A Little Nudge

“If you want to encourage people to do something, make it easy,” said Richard Thaler at a TED talk. He presented the idea of “nudge” where a small tweak to the way a choice is framed can change a person’s decision. One example he gave was the way employees signup for retirement savings. A company in Minnesota wanted more of their employees to participate in retirement savings. The old way required employees to opt in when they were eligible for the plan. A small tweak in the process made all the difference for the company. They changed the process from opting in to opting out. So, all employees were automatically signed up for retirement, and they had the choice to freely opt out of the program. This simple change increased the enrollment rate from 49% to 86%. Another example is how slicing up apples and putting them in plastic bags increased apple consumption by 70% at a local school. This one simple nudge made it easy for children to eat more apples. What about us? I believe that we can nudge the status quo and make small changes that can have big impact on our community. Let us all put on our thinking caps and see how we can make things easy with our words and actions. I believe that one simple nudge is how we love our community. Let us love each other as ourselves and see what impact this will make to our church.  After all, Christ’s love changed our lives forever. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).