The Power of Observation

Dr. Kashey explains a tactic to reach goals and make lasting improvements.

Quick Summary of Today’s Post

• Dr. Kashey shares an brilliantly sensical and effective path to improvement.

• He’s used it to help people lose weight and keep it off, win Olympic gold medals, double the revenue of their businesses, and increase their productive output at work.

Quick Housekeeping

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Now let’s get into it …

At the end of 2023, the Two Percent community voted on what we wanted to see on Two Percent.

One outcome of that voting: You wanted more posts with Dr. Trevor Kashey.

For the unfamiliar, Dr. Kashey is the super genius from chapter 14 of The Comfort Crisis. He’s a great friend and someone I go to for all sorts of life advice and great conversations.

Dr. Kashey and I recently hung out in Las Vegas.

We were at a Denny’s just off The Strip, drinking coffee and eating pancakes. Casino workers were filing in after their shifts, looking tired and smelling like second-hand smoke.

We were talking about life and living it—and what it takes to live it better. This is when Dr. Kashey dropped one of the more insightful things he’s told me.

We tend to approach life-improvement like this:

• Step One: We realize we’re dissatisfied with some part of our life.
  Maybe we think we need to lose weight. Or improve our fitness. Or boost our work productivity.

• Step Two: We set a big goal.
  We determine where we want to go—point B. For example, want to lose 50 pounds, take one minute off a 5K, or increase sales by 10 percent.

• Step Three: To reach that goal, point B, we adopt a big new behavior change.
  We commit to a giant overhaul. For example, when people want to lose weight, they try a new diet. To improve their fitness, they might adopt an 8-week marathon training plan. To improve their business, they hire more people or invest in some special software.

In other words, we determine point B and think getting there requires diving into big, radical changes that upend our life and normal routine.

But this process rarely works. For example, people fail to reach goals more than 4 out of 5 times. Some goals, like diets, fail 95 percent of the time.

Dr. Kashey told me about a far more effective method.

It helps people reach their goal without really trying to reach them. It’s almost like they reach their goals on accident. The method also saves resources like time, energy, and money along the way.

It’s helped his clients:

• Lose a collective hundreds of thousands of pounds and keep it off.

• Shift their work tactics in a way that doubled company revenue.

• Win gold medals.

Dr. Kashey has reams of data showing that the method works. It’s also backed by decades of behavioral psychology. It’s worked on me and it’ll work on you.

Find Point A

Section summary

To reach point B, first find point A.

The details

Recall from above how people set a goal. They select point B and then dive into some significant new change they think will get them there.

But this skips the most important part of getting anywhere. As Dr. Kashey explained, “If you want to want to get to a destination—point B—you need to find out where you are—point A.”

Most times we have no clue where point A is. That is to say, we’re not aware of our current behavior.

So how do you find point A? Simple.

Finding point A takes observation. Once we start observing our current behavior, it often changes in positive ways without us really trying. And those changes pushes us toward point B—without us having to upend our life!

Dr. Kashey explained:

When people have things they want to improve, I have them first measure the thing they want to improve. I don’t tell them to change anything—I only tell them to measure. But just by virtue of measuring that ‘thing,’ it starts to improve on its own.

And this occurs, by and large, because as people measure they identify silly things they do that interfere with what they want to improve. So they naturally start doing something smarter instead.

For example, take some of my weight loss clients. I've had more than one person lose more than 100 pounds just by paying attention to what they eat—finding point A. I gave them zero explicit instructions aside from ‘keep track of what you eat.’

This worked for me. Years ago, when I was an editor at Men’s Health magazine, Dr. Kashey gave me some nutrition coaching for a story.

He didn’t ask me to change anything at first. He just had me track and measure what I ate.

I had many “aha” moments in the process. But the biggest came when I measured peanut butter, which I ate every day at lunch.

I learned that what I thought was a 200-calorie serving was actually three servings—or 600 calories. Smaller examples like that abound. I had no clue where point A was.

Once I got a clue, I naturally started to eat a true serving of peanut butter and of all the other foods I’d mis-portioned.

Finding point A got me results fast, almost by accident. And I just had to make some portion sizing tweaks to my existing diet rather than completely altering how and what I ate. So the results lasted.

Why it works: The observer effect

Section summary

Observing a behavior changes it. You can leverage that to make change easier.

The details

Dr. Kashey explained that “the observer effect essentially states that when you observe a system, the system changes.”

The observer effect is a pain in the butt for scientists because it interferes with experiments. For example, suppose a scientist is studying worker productivity by observing workers. In that case, all the workers will work harder because they know they’re being watched. That skews the scientist’s results.

But if you apply the observer effect to people who are trying to change something? “You can turn the observer effect into a weapon,” Dr. Kashey told me.

Three ways to weaponize the observer effect

Here’s how you can find point A in nutrition, productivity, and fitness.

Nutrition

Do this: Track everything you eat.

The more accurate your data, the better your results will be.

For example, use a food scale, like this one for $14, to weigh your food. Then use an app like Carbon, MyFitnessPal, or FatSecret to log the data. (P.S., I can create a video on food measuring if that would be useful).

One reason this works: Like my experience with peanut butter, you learn what a serving size is. And your serving sizes then change in a way that helps you improve.

Productivity

Do this: During a work day, set a timer to go off every five to ten minutes. Jot down what you were doing each time the timer goes off.

Be specific. If you’re surfing the web, write down what website. If you’re working, write down the work task you were doing.

One reason it works: You’ll find that you likely spend a lot of your day not working at all—or working on the wrong tasks.

Different surveys have discovered that the average worker is only productive for two to three hours a day.

Or maybe you’re spending too much time on tasks that don’t move the dial.

For example, let’s say you wanted to improve sales. By measuring, you might find that you spent two hours messing with spreadsheets and only 15 minutes on actual sales calls. That’d show you that you need to devote more time to sales calls.

Exercise

Do this: Jot down what you’re doing every five to ten minutes, just like as described in the “Productivity” section above.

One reason it works: “Not enough time” is one of the main reasons people don’t exercise.

Building awareness around how you spend your time changes how you spend your time—freeing up time so you can exercise.

Have fun, don’t die, find point A.

-Michael

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