Higher Performance Insights | When Convenience Beats Conviction: Mastering The 20-Second Rule
The gap between knowing and doing isn't about knowledge. It's about friction.
Every campus leader knows this truth: the best initiatives die not from lack of merit, but from tiny, invisible barriers.
· The guitar that stays in its case.
· The wellness program nobody uses.
· The Duolingo platform that gathers digital dust.
Here's the surprising truth about change and growth: it's rarely about convincing people. It's about managing those twenty seconds.
Twenty seconds is all it takes to kill a good intention.
Shawn Achor discovered this when his guitar sat untouched in his closet. Twenty seconds of friction was all it took to keep him from doing what he actually wanted to do. The solution wasn't motivation - it was moving the guitar. [1]
The magic happens when we flip this insight: if twenty seconds can kill an initiative, removing those twenty seconds can make it thrive. [2]
Want more students at the writing center? Put it where they actually study, not across campus. Want more faculty using new teaching tools? Make it one click, not five. Want more engagement in mental health resources? Put them in the path, not behind a portal.
The question isn't "How do we get people to care more?" The question is, "What's our twenty seconds?"
Find it. Remove it. Watch what happens.
When you remove the twenty seconds, you don't need to push. People do what they have wanted to do all along. [3]
Your job as a leader isn't to change minds. It's to change the distance between intention and action.
Twenty seconds at a time.
Footnotes
[2] Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
[3] Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad One by James Clear
Team Discussion Question
Where are we losing impact due to 'twenty seconds' of friction? Identify one critical initiative and the small barriers that might be quietly killing its success.
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