WOOP your way to a win

When we make plans, we can be remarkably generous about our future capabilities. We’ll have more energy, resist distractions and somehow find time for the thing we haven’t managed to do all month.

Sadly - we’re not as reliable as we might like — research reliably shows that we fail to stick to our plans.

Researchers taught first-graders a practical approach to pursuing goals: identify a wish, imagine the outcome, recognise an internal obstacle and decide how to respond. The children practised it over five lessons.

Their reading skills improved. Three years later, they were 13 percentage points more likely to enter an advanced secondary-school track than children in the comparison group.

The approach is called WOOP: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. It combines thinking about what you want with an “if–then” plan for what might get in your way.

Here’s how you might apply it at work:

• Wish: Delegate more work - so that you’re less stressed, and your team grow.

• Outcome: They develop their skills, and you have more time for your own responsibilities.

• Obstacle: You feel impatient explaining things when you could do them faster yourself.

• Plan: “If I’m tempted to take over, I’ll ask what they’ve tried and help them identify their next step.”

Delegation may sound entirely sensible until somebody needs help and your deadline is approaching. Planning for that reaction gives you something to try when you’d usually take the work back.

Choose something you want to do differently. What usually stops you, and what will you do when it happens again?

Reference

Schunk, D., Berger, E. M., Hermes, H., Winkel, K., & Fehr, E. (2022). Teaching self-regulation. Nature Human Behaviour.