Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?
You know that a hurried Energy Transition would cost trillions of dollars and may upend the lives of millions of people around the world already facing energy insecurity....so, is the net impact worth it?
You know how irritating it is when someone says, "Hey, I've got a 'quick question' for ya," knowing how likely it is that their question is neither quick nor important....so, is the fact that you do the same thing to others on a regular basis worth it?
You know that a “quick peak” at social media can cost you an hour or more of productivity....so, is scrolling through nauseating LinkedIn posts and watching a video from another self-proclaimed "coach" worth it?
Regardless of your answers to those questions, ask yourself:
1 - "In what ways am I underestimating the burden that 'switching costs' are having on my day-to-day performance?" and
2 - "How might I help others quantify the all-in costs of personal and professional 'switching costs' unwittingly draining them of time, energy, and money?"
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
This past weekend, I took part in two separate energy transitions. The first transition is when I decided to switch the electric generator, the electric supplier for our home electric utility bill. And in so doing, I did what anyone here in Pennsylvania and about 20 Other states can do, which is choose the company that has the best rates, the best terms. And if you're so inclined, the best source of energy, whether that's green energy, not so green energy, or whatever the case might be. The second energy transition that I took part in was my decision to purchase a battery powered chainsaw for use with small projects outside in the yard. And in both of those transitions, and both of those decisions that I made, there were costs, right? The first one, really the the mean cost yesterday, when I did this was a couple minutes of my time, with the hope of saving some money in the long term by making a conscious decision, again, about the rate and the contract terms that made the most sense for me, for my family in the amount of electricity we use, and what you know, I happen to think electricity rates might do over the next couple of months or years in the case of what I was able to lock in. And on the chainsaw, again, that was a bigger upfront investment of money. But again, with the hope of ultimately saving time and agitation and whatever else, maybe even saving some limbs for me kind of messing around with a gas powered chainsaw that I really don't need for the amount of chainsawing that I have to do around our yard. So all that being said, as is the case with life, I made a conscious decision that I knew had trade offs, right, invest a little bit of time and a little bit of energy, a little bit of money, in some cases, with the hopes that that investment leads to long term positive results. And so with that being said, it's a perfect analogy, not just for the much larger energy transition that's going on and the 10s of trillions of dollars, that that's going to cost and the 1000s of dollars per person per year for the next couple of decades that it would cost you and every American and probably anyone in the developed world. Now, again, my intention is not to go down that path, I can't say with certainty that I won't go down that path. But today, we're gonna bring it back to you as an individual, as an individual who has to make lots of decisions, who has to weigh lots of trade offs, but who might be missing out on a lot of the transition costs, the switching costs, if you will. And again, this is not a new concept. I'm sure anyone who has switched cell phone providers or cable providers, to the extent you still have cable or internet providers, or whatever the case is, you understand that you understand the time and the energy and the headaches that can be induced setting aside whatever potential money might actually be saved. In many cases, you're probably not saving as much as you might think. But nevertheless, we have to make these decisions, right? Or at least we think we have to make these decisions. Because as I work with individuals, so often coming out of people's mouths is the word Well, I should I need to do this, I need to switch this I need to go do XYZ, and in many cases, they've convinced themselves that they're supposed to do it. But in many cases, they also haven't really ever asked themselves if it still matters, if the cost of that investment of time, energy money is truly worth it. And so today, very quickly, very simply, we want to arm you with this idea that you need to be questioning whether these transitions that you decided to make in your life, both big and small, are worth it. Whether they're transitions related to your career, whether they're transitions related to, again, the the utility supply for your natural gas, or for your electricity, or whatever the case is, whether their decisions to purchase some new power tool or piece of yard equipment, and whether that makes sense. These are all transitions of cost course. And they all have costs. And they're all many cases more complicated than the over simplified GEICO commercial to, you know, have a phone call, that's 15 minutes that can save you 15%. That sounds good. But in many cases, it's taking a lot more out of you than you actually realize. And so today's question for you is, in what ways as you go throughout today, are you making transitions that have a much bigger burden, a much bigger cost on you, then you realize, and this isn't just some generic thing? They say, Yeah, you know, yeah, I understand it. But we can bring it back to two numbers, right, not just the financial numbers. And the, again, the the cost and the benefits of switching your utility supplier or whatever the case is. But the time costs to you when you make switches when you make transitions that really don't add value. You know, there's a study that's been out that a lot of people cite from a couple years ago that says that if you're involved in a task and you're distracted, it takes on average 23 minutes and 15 seconds for you to recover and get back on track. 23 minutes 23 minutes to get back on track for some simple distraction, some some simple interruption, and depending on you know how important that task was, clearly that could be catastrophic, right, especially if those interruptions are happening at a much greater clip than 23 minutes and obviously overlap. Two years, if you've had kids and you're trying to work from home, those interruptions are much more frequent than 23 minutes, in some cases, and even in a non work environment, at least in our household, I think the average is probably about 60 seconds that we can go without being interrupted, in some cases, far less. And that is not an exaggeration. We've, we've tried, we've experimented my wife and I to have a simple conversation. And the amount of times that we can't even finish a sentence without being interrupted is crazy. So bring that back to your world where there's enough distractions out there, there's enough things out there that you might not have full control over, let alone the things that you do have control over. So ask yourself as you go throughout the day, what are some of those things that you are allowing to come into your life that lead to a 23 minute pause in your focus in your productivity, and again, that 23 minutes is an average? Clearly, there's people out there who are better at handling distraction and get bang, but getting back on track, there's plenty of people out there who believe they are better at multitasking. But again, you can look at no shortage of studies that dive into the psychology of multitasking and the Myth of Multitasking and debunk the whole idea because of course, what is multitasking, it's doing multiple things, but having to switch back and forth, right, just like the the switch the PA Power switch that you can go to the switcher electric supplier here in Pennsylvania, it's not a question of doing two things at once, just the question of switching from one company to another. And for multitasking, it's a question of switching from one task to another. And your measure of how good of a multitasker you are really just depends on how good you are at switching back and forth without having to suffer the consequences of that switch.
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How well are you able to switch back and forth without losing focus without losing momentum? And again, this is where you can get into some stereotypes where women are better at multitasking the men you hear that right? And whether or not that's true. If it is it's not a question of them necessarily being better at multitasking. It's a question of women or whatever group, you're talking about, perhaps being better at reducing the impacts of those switching costs. So again, ask yourself as you go throughout today and every day, but focus on this right now, if you happen to be listening to this, if you haven't stopped by now and switched to something else, which I'm not arguing is a bad decision. But if you're still listening, ask yourself when you're done listening to me talk, what are you going to do next? What were you doing before you decided to click on this video or listened to this podcast? Or or read it on the internet? Or whatever the case is? What were you doing before? And what are you going to be doing? And is the couple minutes I decided to listen to me worth it? Is that trade off? Is that cost to switch from what you were doing to what you need to be doing next? Is it worth it? Just simple question. And as you go throughout your day to question you can repeatedly ask, but not just for you not just for the impact on your own productivity. More importantly, from a leadership standpoint, the question for you today is in what ways are you over burdening others with unnecessary or in far too frequent switching costs? How often are you interrupting them? And again, you know, certainly in a, in a work environment that's actually in the office, you know, the hazards of strolling around somebody's cube or office and what happens if you interrupt them, I would imagine you've been interrupted enough to know that you are going to hurt that person's productivity, there's a good chance that they're working on something important. And by you wandering over to have your question answered or to just strike up a conversation, you're going to cause some damage, if you will, in their productivity, you know that? So the question is, how often are you doing it? Are you doing it too often? Are you doing it unnecessarily? Are you doing it in a way that forces them to feel compelled to stop and listen to you, especially if you're in a position of authority, if you will, if you are a leader of people look to how often is that happening?
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How often are you causing people who again, wait work for you? How often are you causing them to have that 23 minute distraction, that 23 minute gap in real focus on what they're doing? And how many times that multiplied throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month. And also in terms of, you know, relatively innocent things where you might be helping somebody say, with with a career transition, right, you talk about a career transition, you talk about the switching costs there? How often do people go into career transitions, unconscious of the real cost of such a transition? It might seem so easy and rewarding, and the grass is greener, and all of those things. But in many cases, there are people who are going into those transitions. Unconsciously, they might be making the conscious decision, at least they think to switch jobs or to look for a new position. But what are they missing? What are those transition costs? And of course, we're not just talking about, you know, the cost of maybe losing benefits for a little bit or having to buy a I don't know, a new suit to go for an interview or certainly if you're switching cities, those type of costs, but we're talking about the continuity that people might have in an existing company and everything that they might be leaving behind that really aren't transferable. So if you're in a position to help people like that, make sure you're asking the questions, make sure you're getting all of those costs. On the table and make sure you're helping to quantify some of those costs that are seemingly unquantifiable that don't go straight to $1 amount, because again, we can bring it back to the decision to switch our energy supplier, right? It's a really just an investment of time, there is literally no upfront cost, at least in the, you know what I chose the other day, but the cost can add up. If you know you do this every three months, right. And if on occasion, you do this every three months, but then you forget that you've locked yourself into something that then switches to a variable rate, which has happened to me. And next thing, you know, you're paying energy prices that are equivalent to what they're paying in Europe, right? I mean, you might be paying three times the the going rate, because you signed up for a fixed term of, say, 612 months, you forget to switch and next thing, you know, you're paying upwards of 1520 cents per kilowatt hour instead of the, you know, five, six cents that it used to be is certainly not five or six cents now, I think anywhere around the country. But nevertheless, there are things that you're doing that you might miss, or that might have implications down the road. So it's your job as a leader to help people understand what those hidden switching costs are. And most importantly, to identify those areas where you might be introducing some switching costs, some transition costs that are, are unnecessary and unhelpful. So with that, again, I encourage you to be on the lookout when you interact with anybody, anybody within your purview, any of your stakeholders, if you will, family, friends, business colleagues, and hear signs here words that they're using that indicate that they are far too locked in on decision to switch from A to B, look for language where they're saying, Hey, I should do this, or I need to do this, or I'm expected to do this and challenge them tactfully and say, Well, who says that? Why do you need to do that? Do you really need to switch your electric supplier? Could it actually make sense to just let it ride and, and go back to the rates that your actual utility who brings the power to your home, no matter who your supplier is, you know, they're going to offer a rate that is, you know, required by law, at least again, in some states to to mirror the going rate, right, and the price to compare, if you will. So if you don't want to invest that time, if you don't want to introduce the risk of having to remember to switch back and again, undo whatever savings you might have, maybe that is the best option for you. Because your time and your energy is far better spent on something other than trying to predict electricity prices, or trying to spend even might only be a couple minutes switching, or so to when it comes to battery powered lawn equipment, right? For me, a battery powered chainsaw makes sense for the frequency that I'll use it and for the desire to have it work when I need to use it. And to not have to fumble around with a traditional chainsaw. It makes sense for me. But if I were running a landscaping business, or if I'm running a tree trimming business, or whatever the case is, a battery powered chainsaw may very well not make sense. Because if I'm going to be using it 810 12 hours a day, then again, it probably isn't worth the cost, it isn't worth tons of batteries. And again, that's not a decision that I need to make. That might be a decision that maybe it does make sense to go battery powered, I don't know. But the moral of the story is, if I simply purchase that, because it was hip, and it was trendy, and it was clean, and it was the right thing to do for the environment or wherever the case might be. That would have been a very short sighted transition experience, if you will, that would have cost me in the long run, probably more than I was willing to invest. And so with that, again, ask yourself as you go throughout the day, how are you allowing yourself to enter into transitions and switches that aren't necessary? And more importantly,
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how are you burdening others with unnecessary transition costs. And so with that, as I transition to the end of this episode of the energy detox, I thank you, as always, for taking the time to tune in and allow yourself to be distracted, if you will, for those 23 minutes, even if this is only half that in length. And again, I encourage you to ask yourself before you click on the next LinkedIn post or podcast episode, or whatever the case might be, to truly examine how much those couple minutes that you think you're going to be investing how much those couple minutes actually cost you and determine as you go forward, whether it makes sense to invest that time and that energy again, going forward. So with that, thank you again, have a great rest of the week and take care