微决定：小步快走改变人生的七大法则
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大多数公司的办公室可能都像高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）的会议室一样放着一些小点心，你的办公室里可能也有。高盛的常务董事卡罗琳•阿诺德每次与同事或者客户会面的时候都会来上两块。 卡罗琳在一本名叫《小步走，大变化：用微决定彻底改变生活》（Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently）的新书中写道，每块小点心大概含有350卡路里的热量，而且“它创造出甜味非常强烈，可以支持你撑过最漫长的会议。” 只可惜这些甜点打击了她想减肥的决心。于是她做出了一点小的改变，也就是她的新书副标题里所说的“微决定”：以后不再在会议室里吃甜点了。她写道，这样做的关键是，“我并不是决定以后再也不吃点心了，也不是说以后再也不在会议室里吃东西了……因为我的解决方案合理而明确，成功也很容易衡量。”最后她形成了一个习惯，接过盘子随手就会递给别人，最终帮助她在其它地方也减少了卡路里的摄入。 卡罗琳表示，正如亚里士多德所言，“我们反复做的事情造就了自己。”不积跬步无以致千里，我们每天的大多数行为都是由习惯决定的，也就是卡罗琳所说的“惯性”。因此要改掉惯性行为的关键，就是利用“微决定”每次改变一点我们的习惯，具体方法就是她在书中列出的下面七个步骤： 1. 选择容易执行的“微决定”。卡罗琳指出，我们的大多数决心往往坚持不了多久，原因是它们太大或者太空泛了。因此，她表示，我们要从“一些有意义的个别行为”着手。比如说，与其痛下决定瘦身减肥，不如决定做一些“有限但是可以完成”的事，比如每个礼拜都有一天走路上班。一旦你把这个小改变坚持下去，下一步做其它瘦身决定就会容易些。 2. 微决定应该是明确的、可以量化的行动。比如如果你想对工作上那些不太积极的评价表现得不那么有防御性，“你就得想想你在什么环境下会变得具有防御性，你的防御性会以哪些方式表现出来，你可以给自己发出什么明确的信号来阻止这种表现。”决心越明确，它就越有效果。“灵活的或者模棱两可的决心，以及你给自己开的‘例外’和‘后门’”都会限制你，使它变得容易放弃。 3. 微决定应该立竿见影。人性的弱点就是急功近利。我们总是喜欢付出立刻就有回报，而不想让心悬在缥缈的未来。对此卡罗琳写道：“如果你的决心需要几个月的努力才能见到效果，而你又在这之前放弃了，那么就是竹篮打水一场空。如果能立竿见影的话，那么你每次实现了自己定下的一个小目标，就会迫切地希望马上实现下一个微决定。”
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Most offices, maybe even yours, have some equivalent to the cookies in Goldman Sachs' (GS) conference rooms. Caroline Arnold, a managing director at the firm, used to eat several snacks every time she met with colleagues or clients. Each cookie was "probably 350 calories," she writes in a new book called Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently, and "produced a sugar high so powerful that it could outlast the longest meeting." Unfortunately, the sweet treats also played havoc with her resolve to lose a few pounds. So she made a small change, or what her book's subtitle calls a microresolution: No more conference room cookies. The key, she writes, was that "I didn't resolve never to eat a cookie again, or never to eat food in a conference room again ... Because my resolution was reasonable and specific, success was easy to measure" -- and to repeat until it became second nature to pass the cookie plate along without taking any, which eventually led her to cut calories elsewhere as well. In explaining how small changes produce big results, Arnold quotes Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do." Most of what any of us do on any given day is dictated by habit, or what Arnold calls "autopilot." The key to changing entrenched behaviors, by her lights, is to alter our autopilot a little bit at a time, using microresolutions. These seven steps, from her book, explain how: 1. Microresolutions should be easy.Most resolutions don't stick, Arnold says, because they're too big and vague. Instead, she says, start with "a discrete change in behavior that will make a difference." Rather than resolving to get in better shape, for example, decide something "limited [and] achievable", such as walking to work one day a week. Once you've been doing just that one thing for a while, she writes, it will be easier to make other fitness decisions. 2. A microresolution is an explicit and measurable action.If, for instance, you resolve to react less defensively to not-so-hot feedback at work, she writes, "you'll need to think about the specific circumstances under which you become defensive, the form your defensiveness takes, and what explicit message you can send yourself" to stop it. The more specific you can make your resolution, in other words, the more effective it will be: "Flexible or fuzzy resolutions, escape clauses, and loopholes", she writes, will just stress you out and make it easy to give up. 3. A microresolution pays off up front.Human nature being what it is, we crave instant gratification and have trouble caring much about hypothetical rewards that are somewhere in the foggy future. "If your resolution delivers only after months of effort and you quit ahead of time, you end up empty-handed," Arnold notes. "Getting 'paid' up front" -- that is, every time you succeed at one task you've set yourself -- will "leave you eager to nail your next microresolution and its reward."
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