Wisdom For Enterprise

If you want to train a puppy, you have to get the timing right.

Their brains can only connect their behavior and its consequence over a very short period of time.

And if you want your training to be REALLY effective, you have to catch them in the act.

That's why clicker training is so effective. 

You associate a reward to the click.

After you do that for a while, the click itself triggers a reward  in the brain.

And then you use the click itself to mark the exact moment the puppy took the desired action.

Although people are much more complicated...
And have a more sophisticated ability to bridge the gap between action and consequence...
Our brains still work in fundamentally the same way.

Why do you think that so many people knowingly trade long-term costs for short-term benefits?

Think junk food, video games, tv, drugs, and alcohol.

They all trigger short-term rewards.

The brain heavily biases towards those things which reward or punish us immediately.

So if you are responsible for training people...
(And you're always responsible for training yourself)

Or if you want to start encouraging certain behaviors over others...

Start catching them in the act.