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When we are given the space, as Parkinson’s Law dictates, we expand our work to fill the time.
Set aggressive deadlines so that you are actually challenging yourself on a consistent basis,
push yourself to finish early and free your mind.
Recognizing your discipline drainers is the first step toward a more fruitful pursuit of self-discipline.
Self-discipline is uncomfortable by nature. You would never willingly subject yourself to the struggle of being disciplined unless you had a strong purpose for doing so.
But when you choose an open attitude about your urges and watch them without fighting them, they subside much more quickly and effortlessly.
arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go.” Such art of calm acceptance—no matter the circumstances around you or the urges that gnaw at you—is
The harder you try to avoid that thought, the more it consumes you.
it’s time for you to get comfortable with discomfort.
You may not completely forget about those distractions, but
If you aren’t aware of the harms of constant dopamine hits or you do nothing to reduce them, you’ll often be distracted by a pervasive urge to get more of it. Something as simple as checking who’s liked your last post on social media can quickly develop into an irresistible itch to constantly refresh your feeds.
For humans, dopamine releases are caused by more than just pleasure—it’s also a result of anticipating pleasure.
Countless experiments and observational studies have shown that making an option the default will increase the likelihood of it being chosen, which is known as the default effect.
Optimizing these default decisions is where the bulk of your efforts to create a more discipline-conducive environment can take place. You might believe that you control the majority of your choices, but in reality, that isn’t the case. Instead, a significant amount of your actions are just responses to your environment.
our decisions are significantly influenced by the people around us.
But this tricks you into thinking you have achieved something already,
This has the adverse effect of reducing your willpower and self-discipline.
He concluded that telling others of your goals gives you a “premature sense of completeness.”
As much as you want to talk about what you plan to achieve, you are better off keeping your goals private.
You can even think of it as a personal board of supervisors.
they have discovered something that makes a difference. It comes down to visualizing exactly who you are, who you will be, and who you want to be.
being self-disciplined is not a one-time decision, but a recurring choice.
doing the right thing means doing the hard thing.
There is a right way to be optimistic, and carelessly leaving everything up to fate without putting in any effort is certainly not part of it.
Flawed efforts can still lead to success, and perfect efforts can still result in failure. Therefore, it’s important to detach your performance from outcomes because that will prevent you from reinforcing the wrong techniques.
This all comes down to focusing on what you can control.
