Something rather unremarkable happened to me at lunch today. I needed to cross the street.
My office is on a corner, marked A in the image to your right. I needed to cross the street and make it to B. A gentleman was standing next to me, and needed to go from point A to point B as well. As you can see, though, our progress was impeded by a not-so-friendly “Do Not Walk” sign. Because there is a left turn arrow at this intersection, the rightmost “Do Not Walk” will cycle before the one between points A and B.
I can only attribute what happened next to a basic difference in psychology. I waited on the corner in order to go straight from A to B. The gentleman next to me crossed to our right (the bottom green checked sidewalk), took take advantage of the rightmost walk signal, and wound up jaywalking through the top of the intersection to arrive at point B.And for all that effort, he still arrived after I did.
The question is, what did this gentleman gain by traveling three times as far to make the same journey? He didn’t save time, that’s for sure. It was chilly outside, so it’s possible all that walking warmed him up, but I think the wind probably offset that.
The only thing I can see that he really gained was the feeling of control via action: rather than waiting on the light to change, he took control of the situation to find an alternate solution. This is a pretty normal human thing to do, actually. The only problem is the result: he got nothing extra for his effort. His actions to control the situation did absolutely nothing. Moreover, had he taken just a moment to review the situation, he would have seen that all that extra action (not to mention the risk of injury by jaywalking) would be fruitless.
Like I said, it’s actually a very normal human reaction. When faced with an uncontrollable situation, we want to take action, do something, anything, to try and make the circumstances fit what we want. We even take risks that we know aren’t outweighed by the possible rewards.
And in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not just talking about crossing the street here. We engage in this kind of behavior all the time. Think of how you drive during high traffic: are you more likely to take side streets so you can keep moving, even though you might arrive home no earlier than if you’d taken the stop-and-go main route? What about computer issues: do you take the time to review the logs to see what exactly went wrong? How about the stock market, or a crisis at work?
Our initial reaction is to jump in, get moving, and stay moving, even though analyzing the situation we may be better served by taking less action. Or even no action at all.
It’s a hard lesson to learn, but it’s one worth remembering. Action doesn’t always equal progress.
