Distracted: The Secret to Consistency

The Estate Agent Consultancy Podcast

Host Toby Martin leads a collaborative live broadcast exploring the psychology and practical strategies behind building consistent habits. Joined

Key takeaways

• Baumeister's radish vs. chocolate cookie experiment suggested willpower is a finite battery that depletes with use, forming the basis of ego depletion theory.
• Danziger's study of Israeli parole judges revealed decision fatigue, showing favorable rulings dropped to near zero before breaks due to cognitive exhaustion.

Main topics

• Consistency and habit formation
• Ego depletion and decision fatigue research

Notable quotes

"Consistency is so consistent that it's everywhere business types are so consistent in their advice that the one thing we need to be in life is consistent."

Conclusion

The episode provides a research-backed toolkit for overcoming inconsistency by

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) Welcome to the Estate Agent Consultancy Podcast, Saturday edition. I'm Toby Martin and something a little bit different for you on the pod this Saturday. And I find myself saying that rather a lot lately, but this is genuinely a bit different. So yesterday on Friday, the 2nd of October, I launched a bit of a new initiative for me, which is a weekly live broadcast. It goes out on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn, and it's called Distracted. And the whole premise is that I am attempting to solve a different topic every week. This week, the topic is consistency. But what makes this a little bit different if you watch it live is it's meant to be really collaborative. And during the broadcast, I put a QR screen, a QR code up on the screen, which anyone can scan to come on the show. and help me solve the topic live. So you'll hear during this that I'm joined by a couple of great guests, Rachel Ollington of the podcast and Natalie Barton from PropertyMark as well, to help solve this thorny issue of consistency. And I thought consistency was a brilliant place to begin because how often do you hear someone like... like me, like Chris or Rachel and agents as well, say, look, the thing, the key to success, the main foundation is consistency. And that can apply to so many things, not just your marketing, but also the everyday daily work as well of running an agency and performing to a high standard, but also. work and life too, and health and fitness and well-being and happiness. So much of it is rooted in the art of consistency, so it seemed like a brilliant place to begin. During this episode, we explore the psychology of why it's so difficult to make a habit stick, and we then move on through to practical solutions and advice that you can apply to all manner of different things in your work and life. immediately that will cost you nothing to do but will help you to perform more consistently and to adopt new healthy habits and make them stick. So I'm not really going to hang around any longer but to hand over to my my live self and just before I do that I'll finish off by saying that if you'd like to see future episodes of Distracted because I won't put them all on the podcast But if you'd like to watch them go out live or find previous episodes, then you can go to tobyisdistracted.com. That's a real website, tobyisdistracted.com, and you'll find previous episodes. But also, at the end of every episode, I produce a summary download just with the practical bits. Here's the things that you can do in a PDF. So you can find the download for this episode at tobyisdistracted.com. But on with the show. I hope you enjoy it. Speaker 1 (3:01) you Speaker 1 (3:19) Good afternoon, everybody. If you have arrived like 30 seconds late and you missed the intro video. Speaker 1 (3:27) You've missed out. I spent far too long creating that. I might have to play it again in a minute when a few more people join. But good afternoon. Thank you for joining. This is Distracted and I'm Toby Martin. And over the course of the next I don't know how long, we are going to try and solve one of life's great mysteries. And that is this week's theme, which is consistency. consistency is so consistent that it's everywhere business types are so consistent in their advice that the one thing we need to be in life is consistent every everyone is very clear on that And so over the course of this session, we are going to try and solve consistency. And I say we because I'm looking for as much help as possible. The idea is not for this to be a Toby Martin speaks to the nation kind of thing. The idea is this is meant to be something where I lean on your expertise and your wisdom. Yeah, I've got a whole bunch of research that I've done myself, which is really fascinating. I've learned a lot from it already. But there's two ways that you can get involved in this, because I know there's going to be some people out there tuning into this who are experts on how to be consistent. Well, that's in life, in the quality of your work, in your marketing output, whatever it might be in fitness, health. And so I want you to get involved. So there's two ways that you can get involved. The first is in the comments. So please do comment and I can put it up on the screen just like Lisa's done. Hi Lisa, thank you for demonstrating the live chat. So whether you're watching on Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube, you can get involved in the chat. But there is of course a far more entertaining way to get involved and that is to come on, come on and be a part of the show and actually to chat to me and give me the benefit of your experience and your wisdom and expertise. And so in a little bit after I'm done with the intro, I'll put a QR code up. about there and you can scan that QR code and you can come on and be a part of the show and chat to me. Don't be afraid. I'm extremely friendly and I'm a very good interviewer. But to help you with that, I want to share with you what I'm probably going to ask you so you can actually have a think about it. So if you scan the QR code and you come on, then this is probably roughly what I'm going to ask you. Or... Or you can give your answers to this in the chat. So what is something that you are brilliantly consistent at? What is something that this is probably the easier question. What is something that you know you should be consistent at, but you can't just can't make it stick? And if you have one, what is one routine rule or habit that helps you to be consistent? But I thought I'd kick us off with. consistency just because it is one of the building blocks of success, isn't it? It is very hard to be successful without achieving consistency. So that is why we're starting with this monumental subject. And the other thing you need to know is that in the background, I have a note taker running and you can see it's already taking notes. So after the session, I will turn those notes into a download and you'll be able to go to my fancy new website, tobyisdistracted.com. And after every session, you'll not only be able to watch back these episodes, but you'll be able to download the summary as well, which will help you to put this advice into action. And I should add, there's no data capture. There's no funnel that you're going to go into. This is not an exercise of give me your email address and forever get my newsletter. This is just for fun. So afterwards, you can download that summary sheet and have it with my blessing. So I think that we're going to get underway. Speaker 1 (7:37) And what I'm going to do is I'm going to replay the intro because I loved it so much. So I'm going to replay the intro. And then after that, I'm going to start to talk to you about consistency. And I'm going to be keeping an eye out for people who want to come and join in the conversation and for people who want to share their own takeaways in the chat. So let's replay the intro because I love it. Speaker 1 (8:19) Yeah, I told you, didn't I? So thank Crunchy, it's Friday, says Alistair. Good to see you back here again, Alistair. Thanks for tuning in. So this is Distracted. I am Toby Martin. We are dealing, we are solving consistency today. And as humans, I think it's our nature that we like to solve problems. You know, if the car breaks down, if smoke starts coming out of the car engine, then... Well, we take it to the garage and they say, well, you need to swap this walnut or flywheel or whatever it might be. And then it works again. We like to diagnose the fault and then solve it. It's in our nature. Something's wrong. Let's put it right. Consistency is, I think, something that confounds so many of us because it is so hard to diagnose. diagnose why we lose momentum, why we lose motivation, why we lose focus or energy. So over the course of this session, I'm going to be rattling through the research that I've discovered that has helped me to understand how to be more consistent. However, I'm easily distracted. Hence the title of the show. I'm very easily distracted. So if you want to come and distract me, then you can be my guest. The QR code is on the screen. And rather than letting me ramble on, I'm very happy to ramble on. I've got some really interesting stuff to talk about. But if you want to come and contribute your own insights, then be a part of the show. I should add, just because sometimes it needs pointing out, that if you're watching this back, you can't scan the QR code. If you're listening to this on a podcast, you can't also join the show live. I'm afraid it's over, but it will happen again every week, normally on a Friday at 1 p.m. Okay, so let's crack on. In order to understand a little bit more about consistency, I want to go back to the roots of understanding why sometimes we find it hard to achieve consistency. Speaker 1 (10:31) Yeah, thank you, Nat. Nat has summarized this up very well. Nat in the comments says, I am brilliantly consistent at being distracted, which sums me up perfectly as well. So why do we get distracted? Why can't we just pick an important task? Sometimes the stuff we're trying to focus on, like getting healthy, right? I have been trying to be healthy. for so many years now but there was just a louder voice in my head that tells me i like chocolate so why do we lose focus okay i want to take you back to the 90s and i want to tell you about some really interesting research into the the idea of willpower and motivation And I want to tell you about a chap called Baumeister. Baumeister, he carried out a bunch of research which led to a theory called ego depletion. And when I say ego, I don't mean like arrogance, that kind of ego. I mean the psychological sense of ego, which is like the conscious decision making self. Right. By the way, if you tuned into this thinking, great, I'm going to learn how to be consistent. And now he's talking about ego and someone called Baumeister, who sounds like a villain in Mario. We'll come to that. So we're going like roots. Understand the background to it. We'll end on the practical tips. They're coming. If I don't get distracted before. Speaker 1 (11:57) But Baumeister came up with this theory called ego depletion, and he carried out this really interesting experiment. I'd love to know how you would fare in this experiment. He filled a room with the scent of freshly baked chocolate cookies. OK, and I'm already salivating at the thought of it because I hadn't had any lunch. And the subjects of this experiment were led into this room and immediately were hit by the scent of freshly baked chocolate cookies. Speaker 1 (12:27) except they were not allowed to eat the bowl of chocolate that had been left in this room. Instead, they were invited to eat radishes. So they were given radishes instead. And then afterwards, the group of people were asked to solve a puzzle. Unbeknownst to them, the puzzle was actually impossible. There was no solution. So they could have been going all night if they hadn't given up. So we had two groups of people. We had the group of people who had eaten the radishes, but then there was a second group who was allowed to eat the chocolate, right? And there was a very clear distinction between the two groups. The radish group gave up the puzzle far quicker than the group who had been allowed to indulge. And the findings behind this, which led to this ego depletion theory, was that willpower is like a battery. You have an... You have a finite amount of it. And the more you use it up, the less you have left in the tank. Right. So this group who had who had scoffed down the chocolate had used up far less willpower than the group who had to resist the chocolate and only eat radishes. OK, so we all have a finite amount of willpower. And the more you have to use that, the less you have to call on when you need it most. Right. And there were other. Is this annoying you? This like triangle of light, by the way, I'm going to shut that curtain. The beauties of a live broadcast. There we go. If you're listening to this on the audio feed, I just had to shut a curtain. 2011. Let's go forward a little bit in time. These were research experiments that were relied on for decades to inform our fundamental understanding about willpower and your concentration. This second research study was carried out by a guy called Danziger and it focused on a group of Israeli judges, parole judges, over a thousand parole decisions they looked at. And they looked at the decisions made by these judges, very experienced judges who, of course, are expected to be impartial and to take in all of the facts to reach a fully formed decision. And they looked at when favorable decisions were handed down by these judges. And what they found was that at the start of the session, around 65 percent. of decisions were favorable. which then steadily dwindled down and down and down and down until just before the afternoon break, when people had made loads of decisions, were feeling hungry, were feeling tired and fatigued, when the number of positive parole decisions reached pretty much zero. Pretty much zero until right after the break when they went back up to 65 % again, you know, because they had a break. And this was called decision fatigue. So we've got these two ideas, decision fatigue and ego depletion. The idea that we have a finite amount of willpower, which we then drain that battery until we have no willpower left at all. However. Speaker 1 (15:54) I have a guest who I'm going to bring on in a minute. I'll add one more thing to this just to throw in this melting pot, which is OK. So we're painting this picture that we have a finite store of willpower. And the more we have to make decisions and and use our willpower, the less we're able to keep doing that. And. Speaker 1 (16:17) researcher called Gloria Mark in 2005 carried out a study into digital distractions which I find really interesting and she found on average in in the workplace where she carried out the study those workers were distracted on average every 11 minutes. And on average, it took them 24 minutes to return back to the state of work that they were previously in, which meant that actually they barely ever returned to work, probably because then 11 minutes later they were distracted again. So we