Ep 278 | Slippery Slopes Get the Ball Rolling

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to talk about a study that I recently reviewed on obedience and how a slippery slope can actually be beneficial in getting the ball rolling. Sounds like a strange topic, but stick with me over the next few minutes. I think that you will figure a few things out and this will make a difference in your world today. So let's talk about this study. There's a study that was done, uh, conducted in the early 1960s by a guy named Stanley Milgram. And in this study, Stanley aimed to investigate the extent to which ordinary people would obey instructions from an info— from, from an authority figure to inflict harm on others. Sounds like a strange study for me to be taking a look at, right? So the purpose was to investigate the extent to which your normal person would obey instructions from an authority figure to inflict harm on others. The experiment involved 3 roles. It involved the experimenter, which was the authority figure. It involved the teacher, which was the actual participant. And it involved the learner, which was just another participant who was just going to be the recipient of some shocks. So participants were told that they were part of a learning experiment where they were to administer electric shocks to the learner whenever that learner made a mistake on a memory task. However, the shocks were fake. But the participant did not know the shocks were fake. Only the learner knew that they were fake, and the learner pretended to be in pain. The key aspect of the study was that the experimenter instructed the participant to continue to administer shocks even when the learner was in pain, was distressed, was protesting. Milgram found that a significant number of the participants continued to administer shocks up to the highest voltage level, despite the uncomfort of the recipient of the shock. So this social pressure and this power of authority was on display. And I think those that observed the results of the study, they were amazed by how much influence authority and social pressure had and these shocks were being administered. Now, Milgram's experiments were a demonstration of the potency of a different behavioral channel. And that's what I was referring to earlier today, which is slippery slope. A slippery slope took these individuals that were administering the shock. It took them one step at a time from what would be deemed an unexceptional action to exceptional behavior. They started with 15-volt shocks, which you can feel but are not that significant. And then with the next wrong answer, it went to 30, and the next wrong answer, it went to 45, and the next wrong answer, it went to 60. It went all the way up to 450 volts. Now remember, the individual on the other side was just faking. Okay, but the person administering the shock did not know that. 15 volts is rather unexceptional, but the slippery slope, the rhythm or the momentum that was built, building from 15 to 30 to 45 to 60, all the way up to 450, even though the person administering thought the recipient was in pain. It was rather, dare I say, easy for the participant to do. What is this trying to prove? Right now, again, the experiment had a lot more to do with this apparent influence of social pressure and this influence of an authority figure who kept saying, administer more shock, administer more shock. And there was this pressure and there was no easy way out. But it also demonstrates that chipping away, or small building blocks, small steps repeated over time, can put you into a massive, massive world, right? Can put you into exceptional behavior. See, if he had said, if the administrator had said, uh, hey, I need you to go from 15 and then jump it immediately to 150, then jump it immediately to 300. Odds are there would have been tremendous pushback, but because the momentum was created, because the ball was rolling, because of this slippery slope, unexceptional went to exceptional. Now, where does this show up in real life? Okay. This is just something to think around. Heroic actions, lifelong commitments to noble causes often start with small acts in particular circumstances that the individual happens to confront. All right. So for example, a child volunteers to walk dogs at a local shelter because she likes pets. She then responds favorably when she's a little bit older to a request to donate to the shelter. Soon she's soliciting signatures to preserve the shelter for, for, you know, the local animals. Then she's on to preserving the habitats of, say, a local species of owl. And then she eventually joins the rank of the Greenpeace activists. This shows up throughout life, right? Someone doesn't go from walking dogs on occasion to Greenpeace. It is a series of steps, small, each one small, compounding, going from exceptional— unexceptional to exceptional behavior. This is the slippery slope. This is a long process that culminates in something so much more significant. Maybe we look at, say, a depressed individual. A depressed individual can find challenges and chores of everyday life Overwhelming. But those difficulties can seem less onerous after getting up from, from the chair and doing something far removed from the source of the depression. Even if it's only taking a short walk or taking a shower. Maybe a messy kid might find a request to clean her room, like my kids find the request to clean the room intimidating or too aggressive, which is frustrating. That's a conversation for another day, but clean your room. Is perceived as a big task, but maybe just picking things up from the floor is a more manageable task, which creates momentum towards more thorough efforts that ultimately lead to cleaning the room. So the idea here is that we learn to understand that the secret to getting big things done is to just get the ball rolling and take additional small steps one at a time. Block whatever channels make it easy to get sidetracked and then count on the boost in motivation that comes when that end is in sight. So today's episode I mentioned is about slippery slope, right? We usually think about slippery slope, maybe going in a negative direction, but I'm actually saying leverage the slippery slope, leverage small steps. One at a time, at a time, one and over and over and over again. Leverage that and go from the unexceptional to the exceptional. In your world, I'm going to guess this applies. As a matter of fact, I think the focusing question today is, where are you looking to make a substantial move or substantial impact? And that may feel a slight bit overwhelming, but if you take a small step right now, Today and just, just take an action and kind of jumpstart this whole thing, get the ball rolling. And then tomorrow, take the next organic action. And then the next day, take the next action. You will find yourself going from somebody who's at a standstill, maybe procrastinating, to someone now building momentum, to somebody that now compounds these efforts over time. And potentially lands with something exceptional. Where does this apply to you? Where can you take a step today? Better yet, I would encourage you to maybe map out the next few steps if, if you feel so inclined. Maybe that is deflating, maybe you feel overwhelmed, so that's not a good step for you. But for many of us, you know, as I was talking about the other day when we were talking about procrastination, just getting the ball rolling right, creates the energy necessary to make— to take the next step, which ultimately gets us to where we want to go. So on that note, that's all I have for us today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.