The key to self-discipline: Decide on it ONCE instead of a thousand times throughout the day.
If you want to get disciplined; if you want to become consistent in your actions, if you want to stop procrastinating… do all you can to reduce the instances of decision making in your daily life.
Incorporating this idea into my daily routine has ignited my self-disciplined during the lock-downs of the pandemic
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I was good for a while—hitting the gym regularly, working on my goals, consuming my vices more-or-less in moderation (Reddit, videogames, junk food)—then the pandemic hit aaaand everything went to shit.
Perhaps you can relate.
It’s a paradox. I had more free time than I ever had before.
More time to go for runs, do yoga and knock-out bodyweight exercises.
More time to work on my side projects.
More time for leisure—not for mindless internet crap—but for interesting books, insightful online courses, and fun hobbies.
Finally, I just had more time to simply get my sh*t together; to get my priorities straight and do the basic work to slowly cultivate the healthful and productive habits I was procrastinating on, yet knew would make my life 1000x better.
More time, more time, MORE TIME… but somehow, I found myself accomplishing less and less and less.
It made no sense.
The pandemic changed our lives in countless ways—some obvious, some subtle—but there was one area that was both unexpected and completely hidden to me, and probably to you too.
The pandemic gave us more choices.
More instances to decide on things. Opportunities to do stuff now, or it do later. Swaths of free time, unconstrained schedules. Spatial constraints but temporal freedom.
Anyone who’s ever had a deadline way off in the distance and ample free time to chip away at it knows that this mix makes the perfect recipe for procrastination.
So I knew what was going on, but if I stood a chance at a solution, I need to figure exactly why?.
The answer came to me months later. I happen to recall how I, several years back, decided to do something, ridiculous, which unintentionally brought a super valuable insight that was now perfectly applicable to this situation.
For 2 weeks in 2016, I ate nothing but potatoes.
I did this half as a joke, half as a sort of thought experiment to see if I could do it, and if so, what would happen1.
The whole thing ended up as ridiculous as it was revealing. I've been on countless diets before and since then—from hyper-regimented paleo-something programs, to a vague "I just want to eat clean" intention—and this one, this ludicrous potato diet thing, was the one and only one I ever stuck to without a single instance of cheating or slipping.
It was also surprisingly easy; even fun.
You probably didn't expected that, and I certainly did not. I pictured myself, day 8, yellow-skinned, hair falling out; stink-eyeing that cursed potato bag, musing—through the mental haze brought by severe protein deficiency—what it would take to nuke the entire state of Idaho.
But that didn’t happen.
On day 8, I was fine. I had down pat my little routine of toasting the little wedges just right to get that nice outer crunch and puffy soft steamy center. So delish.
On day 12, I had the giggly thrill of ordering a plain baked potato, no oil, no salt, no nothing, at an Irish pub.
Once the ordeal was over, I spent some time reflecting on why the experiment was so unexpectedly easy compared to my other diet experiences, and if therein may lie some useable life wisdom.
Here is what I realized: eating nothing but potatoes for 2 weeks was easy because, rather than having to make a thousand judgements and decisions throughout the day, I had already made my decisions on day 1.
In the past I was inconsistent and impulsive, not because the diets were too restrictive and I thus struggled due to the cravings. It was because they were not restrictive enough.2
Chance are you’re someone who wants to "eat better and consume less sugar". This is good and reasonable. Hard-core, restrictive and strict diets are hard to follow, so it’s better to offer yourself some latitude.
So you go to a restaurant. You are then confronted with options—decisions to make.
Is fruit juice ok?
Beer has carbs, but is that like sugar?
How about diet soda?
I've been good all week, maybe I can cheat a little and get a small coke now that I'm at a restaurant...
How about some cake? It has blueberries which contain like anti-oxigents or something...
On and on, all night, decision after decision after decision.
As soon as you rationalize something once, you end up subconsciously giving yourself permission to rationalize it again and again.
As the days go, your rules and boundaries widen and soften until you're back to your previous eating habits.
Isn’t that how our lives feel like 99% of the time? It’s just a long succession of decisions to make, rationalizations and excuses to swat away like flies, and judgement calls to weight out and process. Like staring at a wall of 142 toothpaste brands and varieties at the pharmacy… it can get quite exhausting.
Compare that to what I had going with my stupid potato diet. For just that this thin slice of my life, it was dead effing simple. I had one, easy, black and white question to answer:
[holds up a bag of peanuts]… is this thing a potato? No.
[holds up an apple]… is this thing a potato? Close but no…
[holds up a sausage]… is this thing a potato? Nein!
[holds up a potato]… is this thing a potato? Ou! ou! I learnt this in kindergarten! It is! Ok in my mouth you go.
So what's the lesson here? What's the 'advice' we can extract from my ridiculous experiment?
If you want to get disciplined; if you want to become consistent in your actions, if you want to stop procrastinating… do all you can to reduce the instances of decision making in your daily life.
Let’s get practical with this. See how to apply it in our day-to-day.
We can go back to our little pandemic paradox: more time, more opportunities for good habits, yet somehow, we’re less disciplined.
Let’s start with your workout habit and why it went to sh*t.
The problem for me was a sudden surplus of decisions to make. I'd wake up in the morning with the notion that today was a running day, and throughout the day I'd randomly remember and ask myself if it was time to run.
8am: Nah, too early and cold, I can do it after lunch.
1pm: Too bloaty, let's just go before dinner.
6pm: shit... it's already 6! I forgot. Oh well, I gotta make some food, I'll just go it tomorrow morning.
Rinse and repeat everyday.
I knew I had to look back and figure out what had changed since the lock-down started—what was it that had me so consistent? It was simple: on my commute home from work, I would walk pass the gym which was located just outside the metro station near my place. So, exactly once a day, and only once a day, I was made to decision if I’d go work out. 8 times out of 10, if it was a gym day and I had my stuff with me, I’d go in and just knock it out.
So I decided to simulate that. I’d concentrate all instances of workout decision making into one daily pin-point. I now set an alarm for 11:30 am, and when it chimes, I walk to my home gym area and I wait a bit and decide to work out or not.
Here's the key: I am not allowed to go later. Doesn't matter if Richard effing Simmons barges in and begs for me to join in on some 80's era aerobics; it's disallowed. The decision-making process happens exactly once a day and that’s it.
Let’s apply this to getting disciplined and productive with our work.
You procrastinate so much because, well, there is always tomorrow or later to do said task.
Knock that possibility from out of your mind.
In practical terms, I do this through a bit of early morning planning. Some people work best with “Time Boxing”, which involves setting tasks into blocks of time throughout the day. This way you’re only confronted with the ‘fill out budgeting spreadsheet’ task exactly once in your day, and only once.
In can seem constrictive at first, but once you get into the swing of it, it just makes your life easier. Sometimes not having choices is ironically nice and freeing. Time Boxing does that quite well.
This works for many people. Nir Eyal is a big proponent, he has an article about it and he talks about it in his book Indistractable.
I do have a tweak which solves for me the issue related to the inflexibility of this method. Basically, every morning, I write out what I call a “track-list”, which is basically a sequence of tasks I am to perform on each of the Pomodoros of my upcoming work session. So whether I start my work-session at a scheduled time or not, I’m good; I always just work relative to my track-list and not to a schedule.
The point of this is to again limit my decision making. Before I’d have my long to-do list next to me, so I always I had 8 projects, demands and obligations vying for my attention and I would have to decide a thousand times a day yes or no on each. Now it’s always crystal clear what I am supposed to be doing at any given moment; only one decisions to make and that's at the start of the Pomodoro timer.
There are for sure many other ways to apply this concept, but I think this post is just about long enough. So I’d be curious to learn about your ideas and experiences. Let us know!
Best,
-Simon ㋛
¹ If you’re curious, the idea came about after reading Penn Jillette's book Presto, which chronicles his 100 lb weight loss journey and his own potato diet experience. I obviously do not recommend this diet, or any diet really. Like Jillette would say after his ‘swallowing fire’ act: I did it so you don't have to.
² Gigantic disclaimer here. I am in no way condoning any sort of diet or style of eating. My girlfriend’s a dietitian and her experiences indicates that restrictive fad diets usually don't work over the long-term.