Arjun Khemani

There’s something unsurprisingly odd about doing “fun stuff” that we would even go the extra mile to do it.

Here is a video I found on Twitter which depicts more clearly, through a public experiment, the meaning of my statement.
In the video:
The creators of the whole video wanted to see if they could get more people to choose the stairs (rather than the escalator) by making the stairs more “fun” to climb.
So, they cleverly transformed the stairs into a piano! Each stair step was a piano key, and if someone would place their foot upon one of those stair steps, the piano key which was pressed upon would make a noise, just like a real piano!

Taking note of key data (of stair-takers over people who took the escalator) before establishing the piano and then after engineering the whole masterpiece piano staircase which would be available to the common public; the observers of the experiment discovered that 66% more people chose the piano staircase over the escalator.

A 66% increase in stair climbers. Just by making the stairs a little more fun to climb. How cool is that!

What this experiment shows—and various other studies on human psychology would agree upon—is that our actions, and our decisions to act in a certain way depend on a variety of factors. The level of fun shows up prominently in those list of factors.

We would rather do an easy task than a difficult one. We would rather do something fun than boring. We would rather do the probable than the improbable.
Note that easy, difficult; fun, boring; and probable and improbable are relative terms and solely depend on the individual’s mindset. Something that may be hard for one, may be easy and fun for another and vice-versa.

But when we use the fun factor to trick our brains to do something difficult, it works because the fun outweighs the level of difficulty.
In the stairs example, people would rather enjoy pressing large piano keys with their feet than worry about having to puff and sweat a little along the way. The fun was of greater magnitude than the difficulty.

We can use this principle of tricking the mind to do something fun, yet productive and relevant to a very significant degree.
– If you don’t get enough exercise: You can trick yourself to watch Netflix while walking on the treadmill.
– If you don’t like reading books: You can listen to beautifully narrated audiobooks instead of turning physical pages over.
– If you don’t want to do a particular thing: You can say you’ll truthfully reward or treat yourself with something you really like (like some luxurious ice-cream) right after you do the thing (for instance go to the gym). But; no gym, no ice-cream.

There are many others. Whatever you find hard or difficult to do, there’s probably a nice loophole for you to trick your motivation into doing the task by making it fun in any sort of way.

. . . . .

The Twitter video: Would you take the stairs? (@buitengebieden_)