Gonna keep it more down to earth with this one. I have struggled a lot (and still do) with getting rid of bad pain and embracing good pain. I’m going to break down what I’ve learned and categorize ideas into what sticks versus what sucks and how to focus your time for the best possible results.
I use good pain and bad pain as more of a metaphor, a mental model for what we want more vs less of. Pain is pain. Getting kicked in the nuts hurts, but so does staying up til 4 am doomscrolling, and so does finishing a marathon. However, while I would hope everyone tries to avoid the indiscriminate violence of nut-kicks, I think most people would agree there is shame and embarrassment in staying up scrolling, whereas there is fulfillment and euphoric joy in finishing something that took lots of effort.
Lately, I have struggled with both sides of this coin: I want to stop wasting time on things like youtube and social media (often late at night), and instead put this time towards self-studying and other growth (i.e. ML contests, potentially even running a marathon). However, I am nowhere near what I could be at. Even as of late, I’ve struggled with staying up late into the night scrolling or watching videos when I really ought to be asleep. Additionally, I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a GPU programming contest, but I have yet to write a single full kernel for my task. Hell, I wanted to learn from the ground up writing a SOTA MMUL kernel, but I’m not even done with that, and I started in January.
All of this is to say I’m not perfect, take it with a grain of salt, but I definitely have improved. I no longer have any social media or games on my phone. Even me writing this blog is good evidence towards my shift in mindset and behavior. My goal is to share what I have learned in my journey, so that others may be more fortunate than I am.
Let’s start with what sucks. Conditioning research has shown that purely punishment-based systems are significantly less effective than reward-based systems, and I can attest to this. Anytime the goals were negative (i.e. no more social media, no more staying up late), it would eventually crumble. Obviously, this is problematic on its own, but it has a secondary effect, even more sinister: the effect on the psyche. Think of it this way: enough interest in the field of improvement will lead one to the conclusion that willpower on its own is ineffectual, so we must make systems that ensure our success. However, what happens when one makes a system and even that fails? To me, the most natural response was to believe that I was hopeless - not even these systems could save me.
This sort of thinking happens whenever one fails within a system of their own design, especially if poorly engineered. It is thus the responsibility of the improver to make sure their plan is as airtight as possible, which I will discuss in further detail soon. But first, a shortlist of other ideas that seem reasonable enough to try but will certainly make you feel like shit:
- too many things: if there’s more than 3 big things to focus on at once, where all of them are outside of daily routine, failure is all but ensured.
- zero accountability: if the result of failure is simply that nothing changes, it makes it a lot easier to give up - as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
- severity of system < severity of need: if you have a crippling addiction to alcohol, it’s gonna take a lot more than locking up the bottles, espcecially if you hold the key; however, if you treat something potentially less severe (eg. you scroll reels too much) with this level of severity, it’s hard to imagine failing. I’m still contemplating on this one, at least relating seriousness with potential burnout / lost interest, especially if the task is not that deep. I would love to hear what people think :)
There are definitely more ways to mess up than what I’ve written, but often the litmus test is pretty straightforward. Ask yourself (or AI for that matter): “Does this system leverage human nature?” and, “Do I really care enough to keep this up for the benefit that would be gained?” The first question is clear - if the answer is no, then you will be fighting all the time, and there’s definitely smart strategies to alter your approach to improve on this. For the second question, sometimes it takes more convincing to the brain. Crunch the numbers, figure out how much time you will save per year, or how much you’ll truly gain, and do your best to internalize this. However, if even after all this the task still doesn’t seem worth it, then I can guarantee there is something more important that you can focus on instead. Importance is relative, so either you find nothing important at all or there is something with better gains for you right now.
Next, let’s talk about the good stuff: what works well and helps me keep going every day. The first and foremost is definitely having the right attitude about this process. Even while finding and following good systems, there will be failure, and it will SUCK. But, you have to remember that this is only natural, and each failure brings you that much closer to the first measurable success. Further, do not involve personal value in this. It is easy to feel worthless when failing at something hard, but you are already doing more than those who refuse to try. The response to failure should never be to be upset with oneself, as we are all human. Instead, it should be to refine the system, fill in the hole so that same failure cannot be repeated. On that note, let me list some of the top strategies I’ve found to limit failures, as well as address some of the shortcomings I talked about previously:
- Accountability partner: for managing screentime, I use Apple’s built-in Downtime feature so that at night / early in the morning I can’t use my phone for anything beyond simple functionality. Additionally, I use an app called ScreenZen to block certain websites / apps + set limits if desired. Everything is locked down, and the good part is that my girlfriend has the passwords, so I cannot change things even if I really want to. This is healthy for the brain, as it is easier to relax when no discipline is involved, it’s just the new reality to adjust to, not something we can change. Another good benefit of having my girlfriend do this is that I can do the same thing for her, so there is some level of integrity required. When either of us fail, it is quite disappointing, meaning we have something of a social contract to stick to our goals. To pick someone to do this, it suffices to have anyone who you see semi-frequently who is willing (if rules need to change for whatever reason, you want to have them there), but it’s better if it’s someone who also has the same type of improvement goals.
- Negatives as reality, not a goal: like I just mentioned, if you can make it so that (for example) there is no instagram versus you have to resist the temptation to redownload instagram, far less energy is needed to maintain this. Mental bandwidth is limited!
- Build the positive habits: while it is still important to work on stopping bad behavior, it is disproportionately impactful to start good behavior. I’m honestly still working on this myself, but the reasoning is very sound. The goal of restrictions are to free up time that can be used to improve oneself. However, if one has simply set up their life such that improvement is of critical importance, naturally the bad behavior will fade because there is no time or energy left to devote. It loses all importance and control of one’s thoughts and emotions (in theory at least).
At the end of the day, you can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. It is absolutely helpful to do everything in your power to lower friction to doing what you want to spend time on while increasing friction for things you do not want to spend time on. HOWEVER, this doesn’t make it an automatic switch to become extremely productive. It will still take time, effort, lots of failure and doubts, but you must trust that when push comes to shove, you are strong and you will succeed because that is who you are!
I’m still very new to this whole writing thing, so please email me any feedback or comments on this, I’d greatly appreciate it!