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We can handle disruption better than we might imagine – in fact disruption can be beneficial to us
About two weeks ago, my life got seriously disrupted. I have been a frequent (some might say continuous) Twitter user for well over a decade. Not really for debating or sharing my opinion *, but to find and share information, mostly about my professional interests. For almost as long, I have been using a so-called third-party app, Tweetlogix, on my phone and tablet, which perfectly suits my needs. On Friday 13th (when else?), I found that it had stopped functioning. Soon I learned countless other users of any third-party app were afflicted by the same problem. Twitter, which has been "under new management" for a few months, appears to have disabled the access to their servers for fetching and posting messages that these apps need.
Disruptions, small…
Did I really say "seriously disrupted"? Yes, indeed. That is precisely what it felt like. We seem to have a tendency to inflate the impact of disruptions, often well beyond their true significance. Almost by definition, they interfere with our pursuit of some goal, or with something that we are engaged in or that has our full attention. The effect it has on us is therefore keenly felt: it is worse when the television breaks down right at the start of a momentous football game, than during the breakfast show that plays in the background. We also experience the consequences very much in the moment – and that moment is all encompassing. We have little sense of the relative insignificance of the disruption, not just on a cosmic scale, but even on the scale of a week, a month or a year. (The tendency to evaluate occurrences without regard for the longer term is a manifestation of present bias.)
A minor disaster, but wait, I know what to do! (image via
DALL·E)
The effect of a disruption is further amplified by a couple more innate cognitive tendencies. All else being equal, our propensity to conserve energy is a beneficial trait, which our ancestors, all the way to the most distant ones, already possessed (their peers who did not died out). This characteristic manifests itself in the status quo bias: unless there is a very good reason to change, we prefer things to stay the way they are, for this usually demands the least mental or physical resources. Similarly, loss aversion, the tendency to perceive a loss as more intense than an equivalent gain, reflects the desire to maintain our resources. Disruption inevitably moves us away from the status quo, and always involves a loss – and we are not happy when this is forced upon us.
So, objectively small disruptions can loom large. Our car breaking down, a cancelled train, roast vegetables burnt to charcoal when we're expecting dinner guests, a water leak, our favourite biscuits discontinued – you can surely come up with more examples that are equally annoying, if not more so. But there are upsides to disruptions, too. They not only take away; they can also give. A broken-down car or a cancelled train give us some unforeseen extra time – waiting for roadside assistance or for the next train – that we can put to good use. An unexpected minor disaster gives us an opportunity to apply and practise our resourcefulness, drawing lessons to get even better. Are there ways in which the remains of the vegetables can be rescued? What else could be served with the main course? The damage the water leak caused can be the long-needed trigger to replace that old tatty carpet with new flooring, and thanks to the disappearance of one type of biscuits we discovered an even better one, which we would otherwise never have tried.
A striking (!) illustration is provided in a study by Shaun Larcom and colleagues at the London School of Economics. In 2014, a two-day strike on the London Underground, which closed some stations but not others, disrupted the commute of millions of people, many of whom were forced to find alternative routes to get to and from work. Thanks to the Tube's contactless access mechanism, the researchers obtained data about the pre- and post-strike journey patterns. It turned out that around 5% of commuters ended up permanently using a different route after the strike, having discovered a more efficient alternative during the disruption. "In normal circumstances, people under-experiment", the authors noted – a disruption can kick us into experimentation mode, fuel our creativity, or simply give us the experience of an alternative we would never have experienced otherwise.
…and large
Small disruptions may feel like much larger disasters, but the long shadow cast forward by large disruptions is usually an accurate reflection of their actual effect. Moving far away from our familiar environment, losing our job, losing a limb, losing a loved one… disruptive events like these do have a big impact. But even though we may not be overestimating their consequences, we still tend to underestimate how well and how quickly we will adapt. When I moved to the UK with my family, aside from our relatives and friends left behind, there were plenty of things we missed from "back home", from favourite food to radio and TV programmes. The disruption could not have been larger than for my eldest daughter (then 5), who had to start year 1 in primary school not knowing more than a handful of words of English (despite my best efforts, with the help of Richard Scarry). Yet by Christmas, she spoke English fluently, and was as happy in class as her mates. Some people who are made redundant take the opportunity to successfully start a business, or change careers. A study by behavioural economists Andrew Oswald and Nick Powdthavee at Warwick University found that amputees, while not typically returning entirely to their old level of wellbeing, soon recover 30-50% of the initial loss in wellbeing immediately after the intervention. And most people eventually overcome the loss of a close loved one.
The memory remains, but we adapt to the void in our life (image: via
DALL·E)
We are, it seems, equipped with two opposing, yet complementary superpowers. On the one hand we inherently prefer to stick with what we've got (because that avoids wasting scarce resources). On the other, we have a remarkable ability to adapt to new conditions and situations, when it is not possible to preserve or return to the status quo (because attempting to do so would, itself, be a waste of energy).
Both processes are ostensibly guided by the comparison of our present state with another state. Initially, this other state is the earlier status quo – which was, by virtue of being the status quo, preferable – and we experience a pull back to it. (The process is akin to the maintenance of homeostasis in biology, a general physiological "steady state"). When a return to our previous status quo is not feasible or not desirable, a new status quo emerges. Over time, the echoes of a disruption, large or small, die down, and we find a new equilibrium. Habituation plays a role here (we get used to something new bit by bit, by building on how used we were to it yesterday), but also a readjustment of the hierarchy of importance of what influences our choices and behaviour. It is as if we live by the advice Stephen Stills offered in his 1969 song: if we cannot be with the one we love, we learn to love the one we're with.
And so it has been with me and the loss of my old Twitter app. I may still be hoping secretly that it will be back one day, but in the meantime, I am readjusting, and I have evolved a different routine. I still miss some of the functionality of the old app, but my new routine also has some upsides. Give it another week or so, and I will have found my new status quo.
Because I was born to adapt (and so were we all).
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