For some reason, I find it hard to negotiate with myself over chunks of time shorter than a day. If I tell myself I’ll goof off after dinner, I’ll have dinner early; if I tell myself I’ll goof off after six p.m., I’ll dither until six p.m. But a day begins when I wake up and ends when I go to bed. Conveniently, my desire to stay up late persists even if I’m staying up late doing work.
If I tell myself I’ll goof off after dinner, I’ll have dinner early; if I tell myself I’ll goof off after six p.m., I’ll dither until six p.m.
Two important distinctions:
I frame it as, “I have to stop working at X pm”, not “I’ll goof off at X pm”. This presupposes that I’m going to be working and what’s more, that I don’t want to stop working (otherwise, I wouldn’t “have to”).
I don’t “goof off” (an unspecified activity), I have a book that I’ve planned to read, a show to watch, etc. -- thus it is a specific thing that I “have to stop work” for at that time.
This is a good example, btw, of how self-help techniques easily go awry, as there are often many subtleties to why/how something works.
That’s not to say that these changes will definitely make it work for you; as I’ve commented before, it’s trivial to defeat a technique simply by expecting something else to happen or thinking that it’s probably not going to work!
But you’ll notice that what makes it work (or not work) in both our cases has a lot to do with what we expect our behavior to be, and how we frame those expectations. And those expectations tend to hinge on fine details, rather than abstract concepts.
For some reason, I find it hard to negotiate with myself over chunks of time shorter than a day. If I tell myself I’ll goof off after dinner, I’ll have dinner early; if I tell myself I’ll goof off after six p.m., I’ll dither until six p.m. But a day begins when I wake up and ends when I go to bed. Conveniently, my desire to stay up late persists even if I’m staying up late doing work.
Two important distinctions:
I frame it as, “I have to stop working at X pm”, not “I’ll goof off at X pm”. This presupposes that I’m going to be working and what’s more, that I don’t want to stop working (otherwise, I wouldn’t “have to”).
I don’t “goof off” (an unspecified activity), I have a book that I’ve planned to read, a show to watch, etc. -- thus it is a specific thing that I “have to stop work” for at that time.
This is a good example, btw, of how self-help techniques easily go awry, as there are often many subtleties to why/how something works.
That’s not to say that these changes will definitely make it work for you; as I’ve commented before, it’s trivial to defeat a technique simply by expecting something else to happen or thinking that it’s probably not going to work!
But you’ll notice that what makes it work (or not work) in both our cases has a lot to do with what we expect our behavior to be, and how we frame those expectations. And those expectations tend to hinge on fine details, rather than abstract concepts.