The reason I deliberately became “Boring”

Hi, welcome to newsletter #14.

Today is not the day to push the pedal to the floor, get in the mood, and let’s begin.

What's inside :

• Why am I trying to become“Boring”

• What I learned this week

• Picture of the week

• Content summary of the week

I often believe that it's the most boring things in life that provide the most value.
It's almost like a secret that no one talks about but everyone knows.

And the most boring thing in life is to be disciplined. Same old same old…I know.!!

But why is being disciplined so difficult?

And what are some practical ways that we can get more disciplined in our lives and live longer happier and healthier

Discipline is difficult because to be disciplined means to do things we don't like and do them every day.

And secondly, we don't see any immediate benefit in going through the pain every day.

However, discipline is like compounding.

One little rupee every day eventually ends up in a big fortune.

So how can we ensure that we can also become disciplined least possibly?

1. Willpower is a scarce resource.

Will power means resisting the urge to do something, But research has shown that it is difficult for humans to resist for a long time. Our brain gets tired and we get stressed.

So a better strategy is to use willpower only for doing difficult things like exercise and sleeping on time.

And limit the wastage of willpower by removing things from our surroundings that tempt us.

For example, it's an easy decision not to eat chocolate if you don't have one at home. Or avoid binging on Netflix if you don't have it installed on your phone.

2. Motivation is overrated.

Motivation depends on a lot of factors that are outside our control.

For example - our curiosity, expected reward, available time, feasibility etc.

And with repeatedly doing things we don't like, our curiosity starts to decrease very soon. And we don't see instant rewards.

And we assume that we are not motivated.

The litmus test is to do things even on days you are not motivated. Then we can practically guarantee success.

WOOP method:

The WOOP method, also known as "Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan," is a goal-setting and planning technique developed by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen.

It says that one must imagine obstacles and challenges beforehand as much as one imagines their success.

the method can be broken down into the following steps:

Wish - Be clear and specific about what you want to accomplish.
Obstacle - Envision the positive outcome or result associated with achieving your wish.
Outcome - Identify potential obstacles or challenges that may hinder your progress toward achieving your goal.
Plan - Develop a specific and actionable plan to overcome the identified obstacles.

3. Challenge yourself

Our brain still lives in the pre-historic period when every action led to some form of instant reward.

We are designed to see immediate rewards which has helped us survive as a species.

We are not good at valuing the rewards we will get in the future. It's called future discounting.

We can give it instant rewards if we play a game with ourselves.

My favorite method is to do 30 60 or 90-day challenges.

Take a calendar and write the thing you want to start doing.

Now start checking boxes every time you do that thing successfully.

Every time you check that box you'd feel rewarded with a sense of accomplishment.

After completing the challenge you can take a break for a few days and start with a new one.

By this time your old challenge would've become your new habit.

You can also use apps like Daylio tools to keep track of your daily activities or a stronger app to track your workouts.

4. Depend on habits

We don't rise to the level of our expectations we fall to the level of our habits.

Habits reduce the work on your brain by not needing to analyse every time you want to do something.

If you have formed a good habit then protect it from breaking like we protect our expansive phone by covering it from all sides.

A collection of many good habits eventually makes us a disciplined person.

5. Make it easy

We often think there is some form of glory in doing hard work.

However, we can also make the process of discipline easy by removing the obstacles that come in the way of doing difficult things.

For example, if I live closer to the gym I'm more likely to go. If I keep a book close to my bed then I'm more likely to read.

6. Have Fun

Being disciplined doesn't mean suffering all the time.

Being disciplined means finding ways of doing more of what you like and what's good for you than just living day by day without direction.

If you're enjoying the process then you may seem like a boring person to the rest of the world but that's their problem to solve.

Extra unnecessary points -

Theoretically, we all know what we want in life, but somehow we can't seem to get there fast enough.

Being disciplined has become more important nowadays because now we are living enough to see the results of our actions after many years.

What do you think? did I bore you enough?

I would like to hear from you.

Reply with a topic you’d like me to cover.

Cheers,

Dr. Vishal.