Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

People will keep doing what they are familiar with doing simply because they are familiar with doing it or, people are creatures of habit.  If you run across someone who is continually critical, all they ever do is judge, they are critical and have a pejorative nature, and you ask yourself, “Why is that person so critical?” Well, the answer is, they are good at it.  They have been practicing for a long time.  Let’s suppose that that person is you and you want to change your behavior, you replace the ongoing criticism with ongoing reinforcement.  You have to do it long enough so that the reinforcement is more frequent than the criticism.  The whole idea is that if people are creatures of habit, you have to get the new habit to stick long enough so that it becomes routine.  So, practice!