How Copywriters Eat Popcorn – And How to be More Productive

He dashed out of the house, jumped on his horse, and galloped off in all directions*…

Just where do you suppose he got to?

And if he knew how to eat popcorn, would he do better?

…some people will eat just as much popcorn if it’s 7 days old and stale, as they will eat if the popcorn is fresh.

That’s the finding of a study by David Neal at University of Southern California.

The experiment was in a cinema — Neal switched fresh popcorn for stale old mucky stuff.

Of course, it’s the association with watching a film — the habit in the cinema, that causes the constant hand-to-mouth greed.

But there is a technique to help break that habit:

When people were asked to switch and use their non-dominant hand to feed themselves with, that made them sensitive to whether the popcorn was stale or fresh — and they ate less of the mucky stuff.

By using their left hands instead of their rights (vice-versa for left-handers), the automated unconscious action sequence in the brain was disrupted just enough to give a little window to stop and think: “Am I actually getting any value out of what I’m doing?”

I.e. Am I hungry? And should I put muck in my mouth?

Habits can be pretty damaging, ey?

I wonder if people who want to give up smoking could do a similar thing: switch to smoking with the non-dominant hand to disrupt the automated action sequence and give the brain a window to stub it out.

Neal’s study was guided by the theory that there are 2 critical pieces to triggering bad habits — one is the environment we’re in, and the other is that our body learns to do things in a very particular way in a particular order.

So you can do 2 things to break a bad habit — one is to switch the environment, and the other is to do something physical to change the sequence of actions.

If you’re aware of how your environment can trigger bad behaviour, you can then structure the environment to give you a nudge in the right direction.

As you know, habits are not just about smoking and eating — all day long we do big things and little things by force of habit.

If we do productive stuff habitually, then of course we’ll achieve more. And if we do unproductive stuff habitually, then we might find we have perfectly manicured nails.

A great copywriter develops habits that make him or her productive, but he or she also needs to throw a spoon into the works sometimes, to get the brain thinking different — crazy stuff, like left-handed popcorning.

But this is not just for Copywriters.

On this here video, is a way to help identify stuff to give up, and a method of giving yourself a nudge, so you can stop doing those things and make your day more productive.

It’s all about galloping off in the right direction:

Tom Peters has other helpful ideas, too.

*I don’t know who first said that Gallop-off-in-all-directions thing. Twasnt me.