the first year of a three-year management training program that includes a master’s degree in technology management at Columbia University. This allows us to get ambitious, smart geeks on a terrific career path talking to customers and solving their problems. We end up paying quite a bit more than average for these positions (especially when you consider $25,000 a year in tuition), but we get far more value out of them, too.
About the Author: I'm your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz - the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot - the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.
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Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Mind interval training approach
I mentioned this as a comment to a previous post, but I thought it deserved its own post as well. If you haven’t exercised in a long time and have gotten out of shape, mild interval training is a good way to rebuild endurance and cardiovascular fitness without killing yourself.
Let’s say your exercise of choice is running. Maybe you can only manage to run a few minutes before your heart feels like it’s about to explode out of your chest and you’re forced to stop for fear of passing out. It’s going to take you a while to build up to 30 minutes if you simply run your maximum each day and then stop.
So instead of that, try running 1 minute then walking 1 minute, repeating this cycle for as long as you can. You’ll find that you can go much further without overtaxing your heart and muscles. Maybe you can even go 10-20 minutes your first time. If run 1 walk 1 is too hard, try run 1 walk 2 or run 2 walk 3. Experiment to see what intervals work best for you. If your heart is still racing after the walking interval, increase the walking interval and/or reduce the running interval.
I recommend you aim for an initial interval that allows you to do the most amount of running in a 25 minute period. If you can only manage run 1 walk 4, that’s fine. Take a week to experiment with different intervals if you need to, but find one that allows you to go 25 minutes total (even if it’s run 1 walk 24). You should be physically challenged but not to the point of feeling nauseous or faint.
Once you’re able to go 25 minutes, gradually increase the running time and reduce the walking time. Aim to reach run 1 walk 1 for 25 minutes for an initial goal. Be patient as it may take you a few weeks to get there if you’re starting with a longer walking interval.
Next, gradually increase the running period while keeping the walking period at 1 minute. Go from run 1 walk 1 to run 1:30 walk 1. Then try run 2 walk 1. Keep extending your running intervals until you can manage run 8 walk 1 for 25 minutes.
Now keep those intervals the same, and gradually build your time from 25 minutes to 45 minutes. Don’t worry about distance, and don’t be concerned if you run a little slower. Just put in the time. Aim to increase the total time by about 10% per week, which roughly averages out to adding about 30 seconds per day.
Once you can do run 8 walk 1 for 45 minutes, you can switch to running continuously. You’ll likely find you’re able to do 25 minutes continuously without any trouble. After that you can continue to increase the distance, build your speed, do harder forms of interval training, or just maintain your current routine.
The advantage of this type of interval training is that you’re still spending most of the time in your aerobic range, so your circulatory system will get the benefit of that conditioning. If you’re out of shape, the running intervals will spike your heart rate quickly, and your heart rate will take a while to come back down, so even while walking you’ll still be mostly in the aerobic range. But you’ll avoid burning out from having your heart rate get too high. Walking won’t tire your muscles as much as running, so your legs won’t give out as quickly, and you won’t be quite as sore after your runs.
You can adapt this idea to other aerobic exercises as well. For swimming you can switch to a slower stroke or a glide. For bike riding you can coast instead of pedal hard.
This technique is also useful for distance running. Some people run marathons in a pattern of run 7 walk 1 (or similar intervals), and they often find their finishing times are better vs. when they run continuously. The brief walking periods slow you down in the early miles, but they make up for it in later miles by keeping your running muscles fresh. So you end up maintaining an even pace even through those last 6 miles where many people hit the wall. I once used a run 7 walk 1 pattern for a 13-mile training run, and I finished in 2 hours, which was a good time for me. I felt I was running strong all the way without dragging at the end.
Even if you’re terribly out of shape, you can use mild interval training to rebuild your fitness to a healthy level without causing yourself tremendous pain and discomfort. And it probably won’t take that long. A typical marathon training program can take you from running 3 miles to running 26.2 miles in six months, and that requires much more time and effort than going from 0 to 3 miles.
Let’s say your exercise of choice is running. Maybe you can only manage to run a few minutes before your heart feels like it’s about to explode out of your chest and you’re forced to stop for fear of passing out. It’s going to take you a while to build up to 30 minutes if you simply run your maximum each day and then stop.
So instead of that, try running 1 minute then walking 1 minute, repeating this cycle for as long as you can. You’ll find that you can go much further without overtaxing your heart and muscles. Maybe you can even go 10-20 minutes your first time. If run 1 walk 1 is too hard, try run 1 walk 2 or run 2 walk 3. Experiment to see what intervals work best for you. If your heart is still racing after the walking interval, increase the walking interval and/or reduce the running interval.
I recommend you aim for an initial interval that allows you to do the most amount of running in a 25 minute period. If you can only manage run 1 walk 4, that’s fine. Take a week to experiment with different intervals if you need to, but find one that allows you to go 25 minutes total (even if it’s run 1 walk 24). You should be physically challenged but not to the point of feeling nauseous or faint.
Once you’re able to go 25 minutes, gradually increase the running time and reduce the walking time. Aim to reach run 1 walk 1 for 25 minutes for an initial goal. Be patient as it may take you a few weeks to get there if you’re starting with a longer walking interval.
Next, gradually increase the running period while keeping the walking period at 1 minute. Go from run 1 walk 1 to run 1:30 walk 1. Then try run 2 walk 1. Keep extending your running intervals until you can manage run 8 walk 1 for 25 minutes.
Now keep those intervals the same, and gradually build your time from 25 minutes to 45 minutes. Don’t worry about distance, and don’t be concerned if you run a little slower. Just put in the time. Aim to increase the total time by about 10% per week, which roughly averages out to adding about 30 seconds per day.
Once you can do run 8 walk 1 for 45 minutes, you can switch to running continuously. You’ll likely find you’re able to do 25 minutes continuously without any trouble. After that you can continue to increase the distance, build your speed, do harder forms of interval training, or just maintain your current routine.
The advantage of this type of interval training is that you’re still spending most of the time in your aerobic range, so your circulatory system will get the benefit of that conditioning. If you’re out of shape, the running intervals will spike your heart rate quickly, and your heart rate will take a while to come back down, so even while walking you’ll still be mostly in the aerobic range. But you’ll avoid burning out from having your heart rate get too high. Walking won’t tire your muscles as much as running, so your legs won’t give out as quickly, and you won’t be quite as sore after your runs.
You can adapt this idea to other aerobic exercises as well. For swimming you can switch to a slower stroke or a glide. For bike riding you can coast instead of pedal hard.
This technique is also useful for distance running. Some people run marathons in a pattern of run 7 walk 1 (or similar intervals), and they often find their finishing times are better vs. when they run continuously. The brief walking periods slow you down in the early miles, but they make up for it in later miles by keeping your running muscles fresh. So you end up maintaining an even pace even through those last 6 miles where many people hit the wall. I once used a run 7 walk 1 pattern for a 13-mile training run, and I finished in 2 hours, which was a good time for me. I felt I was running strong all the way without dragging at the end.
Even if you’re terribly out of shape, you can use mild interval training to rebuild your fitness to a healthy level without causing yourself tremendous pain and discomfort. And it probably won’t take that long. A typical marathon training program can take you from running 3 miles to running 26.2 miles in six months, and that requires much more time and effort than going from 0 to 3 miles.
Physical 1st
If you have many improvements you’d like to make in your life — career, relationship, health — where should you begin? My suggestion is to start with your physical body. Improving your diet and level of fitness will produce positive results in every area of your life because you’ll have extra energy available to you every day. This means more energy to invest in your career, relationships, and mental and spiritual development.
You take your body with you wherever you go. If you’re overweight then you carry that excess with you at all times. You’ll see it every time you look in the mirror and carry it up and down every flight of stairs. An extra 20 lbs may not seem like much, but if you carry around an extra 20-lb dumbbell all day long, you’ll see that it feels burdensome and tires you out much faster. 20 lbs of excess fat weighs the same as a 20-lb dumbbell, and carrying it around all day will drain your energy.
It’s been said that people spend their first 50 years trading their health for wealth, and then they spend the next 50 years trading their wealth for health. But this isn’t a trade that you should make at all.
Losing your fitness can occur so gradually, you barely notice it. Even if you aren’t overweight, if you eat poorly and don’t exercise, you’ll suffer for it. But you may not see the symptoms of poor nutrition and fitness appear in your body right away — they’ll pop up in other areas like a feeling of malaise in your relationship, a lack of ability to concentrate well at work, a lack of ambition, or a feeling of fuzziness in your overall focus. You feel demotivated and don’t know why.
I recall that the times in my life when I exercised the most, I also had the clearest thinking, and I could concentrate for long periods without getting tired. Among the many benefits of exercise are in increase in blood flow, which helps oxygenate the body and especially the brain.
One of the key benefits of improving your body is that you’ll see physical results. When you look in the mirror or step on the scale and see that you’ve made progress, it’s very satisfying. And this self-esteem boost can lead to greater accomplishments in every other area.
Listen to your self-talk the next time you see yourself in the mirror. Is it positive or negative? Are you reinforcing the self-image you want?
Of the many stories I’ve read from people who’ve transformed their lives for the better, physical fitness was nearly always a significant component from the beginning.
Discuss this post in the Steve Pavlina forum.
If you find this site helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.
You take your body with you wherever you go. If you’re overweight then you carry that excess with you at all times. You’ll see it every time you look in the mirror and carry it up and down every flight of stairs. An extra 20 lbs may not seem like much, but if you carry around an extra 20-lb dumbbell all day long, you’ll see that it feels burdensome and tires you out much faster. 20 lbs of excess fat weighs the same as a 20-lb dumbbell, and carrying it around all day will drain your energy.
It’s been said that people spend their first 50 years trading their health for wealth, and then they spend the next 50 years trading their wealth for health. But this isn’t a trade that you should make at all.
Losing your fitness can occur so gradually, you barely notice it. Even if you aren’t overweight, if you eat poorly and don’t exercise, you’ll suffer for it. But you may not see the symptoms of poor nutrition and fitness appear in your body right away — they’ll pop up in other areas like a feeling of malaise in your relationship, a lack of ability to concentrate well at work, a lack of ambition, or a feeling of fuzziness in your overall focus. You feel demotivated and don’t know why.
I recall that the times in my life when I exercised the most, I also had the clearest thinking, and I could concentrate for long periods without getting tired. Among the many benefits of exercise are in increase in blood flow, which helps oxygenate the body and especially the brain.
One of the key benefits of improving your body is that you’ll see physical results. When you look in the mirror or step on the scale and see that you’ve made progress, it’s very satisfying. And this self-esteem boost can lead to greater accomplishments in every other area.
Listen to your self-talk the next time you see yourself in the mirror. Is it positive or negative? Are you reinforcing the self-image you want?
Of the many stories I’ve read from people who’ve transformed their lives for the better, physical fitness was nearly always a significant component from the beginning.
Discuss this post in the Steve Pavlina forum.
If you find this site helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.
Short horizon approach
A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.
Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.
Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.
But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV.
Could you do it? It still requires a bit of discipline and commitment, but not nearly so much as making a permanent change. Any perceived deprivation is only temporary. You can count down the days to freedom. And for at least 30 days, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s not so bad. You can handle it. It’s only one month out of your life.
Now if you actually complete a 30-day trial, what’s going to happen? First, you’ll go far enough to establish it as a habit, and it will be easier to maintain than it was to begin it. Secondly, you’ll break the addiction of your old habit during this time. Thirdly, you’ll have 30 days of success behind you, which will give you greater confidence that you can continue. And fourthly, you’ll gain 30 days worth of results, which will give you practical feedback on what you can expect if you continue, putting you in a better place to make informed long-term decisions.
Therefore, once you hit the end of the 30-day trial, your ability to make the habit permanent is vastly increased. But even if you aren’t ready to make it permanent, you can opt to extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days. The longer you go with the trial period, the easier it will be to lock in the new habit for life.
Another benefit of this approach is that you can use it to test new habits where you really aren’t sure if you’d even want to continue for life. Maybe you’d like to try a new diet, but you don’t know if you’d find it too restrictive. In that case, do a 30-day trial and then re-evaluate. There’s no shame in stopping if you know the new habit doesn’t suit you. It’s like trying a piece of shareware for 30 days and then uninstalling it if it doesn’t suit your needs. No harm, no foul.
Here are some examples from my own life where I used 30-day trials to establish new habits:
1) In the Summer of 1993, I wanted to try being vegetarian. I had no interest in making this a lifelong change, but I’d read a lot about the health benefits of vegetarianism, so I committed to it for 30 days just for the experience. I was already exercising regularly, seemed in decent health, and was not overweight (6′0″, 155 lbs), but my typical college diet included a lot of In-N-Out burgers. Going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days was a lot easier than I expected — I can’t say it was hard at all, and I never felt deprived. Within a week I noticed an increase in my energy and concentration, and I felt more clear-headed. At the end of the 30 days, it was a no-brainer to stick with it. This change looked a lot harder than it really was.
2) In January 1997, I decided to try going from vegetarian to vegan. While lacto-ovo vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy, vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal. I was developing an interest in going vegan for life, but I didn’t think I could do it. How could I give up veggie-cheese omelettes? The diet seemed too restrictive to me — even fanatically so. But I was intensely curious to know what it was actually like. So once again I did a 30-day trial. At the time I figured I’d make it through the trial, but I honestly didn’t expect to continue beyond that. Well, I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels (now I know why cows need four stomachs to properly digest this stuff). I felt lousy the first couple days but then my energy surged. I also felt more clear-headed than ever, as if a “fog of brain” had been lifted; it felt like my brain had gotten a CPU and a RAM upgrade. However, the biggest change I noticed was in my endurance. I was living in Marina del Rey at the time and used to run along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, and I noticed I wasn’t as tired after my usual 3-mile runs, so I started increasing them to 5 miles, 10 miles, and then eventually a marathon a few years later. In Tae Kwon Do, the extra endurance really gave a boost to my sparring skills as well. The accumulated benefits were so great that the foods I was giving up just didn’t seem so appealing anymore. So once again it was a no-brainer to continue after the first 30 days, and I’m still vegan today. What I didn’t expect was that after so long on this diet, the old animal product foods I used to eat just don’t seem like food anymore, so there’s no feeling of deprivation.
3) Also in 1997, I decided I wanted to exercise every single day for a year. That was my 1997 New Year’s resolution. My criteria was that I would exercise aerobically at least 25 minutes every day, and I wouldn’t count Tae Kwon Do classes which I was taking 2-3 days per week. Coupled with my dietary changes, I wanted to push my fitness to a new level. I didn’t want to miss a single day, not even for sick days. But thinking about exercising 365 days in a row was daunting, so I mentally began with a 30-day trial. That wasn’t so bad. After a while every day that passed set a new record: 8 days in a row… 10 days… 15 days…. It became harder to quit. After 30 days in a row, how could I not do 31 and set a new personal record? And can you imagine giving up after 250 days? No way. After the initial month to establish the habit, the rest of the year took care of itself. I remember going to a seminar that year and getting home well after midnight. I had a cold and was really tired, yet I still went out running at 2am in the rain. Some people might call that foolish, but I was so determined to reach my goal that I wasn’t going to let fatigue or illness stop me. I succeeded and kept it up for the whole year without ever missing a day. In fact, I kept going for a few more weeks into 1998 before I finally opted to stop, which was a tough decision. I wanted to do this for one year, knowing it would become a powerful reference experience, and it certainly became such.
4) More diet stuff…. After being vegan for a number of years, I opted to try other variations of the vegan diet. I did 30-day trials both with the macrobiotic diet and with the raw foods diet. Those were interesting and gave me new insights, but I decided not to continue with either of them. I felt no different eating macrobiotically than I did otherwise. And in the case of the raw diet, while I did notice a significant energy boost, I found the diet too labor intensive — I was spending a lot of time preparing meals and shopping frequently. Sure you can just eat raw fruits and veggies, but to make interesting raw meals, there can be a lot of labor involved. If I had my own chef, I’d probably follow the raw diet though because I think the benefits would be worth it. I did a second trial of the raw diet for 45 days, but again my conclusion was the same. If I was ever diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer, I’d immediately switch to an all raw, living foods diet, since I believe it to be the absolute best diet for optimal health. I’ve never felt more energetic in my life than when I ate a raw diet. But I had a hard time making it practical for me. Even so, I managed to integrate some new macrobiotic foods and raw foods into my diet after these trials. There are two all-raw restaurants here in Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed eating at them because then someone else does all the labor. So these 30-day trials were still successful in that they produced new insights, although in both cases I intentionally declined to continue with the new habit. One of the reasons a full 30-day trial is so important with new diets is that the first week or two will often be spent detoxing and overcoming cravings, so it isn’t until the third or fourth week that you begin to get a clear picture. I feel that if you haven’t tried a diet for at least 30 days, you simply don’t understand it. Every diet feels different on the inside than it appears from the outside.
This 30-day method seems to work best for daily habits. I’ve had no luck using it when trying to start a habit that only occurs 3-4 days per week. However, it can work well if you apply it daily for the first 30 days and then cut back thereafter. This is what I’d do when starting a new exercise program, for example. Daily habits are much easier to establish.
Here are some other ideas for applying 30-day trials:
Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total.
List something new to sell on ebay every day. Purge some of that clutter.
Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.
If you’re already in a relationship, give your partner a massage every day. Or offer to alternate who gives the massage each day, so that’s 15 massages each.
Give up cigarettes, soda, junk food, coffee, or other unhealthy addictions.
Become an early riser.
Write in your journal every day.
Call a different family member, friend, or business contact every day.
Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.
Write a new blog entry every day.
Read for an hour a day on a subject that interests you.
Meditate every day.
Learn a new vocabulary word every day.
Go for a long walk every day.
Again, don’t think that you need to continue any of these habits beyond 30 days. Think of the benefits you’ll gain from those 30 days alone. You can re-assess after the trial period. You’re certain to grow just from the experience, even if it’s temporary.
The power of this approach lies in its simplicity. Even though doing a certain activity every single day may be less efficient than following a more complicated schedule — weight training is a good example because adequate rest is a key component — you’ll often be more likely to stick with the daily habit. When you commit to doing something every single day without exception, you can’t rationalize or justify missing a day, nor can you promise to make it up later by reshuffling your schedule.
Give trials a try. If you’re ready to commit to one right now, please feel free to post a comment and share your goal for the next 30 days. If there’s enough interest, then perhaps we can do a group postmortem around May 20th to see how it went for everyone. I’ll even do it with you. Mine will be to go running or biking for at least 25 minutes or do a minimum 60-minute hike in the mountains every day for 30 days. The weather here in Vegas has been great lately, so it’s a nice time for me to get back to exercising outdoors.
Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.
Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.
But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV.
Could you do it? It still requires a bit of discipline and commitment, but not nearly so much as making a permanent change. Any perceived deprivation is only temporary. You can count down the days to freedom. And for at least 30 days, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s not so bad. You can handle it. It’s only one month out of your life.
Now if you actually complete a 30-day trial, what’s going to happen? First, you’ll go far enough to establish it as a habit, and it will be easier to maintain than it was to begin it. Secondly, you’ll break the addiction of your old habit during this time. Thirdly, you’ll have 30 days of success behind you, which will give you greater confidence that you can continue. And fourthly, you’ll gain 30 days worth of results, which will give you practical feedback on what you can expect if you continue, putting you in a better place to make informed long-term decisions.
Therefore, once you hit the end of the 30-day trial, your ability to make the habit permanent is vastly increased. But even if you aren’t ready to make it permanent, you can opt to extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days. The longer you go with the trial period, the easier it will be to lock in the new habit for life.
Another benefit of this approach is that you can use it to test new habits where you really aren’t sure if you’d even want to continue for life. Maybe you’d like to try a new diet, but you don’t know if you’d find it too restrictive. In that case, do a 30-day trial and then re-evaluate. There’s no shame in stopping if you know the new habit doesn’t suit you. It’s like trying a piece of shareware for 30 days and then uninstalling it if it doesn’t suit your needs. No harm, no foul.
Here are some examples from my own life where I used 30-day trials to establish new habits:
1) In the Summer of 1993, I wanted to try being vegetarian. I had no interest in making this a lifelong change, but I’d read a lot about the health benefits of vegetarianism, so I committed to it for 30 days just for the experience. I was already exercising regularly, seemed in decent health, and was not overweight (6′0″, 155 lbs), but my typical college diet included a lot of In-N-Out burgers. Going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days was a lot easier than I expected — I can’t say it was hard at all, and I never felt deprived. Within a week I noticed an increase in my energy and concentration, and I felt more clear-headed. At the end of the 30 days, it was a no-brainer to stick with it. This change looked a lot harder than it really was.
2) In January 1997, I decided to try going from vegetarian to vegan. While lacto-ovo vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy, vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal. I was developing an interest in going vegan for life, but I didn’t think I could do it. How could I give up veggie-cheese omelettes? The diet seemed too restrictive to me — even fanatically so. But I was intensely curious to know what it was actually like. So once again I did a 30-day trial. At the time I figured I’d make it through the trial, but I honestly didn’t expect to continue beyond that. Well, I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels (now I know why cows need four stomachs to properly digest this stuff). I felt lousy the first couple days but then my energy surged. I also felt more clear-headed than ever, as if a “fog of brain” had been lifted; it felt like my brain had gotten a CPU and a RAM upgrade. However, the biggest change I noticed was in my endurance. I was living in Marina del Rey at the time and used to run along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, and I noticed I wasn’t as tired after my usual 3-mile runs, so I started increasing them to 5 miles, 10 miles, and then eventually a marathon a few years later. In Tae Kwon Do, the extra endurance really gave a boost to my sparring skills as well. The accumulated benefits were so great that the foods I was giving up just didn’t seem so appealing anymore. So once again it was a no-brainer to continue after the first 30 days, and I’m still vegan today. What I didn’t expect was that after so long on this diet, the old animal product foods I used to eat just don’t seem like food anymore, so there’s no feeling of deprivation.
3) Also in 1997, I decided I wanted to exercise every single day for a year. That was my 1997 New Year’s resolution. My criteria was that I would exercise aerobically at least 25 minutes every day, and I wouldn’t count Tae Kwon Do classes which I was taking 2-3 days per week. Coupled with my dietary changes, I wanted to push my fitness to a new level. I didn’t want to miss a single day, not even for sick days. But thinking about exercising 365 days in a row was daunting, so I mentally began with a 30-day trial. That wasn’t so bad. After a while every day that passed set a new record: 8 days in a row… 10 days… 15 days…. It became harder to quit. After 30 days in a row, how could I not do 31 and set a new personal record? And can you imagine giving up after 250 days? No way. After the initial month to establish the habit, the rest of the year took care of itself. I remember going to a seminar that year and getting home well after midnight. I had a cold and was really tired, yet I still went out running at 2am in the rain. Some people might call that foolish, but I was so determined to reach my goal that I wasn’t going to let fatigue or illness stop me. I succeeded and kept it up for the whole year without ever missing a day. In fact, I kept going for a few more weeks into 1998 before I finally opted to stop, which was a tough decision. I wanted to do this for one year, knowing it would become a powerful reference experience, and it certainly became such.
4) More diet stuff…. After being vegan for a number of years, I opted to try other variations of the vegan diet. I did 30-day trials both with the macrobiotic diet and with the raw foods diet. Those were interesting and gave me new insights, but I decided not to continue with either of them. I felt no different eating macrobiotically than I did otherwise. And in the case of the raw diet, while I did notice a significant energy boost, I found the diet too labor intensive — I was spending a lot of time preparing meals and shopping frequently. Sure you can just eat raw fruits and veggies, but to make interesting raw meals, there can be a lot of labor involved. If I had my own chef, I’d probably follow the raw diet though because I think the benefits would be worth it. I did a second trial of the raw diet for 45 days, but again my conclusion was the same. If I was ever diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer, I’d immediately switch to an all raw, living foods diet, since I believe it to be the absolute best diet for optimal health. I’ve never felt more energetic in my life than when I ate a raw diet. But I had a hard time making it practical for me. Even so, I managed to integrate some new macrobiotic foods and raw foods into my diet after these trials. There are two all-raw restaurants here in Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed eating at them because then someone else does all the labor. So these 30-day trials were still successful in that they produced new insights, although in both cases I intentionally declined to continue with the new habit. One of the reasons a full 30-day trial is so important with new diets is that the first week or two will often be spent detoxing and overcoming cravings, so it isn’t until the third or fourth week that you begin to get a clear picture. I feel that if you haven’t tried a diet for at least 30 days, you simply don’t understand it. Every diet feels different on the inside than it appears from the outside.
This 30-day method seems to work best for daily habits. I’ve had no luck using it when trying to start a habit that only occurs 3-4 days per week. However, it can work well if you apply it daily for the first 30 days and then cut back thereafter. This is what I’d do when starting a new exercise program, for example. Daily habits are much easier to establish.
Here are some other ideas for applying 30-day trials:
Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total.
List something new to sell on ebay every day. Purge some of that clutter.
Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.
If you’re already in a relationship, give your partner a massage every day. Or offer to alternate who gives the massage each day, so that’s 15 massages each.
Give up cigarettes, soda, junk food, coffee, or other unhealthy addictions.
Become an early riser.
Write in your journal every day.
Call a different family member, friend, or business contact every day.
Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.
Write a new blog entry every day.
Read for an hour a day on a subject that interests you.
Meditate every day.
Learn a new vocabulary word every day.
Go for a long walk every day.
Again, don’t think that you need to continue any of these habits beyond 30 days. Think of the benefits you’ll gain from those 30 days alone. You can re-assess after the trial period. You’re certain to grow just from the experience, even if it’s temporary.
The power of this approach lies in its simplicity. Even though doing a certain activity every single day may be less efficient than following a more complicated schedule — weight training is a good example because adequate rest is a key component — you’ll often be more likely to stick with the daily habit. When you commit to doing something every single day without exception, you can’t rationalize or justify missing a day, nor can you promise to make it up later by reshuffling your schedule.
Give trials a try. If you’re ready to commit to one right now, please feel free to post a comment and share your goal for the next 30 days. If there’s enough interest, then perhaps we can do a group postmortem around May 20th to see how it went for everyone. I’ll even do it with you. Mine will be to go running or biking for at least 25 minutes or do a minimum 60-minute hike in the mountains every day for 30 days. The weather here in Vegas has been great lately, so it’s a nice time for me to get back to exercising outdoors.
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