034 The Nobel Prize for Pattern Interrupts

This is Dr. Torrey.

Welcome to the Influence Every Day show.

Where we make every day better and we influence for good.

The year is 1888. It's a couple days after Alfred Nobel's brother had passed away. So he opened up the newspaper looking for his brother's obituary, and he found his own. The obituary was all about Alfred Nobel's death. So he's sitting there reading it, and the headline is, the merchant of death is dead. The merchant of death is dead. And the reason it started with that and went on to describe his contribution to death and destruction in multiple war efforts because of a type of dynamite that he had invented and been had been reaping profits from. So you can imagine he's sitting there reading his own obituary again. The year is 1888. He died eight years later from a cerebral hemorrhage. And a few years after that, the first Nobel Prize was issued. Now, have you ever been driving? You're driving along the road, and maybe you're going somewhere, and you know exactly where you're going. You've been on this trip multiple times. Perhaps it's to work or school or visiting a friend or someone, and you're used to the path. So you're driving, and all of a sudden you arrive where you were intending to go, and you don't even really recall the journey. You don't recall the trip. You don't recall the stoplights and passing folks and merging and all that stuff. You don't recall any of it. But what would happen if you were driving and all of a sudden a deer ran out in front of you? You would snap to attention. That is what we call a pattern interrupt. You see, the act of driving is a pattern. The act of driving along a familiar path is a pattern that we're familiar with. We've done it time and time again. That's a pattern. It's the same thing. It's predictable. We've been here before. But a pattern interrupt is when something breaks that pattern. We snap to attention. And essentially, that's what happened to Alfred Nobel when he was reading his obituary, which is why his whole life pivoted. You can imagine he's nearing the end of his life, but with the final eight years of his life, he devoted it to the Nobel Prize foundation, which was later founded in 1900, and the first prize issued in 1901. That was a pattern interrupt. He's going through life, the normal things of life. And not only that, he's looking for an obituary. And obituaries have a pattern. There's a certain spot in a newspaper that you look for obituaries. He's looking for his brothers, and he finds his own. Can you imagine reading your own obituary? That breaks the pattern. You're going through your life, and then, bam, Your obituary appears in front of you. So the pattern interrupt is really powerful for multiple reasons, and it shows up in multiple domains of our lives. Yes. It shows up in driving. It shows up in movies, when you're watching movies, and all of a sudden, there's a shocking plot twist that snaps you whenever you hear humor, even if it's just a silly dad joke. The reason humor is funny is because it breaks a pattern. If it was the same pattern, there would be nothing funny about it. But it breaks a pattern. Even if you think about something like Seinfeld. Part of the reason it was funny was because it focused on the patterns that we see every day. But it went in such grave detail that it broke a pattern. So pattern interrupts show up in humor. They show up in driving. They show up in our daily lives. Essentially, they occur when you say, I know where this is going. And then, bam. No, you don't. Because something changed, something dramatic changed, something big changed. Patterns, in fact, are one of the four main categories of influence. States, frames, patterns, and timing. When I've been studying influence from multiple different domains throughout the years through almost a quarter of a century now. Oh, my gosh. But when I've been studying those, the four main buckets, after being authentic and sincere, the four main buckets are states, frames, patterns, and timing. So patterns are really important. In fact, most of our normal natural biases that we have are related to patterns. Essentially, our brain desires ease. Our brain desires cognitive ease, least cognitive effort. So biases exist as shortcuts. And in fact, some of the biases are related to patterns. Because we're biased by the pattern. The pattern has been established, and therefore we have that bias. And then the other side of it is, when something breaks a pattern, there's also a bias to pay attention to it. So there are multiple biases, like contrast effect, the bizarreness effect, the uniqueness bias. All of these are related to patterns. When those patterns are broken, we snap to attention. And in fact, one of the highest yield things you can learn about influence and persuasion and rapport and engagement is the ability to recognize patterns, the ability to manage them, establish them, follow them, align with them, or break them, and then also to create new ones. So patterns are essential in our human. Human interaction. Mastering patterns is essential for mastering influence. So there are Some major qualities of pattern interrupts, and you can imagine all of these apply to the pattern interrupt that Alfred Nobel experienced when he's reading his own obituary. The first of those is that you snap to attention when there's an interruption to a pattern. When a pattern is broken, we tend to pay more attention to it. Now, depending on what the pattern is and how surprising or shocking that break of the pattern is, that may affect how much attention we pay to it. But when a pattern is broken, it commands our attention. The other thing is that pattern interrupts can lead to moments of discovery. If there's a pattern you're going through, you're going through again and again and again and again, and then bam, something happens. Sometimes that's a powerful moment of discovery. You find something new, you gain a new insight, you maybe discover something about yourself or discover the relevance of something that's worth pursuing. The other thing about pattern interrupts is they can lead to learning. They're in fact, a precursor to learning. You. You can learn something because your teacher told you to, and you have to do it before the test. But are you actually learning? The ones that are actually stickier are the ones that have a pattern interrupt moment of discovery that then leads you to pursue that knowledge or to pursue that skill. So pattern interrupts are really important for that. They're also important because when they are particularly visceral and emotional, they become more memorable. When they are visceral and emotional, they become more memorable. Your memory, your behavior, your learning, your discovery, all of this can be related to pattern interrupts. And you can imagine all of those are deeply encapsulated in. In the story of Alfred Nobel reading his own obituary. So if you're seeking some sort of change, if you're seeking some sort of skill development, if you're somewhat, I don't know, discontented with the current patterns in your life or in your relationships, a change is needed. And lasting sticky change requires pattern interrupts. So you don't need to wake up to a shocking obituary of yourself. But I do wonder which patterns in your life need breaking. Which patterns in your life need an interruption. Which patterns in your life need some shocking, visceral. Let's do this differently. I'll see you in the next episode.

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