Your self-control failings are 100% inevitable
↑↑ This was a hard pill to swallow, but once I did, my self-discipline was finally unlocked after years of failure
You have a school or work project due early the next day. It involves tedious and uninteresting work, so you’ve regrettably (and of course predictably) procrastinated on it.
It’s 8:34 pm. That’s not too-too bad. If you start now and grind it out, you could finish by like midnight.
You open the work document, but soon you saunter over to Wikipedia to check something that’s bugging you for some reason (what’s the name of George Clooney’s wife again?). You then google something else (how much does he make for those Nespresso ads?), then, just to scratch another itch nagging you, you head to YouTube for 5 quick minutes to get it out of your system.
You end up wasting an hour.
Fine. You shake it off and cajole yourself back to work, but then, like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, your hand drifts over to your phone as if operating with its own mind. Your eyes reluctantly follow and just like that, you’re scrolling through Instagram.
This is procrastination. You have something important to do, but technically you can push it ahead—I’ll just sleep at 1am instead of 12, no big deal—so you rationalize the time wasting.
The questions that dog you is why? And how can I stop?
The truthful answer to these questions will come in the form of a hard-to-swallow pill. It’s up to you whether you want to gulp it back and see what happens, or if you’d rather stash it in your pocket for another day after all else fails—but for now, take a look at it, read the label on the bottle, consider the implications and its potential side effects.
Here it is: the answer to the why? question is… because it was utterly inevitable.
→ You had some physical wiring in your brain which caused you to do what you did through an uncontrollable and inevitable compulsion.
And the answer to the how can I stop? question is… you can’t.
→ You can’t, so long as that wiring is still there.
To be more precise, it’s not that you can’t decide to override it—you can, you have what’s known as willpower—it’s that you won’t. Your rational mind—the part that plans, weights out pros and cons, and seems to come to logical decisions—it gets manipulated from the inside out.
The deeper, emotional parts of your brain that drives the cravings, its wiry tentacles extend outwards to your newer, logical brain, influencing what you think and how you reason, tricking you, manipulating you, making you think that it’s you calling the shots, when it's not.
If you ever though to yourself, in the aftermath of a binge or a reckless amount of procrastination, why the eff did I think that was a good idea?? Well, it’s because a deeper, impetuous, pleasure-stalking part of your brain infected your rational thoughts.
As such, with all the layers of your complex mind aligned towards the same thing, your actions could only be seen as inevitable.
You’ve already accepted this reality for many of your actions.
For example, if you buy a bag of chips (or crisps for you UK folks) and you end up eating more in the first sitting than you intended, you don’t act surprised.
You say, ok, that’s enough… these things are freaking addictive, then you roll up the top, put a giant clip, then you jam it in the back of the cupboard.
You know you don’t stand a chance. It’s not about willpower or self-control. It’s about your predictable and automatic actions. Compulsions.
If you find yourself, an hour later, stuffing a bunch in your mouth, you roll your eyes at yourself. You might get frustrated, but the frustration is not really directed at yourself—at your thinking process, your morals, character or values. It’s directed at your biological wiring that just won’t let you not saunter over to the remaining chips like a mindless zombie.
Such wiring takes precedence over some rational desire to ration it for the week, and you know it.
It’s like we all have in our mind a big line. For you, eating chips on impulse is left of the line. So is mindlessly scratching a mosquito bite despite telling yourself you need to stop. Or when you find yourself slouching 10 minutes after adjusting your posture (go ahead and fix that now).
But when you do such things…
You don’t act surprised—in fact you might roll your eyes at your folly.
You don’t ruminate on failures—you shrug it off and move on.
You don’t kid yourself into thinking you’ll have the willpower to resist—you ask your roommate or your S.O. to hide the bag from you. Or you put a band-aid over the mosquito bite. You render your impulses ineffective.
You accept some compromises without much protest—well, this goes to show again that I just can’t bring home a big back of chips. That’s life.
You get smart—from now on, when I go shopping, A) I need to shop only the perimeter for fresh and unprocessed food, and B) I can’t go when I’m hungry.
You don’t try to be perfect; you don’t measure “days without” streaks—again, this isn’t about willpower and some noble ability to overcome temptations with strength and gusto. It’s about automatic compulsions. So the best thing you can do—and what you do naturally for actions left of the line—is to learn about yourself and be proactive when you can do something about it, and forgiving and move on when you can’t.
Back to the pill.
Swallowing it—acknowledging and accepting the inevitability all of your pleasure seeking actions—means you take that line and you shift it all the way to the right. And I mean, all the way.
This means that all the actions you consider inacceptable or even shameful are now seen as fully inevitable. Procrastination by binging on your tech vices… breaking some diet, self-care, no-fap or other bad habit commitment… these are as predictable and inevitable as scratching a mosquito bite.
So when you such things you...
You won’t act surprised—in fact you might roll your eyes at your folly.
You won’t ruminate on failures—you shrug it off, forgive yourself and move on.
You won’t kid yourself into thinking you’ll have the willpower to resist—you install web-blockers and get rid of junk food from the house so your impulses are rendered ineffective.
You'll accept some compromises without much protest—well, this goes to show again that I can’t have Instagram on my phone.
You'll get smart—when I sit down for a work session, A) I need to have a clear, task-by-task plan of what I need to do written in front of me, and B) I can’t force myself if I’m feeling resistance. I need to observe and get mindful of my emotions and wait it out.
You won’t try to be perfect; you won’t measure “days without” streaks—this isn’t about willpower and the noble ability to overcome some temptation with strength and gusto. It’s about inevitable compulsions. So the best thing you can do—and what will come to do naturally—is to learn about yourself, be compassionate, then get proactive when you can do something about it, and forgiving and move on when you can’t.
You yearn to get disciplined. Yet it hasn’t been working out because what’s often preached as a means to discipline is gaining clarity on your values, and using more willpower to stay aligned with them.
But now you know that for most of your actions, it’s not that your lacking of values or the willpower to apply them that's the issue; it’s that you aren’t given the opportunity to do so.
When you accept this and set your self-control expectations down to zero, paradoxically, you end up more productive. You get more disciplined.
It’s ridiculous… but it works. This is how I live my life now. Binge a Netflix show when I planned to watch it over the week? Bah, inevitable, move on, next! Fap to porn when I know it leads to a drop in energy and focus? Bah, inevitable, move on. next!
It’s not that I let go of being disciplined; not at all. It’s that I just understand and accept what the heck is going on for real. Then I adapt.
I've taken on a long-term iterative process: I try something, fail, learn from the failure, get up quick, adjust my approach using what I learned, and try again (this, btw, is the basis for the Habit Reframe Method, which you can download again here).
Reaching your ideal self-disciplined self won’t happen overnight—heck I’m not there yet, not even close. But I’m inching my way over; which is more to say than a decade plus of trying with self-help crap focused on values and willpower.
Self-understanding followed by self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-love are the indispensable keys to what ends up looking like self-discipline.
- Simon ㋛