In a perennial attempt to make our lives more efficient, our patience seems to get tested less and less.
The technology around us continues to improve our lives when it comes to the speed of service delivery, and accuracy of meeting our personal demands. Our patience is no longer needed to tune the radio, or set the TV antenna to point in the direction we believe the signal to fly in best from.
We can order food delivered to our doors whilst we finish this week’s laundry. On the way to work on Monday morning, an app can tell us when the next train comes. We’ll get to the station just in time; not too early, but not late either.
With many things helping us save time, it seems that a consistent bottleneck in plans gone wrong are the people around us. We can’t program people to be perfect in how they abide by schedules. There are some who simply value punctuality less than you. You’ll be frustrated by your significant other taking too long whilst you wait, cold, in the car.
What can you do to make people hurry up? It often seems that punishment and sternness don’t work. They entice people to enjoy their time with you less, and to make more mistakes in their process of hurrying up. It seems rushing others should come from a less angered state. What if enticing others to be punctual should be done by attempting to quickly motivate, rather than sternly warm and punish?
This article hopes to present an optimal way in enticing people to hurry up.
It will simply explore how one method seems to stand above the rest. The hope, is that your first remember to keep your cool in times of waiting for others in life. Only then can you entice them to want to hurry themselves for to avoid disappointing you.
The Combination of Missing Out and Bringing Pain
When thinking of ways we’d like to entice others to hurry up, two seem to stand out above the rest. Reward and punishment are the common pathways which our mind travels down in a situation of people being late. General attempts are often made to get kids to want to leave for school earlier, for instance.
You may be motivated to introduce a sort of reward system which centers on their allowance to eat sugary food and play video games. Along the same token, you’d seek to punish them by reducing their access to the reward you’ve introduced should they not behave in an unfavorable manner.
Try to not think in terms of reward and punishment when attempting to entice people to hurry up. Your attempts, if at all successful, would be likelier to bring short term, situational results, rather than long term behavior change.
Rather, tap into people’s fear of missing out, and tendency to avoid bringing others pain. Your dialogue as to why others should hurry up should tap into something deeper than a desire for reward, or avoidance of punishment. Attempt to elicit a fear of them missing out due to their own tendency to be late. Furthermore, connect the dots as to how their tardiness may cause others discomfort or pain.
To set the groundwork for this method, focus your efforts to entice people to hurry in being a balanced mixture of utilizing the fear of missing out and tendency to avoid bringing others pain.
This balance works well on a wide variety of individuals, and can therefore be recommended as a useful general approach. The people who hold others in high regard and seek to please them, would respond to avoiding bringing others pain. The ones who are more selfish in their ways, would be enticed to hurry, in order to not miss out on things.
To bring the topic down to practical terms, let’s explore a few examples of how each phase of this method may look like.
Eliciting a fear of missing out can include:
“Our reservation will be voided if we’re more than 10 minutes late.”
“Mom told me that the pumpkin pie is going quick, we better get there soon if we want some of it for ourselves.”
“My buddy just texted me saying there’s already a line for the washing machines on sale, they might be gone when we get there.”
Eliciting a fear of bringing pain can include:
“I think I’m going to need to cancel lunch with my coworker since we’re behind schedule with dropping the kids off.”
“Dad wants to go to sleep since he’s not feeling well, and really wants to see the kids prior to doing so this Christmas.”
“Jen’s waiting at the bus stop in this winter blizzard, we better get over there quick and pick her up.”
As mentioned earlier, try to formulate dialogue which elicits a mixed fear of both, missing out and bringing others pain. Be calm in your approach, and don’t fall into the trappings of a reward and punishment system. Know that this method not only works to entice others to hurry in the moment, but to remind them next time they’re running late. These fears tap into something deeper than the simplicities of reward and punishment. They serve to motivate people to change, rather than merely adjust.