Freedom Through Discipline

Yep, this sounds like some totalitarian propaganda, but if you give me a chance I'll try to soften it up a bit. You see one can think of willpower as a muscle which is handy on the one hand of that it can be exercised to be made stronger (more on that in future posts).   However on the flip side of that no matter how strong you get, there will still be a point of fatigue.  What discipline does is it removes the need for using that muscle on things that are unimportant and lets you conserve willpower for things that really do matter.

I will be defining willpower as the idea of being given a choice to do something more helpful and more harmful and choosing the thing that is more helpful.  I will be defining discipline as a way to remove the choice altogether, and default to the better choice without needing to make a conscious decision.

As I see it there are two ways to create this discipline and each is based on the type of decision being made.  There are "rules" which will help to take away decisions on consumption or input and habits which will take away decisions on behavior or output.

I will be writing posts on Rules and Habits individually later, but I'll give an overview of how they can help.

RULES.

Decision fatigue is the enemy of willpower.  The more choices you have to make in a day the less likely you are to be able to continue making good decisions.  Rules are a set of guidelines that let you eliminate the need to make a choice, or at least they eliminate a huge chunk of your choices.  If you have a set of rules, it works like a where clause on a SQL query.

SELECT *FROM CHOICESWHERE Good_Choice = True;

Now your subset is significantly smaller and you have an easier decision if there is even one left.  This saves your willpower for a later time when it might really be needed.

HABITS.

Habits are ways you set up your life to have you choose to do the things that move you towards your goals.  Now habits are a bit harder because you'll need to hack yourself in order to get the best results.  There are some amazing techniques in Gretchen Rubin's book "Better Than Before: Master the Habits of Our EverydayLives" which I cannot recommend enough. 

The tricky thing about habits is that you have them whether they are good or bad.  The things you do are mostly out of habit that is both the good and the bad.  The trick is to set yourself up with as many good habits as you can.  Do you jam out to tunes on your drive to work, or do you listen to an industry podcast?  Do you go to bed at 10 pm or 1 am?  Either way, it's your habit and it either takes you towards your goals or away from them.

So with good rules and good habits you have a way to replace all these manual steps with an automated script.  This automation allows you to use your willpower for dealing with important choices , and quite possibly get a lot more done to accomplish your goals.