Have you ever examined or evaluated the ‘knowing/doing’ gap?
In a number of professions including my own, we have been convinced that the most appropriate way to help people was to educate them. Teach people as much as their brains can hold at any given time and thereby empower them for improvement. In medicine, we apply this to disease prevention, disease treatment, health obtainment and weight loss, among many other things. This is how you avoid the common cold (provide a hand out on hand washing), this is how you can lower the amount of diabetes medication you need and better control your blood sugars (set up a full eating plan with lifestyle recommendations and suggestions)
Educate, instruct, edify and repeat – the classic modus operandi. But there is a very obvious gap in knowing and doing: taking said knowledge and applying it. We are all aware of the health benefits of various things, but why don’t we do them? For the first time in human history, the leading causes of death in developed countries have our consent. It is most certainly not a failure of knowing – it’s a failure of doing.
The secret to doing may be locked somewhere in the ability to persuade human behavior. Is not our behavior at the root of it? So how do we influence human behavior? Well, I would tell you, but I just ran out of space…
