Psychology: A Safety Margin 🤺🎠

in #psychology5 years ago

Hi, Folks!

Another wonderful moment to share mental reasoning with friends and colleagues. Do you like setting up a limit for yourself? Friends, you need to pay attention to one important factor when setting up the limit.

Look at an interesting problem faced by Southwest Airlines far back 1996 and this will lead us to the hidden treasure in the setting of limit for ourselves.

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A Safety Margin: Upper Limit


It was cleared to me that, some decade ago the airline company had expanded from being a small regional carrier to one with a more national presence. The expansion made over 100 cities calling for Southwest to expand service to their location, and this was the time when many airline companies were losing money or going bankrupt, Southwest was overflowing with opportunity.

See What Southern Airline Did

It was really another story when people discovered Southwest turned down over 95% of the offers and began serving just 4 new locations in 1996 and Southern Airline left significant growth on the table.

You may ask this question: A business sees many opportunities why would a business turn it? Friends, at this juncture you will need to pay attention in other to learn from this story and make a plan to use it in your day to day activities.

Can I Ask You This? Do You Have Upper Bound(Limit)?

In the 1970s, the history revealed that the only airline that made a profit for nearly 30 consecutive years was Southwest Airline. The secret behind the success of Southern Airline was traced down to the willingness of the company leaders to set an Upper Bound Limit for growth said Jim CollinsBook Title: Great By Choice

It was cleared to me that, the company really want to grow every year but again they intentionally avoided growing too much. Does that sound strange to you? Southern executive chose a pace that they could sustain, and the mind is to grow the business while maintaining the culture and profitability. Southern Airline set an upper bound limit for growth.

Friends, if you are following, you will understand that this approach can be applied to nearly any business or goal you pursue but again most of us tend to do the opposite and mainly focus on the lower bound limit.

I looked at it in this direction;

A person might say, I want to lose at least 5 pounds this month. From the entrepreneur look, you may say, I want to make at least 10 sales calls today. It is clear to me that we tend to focus only on the lower bound limit which is the minimum threshold we want to hit but again I challenge you, Come On you can do more than the minimum, go for it and cancel the implicit assumption over your goal and business.

See The Angle I Want You To Picture

Can you make your goal or behavior to look like this?

Well,I want to lose at least 5 dollars this month, but not more than 10. From a sales perspective, I want to make at least 20 sales calls today, but again not more than 30. As a writer, you say to yourself, I want to write at least 500 words today, but not more than 2,000. This serves as a safe margin for growth.

Upper Bound Limit As A Safety Margin For Growth?

Yes! there is a magical zone of long-term growth in many areas of life and it is logical to push enough in other to make progress but again not so much that it is unsustainable.

Look At From A Weightlifting

A weightlifter a year ago started with a weight that was too light (200 lbs) and what he planned was to slowly added 5 pounds to his squat every week. The following week, he increases it to 300lbs and never follows a magical program. The lower limit is important but this man keeps adding to the weight in order to get stronger. I will need to say this, if the upper limit is not critical then the man should plan for inflammation and injury. When you are on a project, you may have plenty pays when you could have added more task to yourself but if you aggressively pursued growth you would have quickly hit a plateau (or worse, caused an injury)

We need to chose to stay within a safety margin of growth and avoided going too fast. This makes every set to feel easy. There is a power of setting an upper limit, this power makes your goal or business easier and gives you room to sustain your progress and again the sustaining progress as a result of the power in the upper limit you set makes you blow away everyone who chased success as quickly as possible.

Never Think You can sustain

An assumption can ruin a business. You need to put your idea into practice. What do I mean? You need to let your upper bound limits drive your behaviors in the beginning and thereafter slowly increase your output.

Look at this last scenario, a man decided to exercise for 45 minutes on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays and this will be a routine for you. Do you try to look at your strength? Can you sustain 45mins throughout the task? Why not turn the problem upside down and say I am not allowed to exercise for more than 5 minutes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Let me end with this, setting an incredibly easy upper limit will make the process of getting started and sustaining your behavior much simpler. When you succeed in the establishment of the routine of doing your behavior over and over again, you can then raise the limit as needed.

It's better to make small progress every day than to do as much as humanly possible in one day. Do things you can sustain. by samest

Thanks for reading.

Yours Sincerely,

Engr Samest


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