The approaches listed here are essentially the approaches I’ve adopted over the past few years (reading many of the same books). But I want to flag that there’s an alternate approach some people have argued for, which isn’t represented here, roughly summarize as “the integrated approach” or “the non-adversarial approach.”
But there’s an alternate approach that’s more about integrating your various desires. Dialoging between the part of your brain that wants to veg-out on Netflix and the part that wants to work on writing and the part that wants to prepare for interviews at day-jobs you expect to hate.
And the goal is something like
a) figure out what all those parts want
b) actually explore the evidence until all pieces of you actually share a common conception of how the world works. i.e. both understanding that if you watch netflix all day you’ll run out of money and this is bad, and have a plan to acquire money that your monkey-brain actually believes in. (whereas sometimes people have latched onto a crude plan like “if I work harder and use more willpower I will have more money”, which the monkey is rightfully skeptical of).
c) don’t rely on willpower—using willpower is evidence that you are doing something suboptimally. You should use willpower to metaphorically move a boulder onto a hill, and then let the downhill move the boulder the rest of the way to its destination
I haven’t actually gotten this to work for me. I know of a few people who seem to make it work for them. My impression is that it’s more up-front effort but ends with a more powerful sort of productivity that you get by trying to outwit yourself.
I think this comment mainly applies to the sections on preventing procrastination and on following through.
Thank you for bringing this up! I should have mentioned this initially. I updated the post to make a note of it. Personally I am skeptical of the integrated approach, but I don’t know much about it and am interested in hearing from those who do.
The approaches listed here are essentially the approaches I’ve adopted over the past few years (reading many of the same books). But I want to flag that there’s an alternate approach some people have argued for, which isn’t represented here, roughly summarize as “the integrated approach” or “the non-adversarial approach.”
i.e. My entire productivity scheme is about outwitting my baser instincts. Facebook automatically disabled for hours at a time every day. My computer automatically turns off every half hour between 11pm and 7am. I train habits to reduce willpower costs, etc. My inner monkey (and inner lizard) are crazy and “I” (my inner sage) just try to not even give them the option of messing up my inner sage’s plans.
But there’s an alternate approach that’s more about integrating your various desires. Dialoging between the part of your brain that wants to veg-out on Netflix and the part that wants to work on writing and the part that wants to prepare for interviews at day-jobs you expect to hate.
And the goal is something like
a) figure out what all those parts want
b) actually explore the evidence until all pieces of you actually share a common conception of how the world works. i.e. both understanding that if you watch netflix all day you’ll run out of money and this is bad, and have a plan to acquire money that your monkey-brain actually believes in. (whereas sometimes people have latched onto a crude plan like “if I work harder and use more willpower I will have more money”, which the monkey is rightfully skeptical of).
c) don’t rely on willpower—using willpower is evidence that you are doing something suboptimally. You should use willpower to metaphorically move a boulder onto a hill, and then let the downhill move the boulder the rest of the way to its destination
I haven’t actually gotten this to work for me. I know of a few people who seem to make it work for them. My impression is that it’s more up-front effort but ends with a more powerful sort of productivity that you get by trying to outwit yourself.
See Replacing Guilt by Nate Soares for a sequence on how to get to this sort of mindset: http://mindingourway.com/guilt/
ePUB version here: https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/rFrefJgPvYkdtG7Pt/nate-soares-replacing-guilt-series-compiled-in-epub-format
I think the way I approach productivity falls more into the camp you describe, and I’m glad to see more being written up about it, like this comment.
I think this comment mainly applies to the sections on preventing procrastination and on following through.
Thank you for bringing this up! I should have mentioned this initially. I updated the post to make a note of it. Personally I am skeptical of the integrated approach, but I don’t know much about it and am interested in hearing from those who do.
“Don’t rely on willpower”—I’ve seen a lot of guides talk about the importance of habit so as to minimise the amount of willpower required.