Hi All,
I hope your week is wrapping up well. Here are your weekly tips & tricks, just in time for the weekend.
1. Your behaviors are shaped by your environment.
When your phone screen lights up with a message notification, you want to see what it says. Similarly, if there is a bowl of chips on your kitchen counter, you feel inclined to eat a few. The best way to avoid unwanted behaviors is to remove cues from your surroundings. Control your living spaces if you want to stay productive and keep the momentum going.
2. Willpower helps you progress towards your goals, even if you do not feel like putting in the work.
Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University, likens willpower to a muscle: After exercising it, it loses its strength and gets fatigued—at least in the short term. But just like a muscle gets stronger with continuous exercise, your self-control gets better with repetition. Train your willpower at least once a day with a meditation, cold shower, or workout (Ideally, you want to make this a part of your morning routine).
Your Weekly Digest: Your Procrastination Habit
This week’s article on MikevanderPoel.com is titled, “Why the Instant Gratification Monkey Turns You into a Master Procrastinator”.
A couple of years ago, when I was in university, I stumbled upon an interesting TED talk on procrastination. In his presentation, Tim Urban argues that we all have two metaphorical creatures living inside of our mind: an instant gratification monkey and a rational decision maker.
The instant gratification monkey is impulsive. It lives in the present moment and does not think about the future, let alone the past. Your environment plays a large role in its decision-making process.
The rational decision maker, on the other hand, operates with logic and reason. It considers past experiences to make decisions that benefit you in the future. It can also draw upon your willpower resources to delay gratification, if need be.
Attending to your instant gratification monkey can lead to a procrastination habit. Your “pet monkey” prefers to do tasks that are easy over tasks that are challenging. If it is presented with the option to have a small reward now or a larger one later, it will always choose the former.
At its core, procrastination is a habit. Just like any habit, it can be changed. In my article, I go over four habit change strategies to defeat your instant gratification monkey. I will also show you how to use your rational decision maker to its full potential.
Until next week,
Mike van der Poel
Previous: Stay On Track: Focus Meditation, Elephant Rider, and Delaying Gratification — Apr. 9, 2021
Delaying gratification means resisting the urge of an immediate reward in anticipation that there will be a greater reward later. It is all about giving up …