Prescription for the Symptom

If you’ve got a nasty viral infection clogging up the plumbing in your head, making you cough, and leading to a sore throat, chances are you’ll head to the doctor if it doesn’t let up after a few days.  When you see the doctor, chances are she’ll prescribe a decongestant, an anti-histamine, and an antibiotic.  That last one is to make everyone feel like the big guns are being pulled out, but that’s beside the point.  Actually, it’s not, because what the doctor is doing is prescribing stuff to help alleviate the symptoms of the viral infection, not the infection itself.  We all know that viruses need to run their course and there’s really not much to be done for them.  It’s all about the symptoms.  The cause of your malaise will go untreated.  Nature has to take it’s course.

The same applies to this idea that we have to focus our time more on that fourth Covey quadrant (exercise, vocation, planning, etc.) with the more strategic, forward-facing stuff in our lives.  Don’t get me wrong.  We have to be aware of the problem and of the possible solutions.  We have to bring presence to our daily working lives if we want to have a hope of unleashing our full potential here at work.  What’s often missing in our thought process, though, is that extra step to treat the illness and not just the symptom.  Lots of meetings (bad meetings at that), lots of e-mail, and lots of busy work are all symptoms of something else.  They are simply behaviors.  Behind the symptoms there are illnesses, just as behind the behaviors there are beliefs. 

The cause of every behavior is a belief or series of beliefs that life circumstances have positively reinforced over and over again.  Everything we do is a direct result of past experience.  Dr. Phil used to say that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.  I know that it sounds pessimistic, but he always gets to the next step.  The next step is to address the root of the behavior and not the behavior itself.  It’s like the Resolutionaries who invade the gym at the beginning of each new year.  Armed with New Year’s Resolutions and the best of intentions, the Resolutionaries flock to their local gyms and take over.  Gym regulars impatiently wait in lines that didn’t exist a week earlier.  They put up with longer lines, shorter workouts, and crowded locker rooms.  Some of the regulars take a vacation for the month of January.  They know that by February, most of the Resolutionaries will have lost their resolve and will be back into the rut of old behaviors.  It’s somewhat comical, but it is also a great example of the process at work: a New Year’s Resolution often targets behaviors and not the beliefs driving the behaviors.  In the end, that’s why they are doomed.

Likewise, if we say that we have to make time on our calendars to focus more on that fourth quadrant, then we’re ultimately doomed to fail.  We have to take a look at the activities that consume our time today and ask ourselves the all-important “why” question.  Why do we spend our time on time-wasting activities?  Why is our attention drawn to other quadrants?  Why so many organization, so many systems of positive reinforcement and punishment, encourage us to engage in activities we would otherwise deem as not worthy of time and attention?  The answer to those “why” questions will point us in the direction of beliefs both organizational and personal.  Seeking to change the behaviors will get us only so far.  Seeking to influence beliefs will help get us started down the path we want to take.