Self Improvement | Psychology
Ripping Off The Band-Aid Mindset
Embrace the power of identity based habits for lasting change.
“I need you to be more organized. You become forgetful when things get busy,” my boss said.
She sat across from me, reading her notes for my annual review, which was going well up until this moment. I grimaced and took the feedback. But I left the room enormously frustrated.
When I sat down at my desk and looked around, I realized what was in front of me all along: I was a hot mess. Papers and folders were strewn everywhere. It looked like the FBI had just raided my office.
When I went home, I saw the same. Everything was everywhere. I constantly lost my wallet and keys and other important things. I realized that if I wanted to be an organized employee, I needed to have the same standard at home too. Living a double life wouldn’t work. And it made such a huge difference. I stopped losing things. My work performance improved.
I realized over time that so many solutions equate to patchwork — a cheap, easy fix that isn’t weatherproofed against the ebb and flow of human behavior. I call it the Band-Aid Mindset. It happens when people think, “I’ll just do this one thing and then it will all get better on its own.”
