Progress-focused

If-then planning is a technique which helps to perform specific goal-oriented behavior in situations in which it is most needed. Many people know the phenomenon that we often don't do what we wish or need to do (this is sometimes referred to as the knowing-doing gap). The problem is that while we do know what we want to achieve and we also know which behavior is effective, at the crucial moment we still fail to perform the behavior.The reason we fail to behave effectively at the critical moment may have to do with letting our emotions overwhelm us or succumbing to temptations or simply forgetting about the effective behavior when we need it.

George, a high school teacher, looked into the classroom of his colleague Bill and saw, to his amazement, that the students of the class, which had a reputation of being a very difficult class, were quietly working. At lunch break he asked Bill with a surprized smile: "How did you get them to do that, man? I get nothing but trouble from this class. I see no other solution than to get really tough with them. That'll teach them!" Bill smiled and then explained how he used the principle of autonomy-support in his classroom and he said this worked rather well. He explained that this meant, among other things, to provide many choices for students, taking students' feelings and opinions quite seriously, and avoiding controlling language. When he heard that, George said: "That sounds rather naive of you. If you do that they will walk right over you!"

Often things aren't just good or bad. Here are five examples: (1) solutions for problems can create new, often unexpected, problems, (2) good traits of a person can arouse envy in others, (3) what can be a strength in one situation can be a weakness in another, (4) the fact that you have achieved success feels good but can decrease your motivation to make further progress, and (5) having much knowledge about a topic can be pleasant but can create some difficulties in the communication with others. I want to say a few things about this last example which is related to a phenomenon known as the curse of knowledge (Loewenstein & Weber, 1989).

When people have to take a test for an application they are often asked to mention their race or ethnicity by ticking a box. Personally, I am skeptical about both the meaningfulness and the usefulness of  categorizing people in such a way and I think it is likely to do more harm than good. In my view it not only is likely to harm the performance but also is likely to distort the process of assessing the performance. I'll explain.