My wife is a con artist. A very good one.
Sunday night, couch, cold beer in hand, footy highlights on. She says something about massaman curry. I say yeah. I am not listening. I am not even in the room in any meaningful sense. Somewhere in my head a bloke is nodding along to a woman he loves and getting away with it.
Monday morning, I stumble out for my morning coffee, wife nowhere to be seen and the kitchen bench is set out like a highly organised restaurant. Coconut milk. Potatoes. Peanuts. Beef. Curry paste. Everything prepped, spaced, facing the right way, like someone had been up half the night getting this con ready for me.
I never decided to cook that curry. I just found myself browning beef at half nine in the morning, tea towel over the shoulder, fully committed. By the time I worked out what had happened I was too far in to argue. Also, it smelled unbelievable.
That is priming. Say the thing before the moment arrives, and when the moment arrives there is no decision left to make.
Good teachers have been running this con for years.
Walk into a classroom where the teacher has been clear about what happens here. Bags go there. Hats on before you go out. Phones in the box. Nobody is barking orders. Nobody is threatening anyone. The kids are just doing it, because the expectation arrived before they did, and it arrived so often it stopped being an instruction and started being the furniture.
Then watch the same kids in the room next door where nobody ever said anything, and they just look like they are unsure what they need to do next.
Same kids. Different kitchen bench.
We spend a lot of energy correcting behaviour after it happens. Almost none setting the ingredients out the night before.
The curry was excellent, by the way. She knew it would be.
What have you laid out on the bench for your kids this week?
