Welcome, and happy Tuesday!

Today’s curiosity is deadlines and behavioral change. Today’s issue will be shorter than usual.

Yesterday, I released a new project of mine. This was pretty stressful.

Too stressful.

I wasn’t completely prepared when I set the date, but I figured that I’d be able to finish it in time. I was still not finished on the morning of release. I could postpone it, yes, but perhaps my pride got the best of me. I got caught thinking, if I don’t release it now, I never will. I could spend months perfecting it.

I was scrambling with this deadline, which I usually never do. In fact, I am writing this the evening before you’re reading this, because I have been so occupied.

No, I always make sure to take my time beforehand, so as not to struggle at the last second. In fact, I usually am finished at least a week before schedule, unless I received the deadline late.

I am noticing a behavioral change here.

This is not completely strange, I’ve noticed it with my peers. I did expect it to happen eventually, as more and more deadlines approach.

It is a good thing to learn. I think this because you are gonna have a lot of creeping deadlines in the future, and sometimes giving your all isn’t enough. To make it clear, I do think that finishing tasks earlier than a few moments before a deadline is good behavior. The thing is, other things will come up, and this is where working under pressure will help you (as well as corporate work, which also requires some to be able to work under a knife).

That got me thinking though. Why do we behave the way we do?

What is change?

It is a good question, why do we behave the way we do. First, however, we must define what behavioral change is.

Change is when you make something or someone different. Behavioral change is about modifying habits and behaviors over a longer course. Behavioral change can be both good and bad. It can make small changes that lead to a significant improvement in health. This could be smoking, eating healthy, exercising, and reducing alcohol intake.

It can even improve the environment, by changing littering, leaving lights on, or recycling.

Just like one can improve, one can also worsen. A big event could affect this, for example, if a close friend died. One can get depressed, start smoking more, and not care about one’s own wellbeing.

Theories on changing

There are too many theories about behavior and behavior change for me to talk about all of them (some 82) applicable to individuals. I will go over a few.

One theory on behavior change is reasoned action. It states that behaviors occur because of intention, and intention is influenced by personal attitude and the perceived social norm. This essentially means that a more positive attitude toward change will create a stronger intention, and one will therefore be more likely to succeed (from Fishbein and Ajzen in the 1970s).

Another theory states that our many behaviors are learned by observing others in our social environment. This means that for one to adopt a behavior, we have to pay attention to the behavior taking place, remember it, and reproduce it. The creator, Bandura, did acknowledge that there is more to adopting a behavior than this.

Thanks for exploring with me!

Read more about The Perception here.

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Until next week,

Magnus Hvidtfeldt
Designer & writer