24 - Discipline can be easy!
It's the start of year, nearing the end of January - how are your resolutions going?
I don't usually have resolutions - I think I've talked about this before, but I'm quite bad at setting goals. I know that my problem is not with having goals themselves, but being able to set a realistic goal that is motivating enough to continue trying to achieve it every day.
There were a lot of different things in my life that I noticed I would be super excited by, get really motivated about (like writing, or drawing, or coding, or woodworking (LOL)), but they all fell by the wayside as the motivation left me.
It takes effort every time you need to 'force' yourself to do something - and interest can wane quicker than you think...especially when you're shit and you don't see progress.
One of the things that I recently read about to refresh my memory was a core precept of behavioural economics /design, which was that to change someone's behaviour, change their environment. Directly trying to incentivise people to do something by giving them money or education or awareness won't be as effective as changing how they interact with the things around them to complete the action.
Example: instead of allowing you to default to a super fund when you start a new job, I could force you to choose one at that time instead. This means that you are forced to make a choice, instead of passively accepting the default fund. (NB: this is actually already happening!)
Another one is the 'Save More Tomorrow' concept of contributing to a retirement fund (dreamed up by Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and Shlomo Benartzi), where you don't start contributing now - you contribute a percentage of your future pay rises. This means that the contributions become invisible to you - you might get less per pay rise, but you've pre-committed that money and it takes more effort to actually opt-out at the time of the pay rise than to do nothing.
I've tried in my life to set these sorts of systems up. If I can find a way to build the habit instead of trying to force my motivation, then it's easier to do it than not:
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We don't often have snacks or juices / soft drink in the house = we can't ever mindlessly eat them.
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Tuesday is writing night for this newsletter. I have templates and programs set up so that I can get started within 5 minutes of turning on my laptop. It's seamless and easy, and I'm not distracted by anything else.
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When I was in year 12, I had a simple rule of "No computer until 9:30pm" - it's easy to work out if you've flouted the rule, it's simple enough to be unambiguous, and doesn't require much willpower to follow once you're used to it.
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I try my best to not have any games, or addictive apps on my phone, so that I don't waste as much time on it. This is something I'm still working on...reddit/social medias are so...mindlessly interesting but also incredibly distracting. Currently reading 'Indistractable' by Nir Eyal to try and change those habits!
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Cooking-wise, I'm learning to make really tasty vegies. I think that's the next step in actually wanting to eat vegetables (though chicken is literally my favourite food). It means that you're more excited to actually eat the vegies than not.
Setting up your life this way means you don't always have to turn on the motivation / willpower faucet every time you want to do something - it just becomes ingrained in your habits and discipline.
Thoughts? Any of you have something similar? Or any advice on using goals better?
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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Creativity Inc - I might have already recommended this on my newsletter (I really need a better way to track what I've recommended!), but it's been on my Kindle for a while, and I've been slowly making my way through it. It's amazing for anyone who's interested in Pixar, culture, or the intersection between technology and creativity. The most interesting aspect of this book is the fact that Ed Catmull (the author) has enough of an introspective mindset to be able to break down why different things happened, how they made decisions, and what happened. He often talks about how he was wrong, or how he could have improved, and that's the most important thing to me - people who can share their success but understand why it happened, and how they could have blown up at any time.
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Two Peck Crispy Chicken - I tried this on my way to Cinema Nova one night instead of going to Hot Star Fried Chicken; it seems like it's got pretty much the same offering but has a bunch of other Taiwanese (?) snacks. I only tried the fried chicken cutlet, with plum salt (obviously). It was pretty nice! Same price as the Hot Star fried chicken, with a bonus of it being boneless for exactly the same price. If you want it boned it's like 30c cheaper. The chicken was really nicely spiced, and was piping hot right out of the deep fryer - the only knock I would have on it is that the batter was a bit too floury - so it stayed together too much instead of flaking away to give you the nice crunch you want in fried chicken. Would recommend if Hot Star is super busy!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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The End of the Beginning - Ben Thompson of Stratechery is someone I read for interesting insights on tech news in the US - sometimes he'll come up with pieces like this, that seem to apply globally. This one in particular talks about the fact that there might not be another radical shift in technology (like computers, or the Internet, or mobile) that will spawn another generational shift in the world, and instead these technologies become the new normal - all companies will become tech companies. I feel like the point about paradigm shifts is a bit too premature - on a longer time horizon we might get to things like Brain Machine interfaces, but that's far in the sci-fi future...
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Recreating sculptures from photos - Umberto Boccioni created a number of futuristic sculptures depicting the meld of machine and human between 1913-1915, but these were unfortunately destroyed in 1927. Through a meticulous study and comparison of photos of these sculptures, these have been recreated through 3D printing!
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Nearly all CS:GO microtransactions are being used for money laundering - fascinating short piece on how CS:GO keys are being used to launder money. Sounds like the logical continuation of the TF2 hat marketplace (which they needed to hire an economist to control the economy of!).
🌱 The Calathea Corner
With one more week to go before I name this plant, it looks quite healthy, quite alive, and surviving well! I think it might be time to either repot or fertilise it a bit, to help it stay growing :) Any good names for it?
