It’s that time again! Time to impose a stupidly fastidious/rigorous ruleset on myself in an effort to ingrain some better behavior.
Those who know me well know that I do this sort of thing with some regularity. Life moves so quick these days it can seem like it’s flying by, so much so that it’s easy to forget (or not have the time) to stop and think if you’re doing things the way that you want, or if you’re even doing the right things in the first place.
I’ve found these exercises useful in the past, and they’ve occasionally led to longer-term improvements in habits. However, I often did them while I was bouncing around the world; and as fun as it was, it’s hard to lock these things in place when every other part of your life is constantly up in the air. As the old saying goes:
We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.
And now that I’ve solved the whole, pseudo-perpetually-homeless problem, it’s time to do some training (of sorts).
In my case, I’ve found there’s a few pieces I need to put in place to ensure I adhere to a plan this strict: consistency, consequences, and rewards.
Consistency
We are what we repeatedly do.
Aristotle
It should come as no surprise to anyone that a plan aimed at moving you in a positive direction needs to be consistent. A diet plan where you get to eat donuts every other day is a shitty diet. A study schedule where you intersperse study sessions with binging reality TV might leave you more stupid than when you started.
I’m not saying we can’t all have our vice of choice; I enjoy a good cheat day as much as the next guy. But what we all need to aim at is a decently consistent level of adherence over the long term.
Most people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year.
To that end, I created a little checklist for myself:
And here’s how it works. I need to check off 80% or more of these things every single week, or something quite bad happens. Which brings us to the next key piece of the equation…
Consequences
“A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn’t depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.”
Tim Ferriss
Using the platform stickk I’m forced to “put my money where my mouth is”, so to speak. I’ve named two good friends of mined as “referees”, who I check in with every week and update them on my progress. If at any point I don’t reach the minimum 80% (or they think I’m lying), they can fail me for that week and I’ll be forced to pay $75 to a charity.
Well…it might be a bit inaccurate to call it a “charity”. For this particular challenge I used stickK’s function of selecting an “anti-charity”. Since I like a to play high stakes, the anti-charity I chose was American Crossroads: a super PAC that supports the Republican party.
This means that if I fail on any given week, some of my money (which I really don’t want to waste in the middle of this madness) will go (at least in part) to Trump’s re-election campaign.
Oh, and another part of the challenge is that, should this happen, I have to post to Facebook that I failed and donated the money to said organization. I’m sure my friends would be very understanding and not tear me to absolute pieces should that happen.
Needless to say I am quite motivated to be successful in this, given the nature of the political situation in the states these days. On to the last key point…
Rewards
After doing this a few times, I’ve found that the challenge itself is reward enough. We humans are fairly simple creatures in many ways; create a challenge, set a pass-fail condition, and I’m off to the races. In large part I think it’s due to the fact that I’m a fairly competitive person by nature, and this is a way for me to leverage that by setting up a competition with myself (so-to-speak).
Though I suppose another reward is the resulting lifestyle. When I was living down in Colombia I quite enjoyed the life I’d crafted. Multiple days/week of volleyball, good diet/exercise/sleep regiment which got me into the best shape I’ve ever been in, a large social group with a number of very close friends who I saw regularly, and a fairly high level of work output (that last one is the one I aim to improve on most this time around).
I’m building a life from the group up in a new city(again), AND building up a career in a new industry, so I think it’s best to start things off with a splash. I’m also organizing a weekly volleyball meetup in the local park, so I’ll get to have a social outlet without being in an environment where drinking is the norm. After all, as James Clear said in Atomic Habits:
Environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life. Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.
James Clear
…And besides, I can always get rip-roaring wasted at the end of the four weeks if I want to. So there’s that.
Til the next one,
Brandon