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UNC Study Shows We Think We'll Have More Time in the Future
If your appointment book runneth over, it could mean one of two things: Either you are enviably popular or you make the same faulty assumptions about the future as does everyone else. Research points to the latter explanation. A study by UNC Kenan-Flagler marketing professor Gal Zauberman and his colleague reveals that people overcommit because they expect to have more time in the future than they have in the present.
Of course, when tomorrow turns into today, they discover that they are too busy to do everything they promised.
The study appeared in the February 2005 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
Zauberman and John Lynch Jr. of Duke University also learned that this expectation of more time "slack," a surplus of a given resource available to complete a task, is more pronounced for time than money.
The authors suspect that's because every day's a little different: The nature of time fools us and we "forget" about how things fill our days. Money is more "fungible" - freely exchanged for something of like kind - such as four quarters for a dollar bill.
Zauberman and Lynch write, "Barring some change in employment or family status, supply and demand of money are relatively constant over time, and people are aware of that. Compared with demands on one's time, money needs in the future are relatively predictable from money needs today."
Study participants believed that both time and money would be more available in "a month" than "today," and believed it more strongly for time than for money. A deeper investigation of a psychological phenomenon called "delay discounting," in which people tend to lessen the importance of future rewards, showed that people also discounted future time more than both gains and losses in future money.
"People are consistently surprised to be so busy today," Zauberman says. "Lacking knowledge of what specific tasks will compete for their time in the future, they act as if new demands will not inevitably arise that are as pressing as those faced today."
In short, the future is ideal: The fridge is stocked, the weather clear, the train runs on schedule and meetings end on time. Today, well, stuff happens.
To cross-check support for their hypotheses, the authors ran a final survey that measured the expected growth or contraction of slack time and slack money over time. They tested how those expectations predicted subsequent decisions to invest time or money at two points in time. As before, participants who expected to have more time but not more money discounted future time investments more than they discounted future money investments. Participants who expected to have more money than time showed a mirror-image pattern.
"This is important because it demonstrates that the resource dependency we observed in the earlier experiments is explainable by changes in slack," Zauberman says.
Can people learn to predict future time demands more in line with reality? The authors observe, "It is difficult to learn from feedback that time will not be more abundant in the future. Specific activities vary from day to day, so people do not learn from feedback that, in aggregate, total demands are similar." Money's "slack pools" are smoother, more equal and more predictable over time.
The full text of the article is available at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xge134123.pdf . Contact Zauberman at zauberman@unc.edu, 919.962.3284.
UNC Professor's Book Helps Readers Tackle Communication Challenges
Chi-Chi's had to deal with an outbreak of hepatitis A in one of its Mexican restaurants in Beaver County, Pa., in the fall of 2003. How should they have communicated this crisis to employees, to the community and to local media?
A new book by Heidi Schultz, UNC Kenan-Flagler professor and director of management and corporate communication, drops readers in real-world workplace scenarios and requires them to come up with a communication strategy in increasingly complex situations.
"Business Scenarios: A Context-Based Approach to Business Communication" (McGraw-Hill, 2005) takes the concept "critical thinking" and puts it to the test by challenging readers to make informed choices in the face of difficult communication challenges. Readers are placed in the role of managers, to deal with everything from employee relations to crisis management.
The book covers building blocks for successful business communication, document design, communication strategy, tone, creating and delivering business presentations, writing about negative news and dealing with crisis communication.
"For instance, the 'Business Writing Basics' chapter addresses writing from the perspective of business readers rather than English teachers," Schultz says. "Split infinitives may drive English teachers crazy but go unnoticed by successful business leaders. As such, professionals need to master only a handful of basic business writing rules to become better business communicators."
Although the book is primarily designed for business students, it's also chock full of practical advice for busy business executives, including the following:
- Strive for an average of 20 words per sentence. It's a good match for the short-term attention span of busy readers.
- Use plain English. Favor the words you use in everyday conversation; use the technical jargon of your discipline only when you have a good reason to do so. This approach allows your reader to experience a common sense, conversational tone.
- Avoid repetitiveness, redundancies, verbosity and evasiveness.
- Develop an effective communication strategy - one that recognizes not only the medium but also your audience, your credibility and your message.
- Cushion the blow of bad news with a short "context statement." Negative information should come relatively early on in the document, and it should be direct, clear and succinct. End with a positive close.
- Use PowerPoint effectively.
- Use a sans serif font like Tahoma, Century Gothic or Arial.
- Choose colors that contrast well.
- Keep transitions consistent so your audience focuses on the message and not the "bells and whistles."
- Be sure bullets are grammatically parallel.
- Use a consistent capitalization style.
- Limit information on slides.
- Incorporate visuals and charts.
- Create effective headings in written communication.
- Be specific. A heading like "Results" doesn't do much. Rather, "Earnings are up this quarter" is a heading with more specific results.
- Consider using questions. Something like, "How were results last quarter?" implicitly promises your reader the answer in the ensuing section.
- Create a logical hierarchy of headings. For instance, all-caps and bold might serve as a first-level heading; all bold with a period a second-level heading, etc. Be careful not to overuse bold and italics techniques.
Schultz teaches oral and written business communication to undergraduate students, MBA students and Executive Education clients at UNC Kenan-Flagler. Her research emphasizes electronic communication issues and the presentation styles of successful business professionals. She also is author of the book, "The Elements of Electronic Communication" (Allyn and Bacon, 2000).
Contact Schultz at heidi_schultz@unc.edu, 919.962.3234.
Evans is Director of Minor League Operations for the San Francisco Giants
Bobby Evans' dream of playing major league baseball ended when he got cut from UNC's baseball team as a freshman.
Evans (BSBA '91) had starred as a catcher and an outfielder at Northampton High School East in Conway, N.C. He hadn't been recruited by the Tar Heels, but figured he could walk on at UNC. When he got to tryouts, he realized that a lot of guys were far more talented than he was. "My career came to an end before it ever started," he quips.
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| Bobby Evans |
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So Evans channeled his passion for baseball into its business side. He figured that, even if he couldn't play pro ball, he might find a role in its front offices. His willingness to switch-hit paid off. Today, he's director of minor league operations for the San Francisco Giants.
"When I was 9, I promised God that, if he put me in the major leagues, I'd dedicate my career to him," says the devout Christian. "Back then, I wanted to be a player, of course. But I realized a few years ago that he'd answered my prayer."
"I guess I should've prayed more specifically," he adds, with a chuckle.
Evans attended UNC on a Morehead Scholarship. Every Morehead spends one college summer in a private-sector internship. Evans asked to do his with the Boston Red Sox baseball team. He'd grown up a Sox fan; his family had lived outside of Boston before moving to North Carolina.
He joined the team during the summer of 1989. "They let me do a little of everything," he says. He went on a road trip. He helped change the numbers in the team's old-fashioned scoreboard. He worked alongside such famed players as Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs and Jim Rice. "These were guys I grew up watching."
After graduating from UNC, Evans landed a job in the New York office of major league baseball's commissioner. During two-and-a-half years there, he helped on such projects as implementation of a tobacco ban in the minor leagues and HIV education for players.
In 1994, he jumped to the Giants as administrative assistant, minor leagues. He assumed his current job in 1998. Officially, he oversees the development of the team's 200 minor league players; unofficially, he's the Giants' ambassador to anyone involved with its farm system.
He negotiates contracts with minor leaguers and their agents. He coordinates with the owners of the affiliate teams to ensure that they're getting what they need from the Giants and fulfilling their obligations to the team in turn. He monitors the minor-league budget and payroll. He counsels players on professional problems and challenges they face. "I'm available by phone to everyone in our organization 24/7," he says.
The diversity of his duties means that he draws heavily on his business degree from UNC Kenan-Flagler. "Whether it's writing formulas in Excel or my accounting classes, it's amazing how much of the stuff I studied is related to the business side of baseball," he says.
His job isn't all late-night phone calls and crunching numbers, of course. It also lets him attend about 110 baseball games a year.
The highlight of his career so far, he says, were seven games he attended in the fall of 2002. The Giants went to the World Series then, eventually losing to the Anaheim Angels.
"We were within five outs of winning the whole thing."
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