In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. So we've been talking about how you spend your time, we've been talking about the importance of not being distracted. And we are living in a world of distraction. I think distractions are only going to become more and more prevalent, more and more of an issue. If you can be the exception. If you can be one of the few who is not distracted or not addicted to technology or social media, I think you're going to have a massive leg up on your competition.
The ability to be present to be here now, to not be caught up in being there will make you exponentially more effective at whatever it is that you're doing, being present in your relationships, serving your business or your customers pursuing your own things. So just remain In the land of the blind, the one eyed about the one eyed man is king. We're going to talk about choice architecture and creating better defaults right now. And so, in the book, I wrote about this. And in the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment, these researchers gave children a single marshmallow and then said, you know, hey, if you can not eat this marshmallow until I come back, I'll give you a second marshmallow. So then the researchers leave the room.
They come back. Many, many, many minutes or hours long time later, though the point is like they were supposed to never come back. And what they discovered they ended up following these, these kids the subjects for the rest of their life, and the children who went the longest without eating the marshmallow had the most success by several different measures throughout the rest of their life went to better colleges got better grades, who had better jobs, make more money, all the different ways that you could measure that. And so what we're really looking at here is the ability to delay gratification. And a lot of the kids would make little deals with themselves or find ways to not eat that marshmallow right now. And this is sort of where this overlaps with something called a Ulysses pact.
And so, in literature, Ulysses, or Odysseus, depending on which classic literature you prefer to read, a decius in the original Greek works, who was the captain of the ship that was about to sail past these sirens, the same songs that were famous for Lowering the ships into shallow rocky waters so that they would crash. He knew that this was coming. So he instructed his crew to tie him to the mast of the ship. And to not untie him until long after they passed where the sirens work. Because he knew that if he were able to that he would change he would turn the boat and steer where he didn't want to go. He also told his crew to put beeswax or wax in their ears so that they couldn't hear the songs and he said any man who unties me before this predetermine spot, I will kill you with my sword.
And so eventually, you know, they they sail past the the temptation and they get where they want to be safely and without detour. And this is what's known now as a Ulysses pact, it is making a deal with your current self, so that your future self can benefit from that deal. Again, delaying gratification. So if we think about the marshmallows, you know, I can envision myself being in that room. And as soon as the researcher says that to me, I'm destroying that Marshmallow, I'm tearing it up, I'm gonna put it underneath of the leg of the chair and smash it, I'll try to get it flat, shove it under the door. I don't know, I will do whatever I can instantly to ensure that I just don't have the ability to eat it.
You know, we all think Well, I've got the willpower to to not eat that thing. But we all also know that you know, if that thing were to sit there forever, eventually you're going to give in and eat it. And so this is where choice architecture and create Better defaults can be utilized to our advantage to help us just like Ulysses knew he was going to face temptation. You know, how can you set up your day to reduce distractions to eliminate interference? You know, we talked about this with, or, you know, we'll talk about this in a few minutes. In a video of reducing and avoiding and eliminating distractions, you know, is your phone on airplane mode?
Did you turn off all the notifications on your computer? We all know damn well, that if our phone and our computer dating every single time we get a text, email, Facebook, message, tweet, whatever, while we're sitting here trying to be productive, that it's going to pull our attention away from what we're supposed to be doing. We could very easily just turn off notifications. That in itself is a Ulysses package. That is creating a better default environment in which we can be productive and be the version of ourselves that we want to be. Create a friction free environment to to get where you want to be to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
And so what I want you to do is think about what your distractions are, what your interferences are, how can you create better defaults. Two more examples of this would be if you want to take more steps, right, if you're going to prioritize, measure, monitor the number of steps that you take, make a decision to say every time I have a choice of elevator, or steps escalator or steps that I take the stairs. make that decision now one time and then every single time you're in that opportunity or facing that you take the stairs if you Same thing, same same goals, more steps parked at the back of the parking lot. Don't spend three extra minutes going up and down the aisles trying to get the best possible parking space, especially if you're going to the gym. Or if you're a person who prioritizes movement and fitness, just pull into the parking lot parking the first spot available in the back and walk the extra 50 steps.
It's not that much further, but you're creating those habits. And so there's another interesting study where again, this is in the book, researchers changed the order of food as it was presented in a cafeteria. And if they've put the healthiest foods at the front of the cafeteria line, and the desserts at the end of the line, people made healthier choices, they would end up filling their plate and filling their trays with the healthier options and they would have less room for the not healthy options. And then people who went through in the opposite order desserts first, then healthy foods, same thing, they filled their trays with the non healthy options first, and then they had less room for the healthy options. So there's actually two lessons in there. One is, you know, if you want to eat healthier, you know, eat the healthy stuff first.
But the the other thing is that the research has pointed out is that, you know, we are very absent minded, almost sleepwalking as we go through life in a lot of different ways. And this was just an example of people grabbing whatever was presented to them first, as opposed to being very intentional. If somebody was committed to eating healthy, it wouldn't matter what order the things were presented, they would have been intentional about it. So just a couple of things to keep in mind there. Where can you utilize choice architecture in your life to create a friction free environment that helps you produce the results that you're looking for? For that helps you get and do the actions, more of the actions that will lead you where you want to be.
How can you create those better default environments.