- Emotionally regulate regularly
- Know what conditions you naturally have the most willpower
- Mornings (SUNSHINE)
- Before eating
- After using the restroom
- After working out
- Weekdays (Weekends are for leisure)
- Under stress (adrenaline)
- Engage in practices that train willpower
- Meditation
- Prayer
- Reading
- Exercise
- Healthy eating
- Engage in willpower-training practices when you naturally have the most
- Maintain a consistent circadian rhythm
- Do things upon waking and before going to bed
- Regulate adrenaline
- Employ discipline devices
- Timers (Pomodoro, etc.)
- Change environments
- Maintain some level of stress to stay accountable
- Avoid practices that drain willpower or disrupt your ability to train it or maintain a consistent circadian rhythm
- Avoid blue light after 9pm
- Youtube, Instagram, Google
- Masturbation
- Sugary, high GI foods
- Appreciate the fruit of slow growth and consistency over quick gains and sweeping victories.
- …but ALSO recognize that monotony is not consistency and that novelty in routine and lifestyle is necessary. Both novelty and consistency are ingredients of discipline
- Work hard not for hard work’s sake, but for passion of the work. Find ways to inspire that passion in yourself and the people around you
- Gamify chores
- Get excited about work
- Recognize the symptoms of burnout
- Absenteeism
- Irritability
- Cynicism
- Detachment
- Prescribe treatment to burnout before it becomes severe
- MEET NEEDS
- Take a day-long break
- Get a massage
- Talk with friends
- Make art, write, play music
- Spend time outside
- Create barriers between you and willpower-draining
- No-go rules
- Temptation blockers
- Optimize external environment to prevent usage
- Recognize when you are slipping when it is still easy to change course
- Lustful thinking → pornography
- Trivial internet usage → unhealthy internet usage
- …but ALSO learn to break loops and overcome the sunk-cost fallacy when you get sucked into an indulgent spiral
- ‘Pivot’ content (podcasts, etc.)
- You need discipline → You have discipline and are working through a block.
- Pack up and change environments
command + w
- Identify disruptive behavioral patterns
- Identify disruptive triggers
- Implement a way to gather feedback during times you succumb to disruptive patterns
- Ideate and prescribing solutions for disruptive patterns
- Craving sugar → Get Vitamin C
- Try to act on spontaneous positive impulses as soon as they occur to reinforce them (get out of bed the moment you wake up, close your laptop as soon as you are bored)
- Finding a driving source of motivation that…
- Encourages Emotional regulation
- Is easy to treat with reverence
- Is not idealogical, but is still backed by virtuous values
- That may or may not be deterministic, but still places emphasis on ones ability to shape the outcome
- Encourages some form of daily practice
- Displays a uniquely recognizable identity that society can recognize
- Has some degree of community support
- Surround yourself with music, media and symbolism that reinforces these rules and your own driving motivation
- Most importantly: Foster the growth of the people around you to follow the same rules. Your community is your support group, and it has biggest impact on your behavior.
- The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit