Self-Discipline on

Steroids
The science of decision making + 10
practical ways to increase your
willpower and change your life
forever

Max Weigand

Max Weigand / maxweigand.com

Why self-discipline is the key to everything
If you look at your life right now, what is the reason you are not as successful,
happy, or healthy as you could be at this point in your life?

Apart from the many excuses, there is probably just one simple reason: Lack of
self-discipline. You simply dont do what you need to do to enjoy the levels of
success you want. If you think about it, what does it really take for you to be
successful in all areas of your life?

Chances are, its no secret. Everybody knows what it takes to get in shape, but
how many people do it? Everyone knows what to do to perform better at their
job, but how many people actually put in the work? Everyone knows which
foods to avoid and which ones to eat, but most people still dont do it.

If more knowledge was the answer, wed all be millionaires with six-packs.

All the knowledge in the world is worth nothing if you dont possess the self-
discipline to use that knowledge. Elbert Hubbard defined self-discipline as the
ability to do what you have to do, when you have to do it, whether you feel like
it or not. It is the one skill that is necessary above anything else to succeed in
any endeavour.

Success in life comes from the actions you take on a consistent basis - and only
self-discipline allows you to do that.

Why, then, is it so hard to make the right choices?

In order to explain that, lets first take a look at how our brains work.

Meet Albert and Rex.

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Albert and Rex are the two parts of your brain that make all your decisions
(Albert is the prefrontal cortex and Rex is the basal ganglia, but thats not very
catchy, so Ill stick with Albert and Rex).

Albert is the genius part of your brain that makes rational decisions, sets goals,
and creates plans to accomplish them. He is the mastermind behind all great
ideas and is in charge of all effortful and higher-level thinking.

Meanwhile, Rex is the automatic part of your brain. He is responsible for all
unconscious decisions you make throughout a day - things like driving to work,
brushing your teeth, chewing your food, and thinking about the same things as
every other day. Rex is also the one that acts impulsively and cares more about
immediate pleasure than long-term consequences, which sometimes gets him in
trouble.

In an ideal world, Albert would always be in charge and simply make Rex do all
the heavy lifting.

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But the problem is that Albert is old and lazy, and so he falls asleep sometimes.
When that happens, Rex is wide awake, ready to take over control. His choices
are based on two main principles: Avoid pain and gain pleasure! Lots of it!
Right now!

For Rex, only the present moment matters. He wants immediate gratification
and acts impulsively, without any regard for what might happen in the future.

Thats why we often make bad choices even though we know better - things like
eating junk food, smoking, drinking, snapping at your partner, or missing your
evening run. We always know intellectually that these things are bad, but Albert
is asleep, and Rex doesnt care.

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You dont want that to happen.

Motivational Conflicts
As you can imagine, Albert and Rex get in lots of arguments. When Rex sees
those yummy human beings (or chocolate cookies, coke, and cigarettes), he
wants nothing more than to have some yummy food in his mouth. But Albert
knows that this is not a good idea, and so they get into fights.

Motivational conflicts happen whenever we want to engage in several opposing

behaviors, such as eating junk food vs. staying healthy or working out vs. lying
on the couch watching TV.

It is a choice between short-term pleasure and long-term gain. The bigger the
impulse to do something you know you shouldnt do, the harder it is to control
Rex. Similarly, the bigger your motivation to do something good, the more
likely it is that Albert wins.

Its not that Rex never wants to listen. He is like a dog, and will usually do
exactly what you tell him. But when Rex is hungry and Albert is tired, there is
no stopping him: He will lie on the couch eating donuts, no matter how much
Albert yells at him.

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Luckily, scientists have found some strategies to help Albert (your rational self)
control Rex (your impulses) better.

According to research on self-control, there are four things necessary to regulate

your impulses:

1. A clearly defined goal or standard for behaviour

One of the reasons why goal-setting is so powerful is because it gives your brain
clearly defined standards on what to do and what not to do. Before anything
else, you need to know exactly what you want out of any area of your life,
whether that is running a marathon, earning $30,000 more, or creating a better
relationship.

These goals bring with them a new set of standards that you need to follow if
you want to succeed. For example, running a marathon cant be done from one
moment to the next. It requires a daily ritual of working out and running a
specific number of miles in order to get into the physical and mental shape that
allows you to run the whole marathon.

Once you determine what the process or reaching your goal looks like, you have
a new standard for behaviour that you now need to commit to.

This helps Albert because he now knows exactly which choices he has to make
every day in order to reach the goal.

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2. Monitoring

According to psychologists Charles Carver and Michael Scheier, we accomplish

our goals by using feedback loops. Once you have a clearly defined set of goals
and standards, your brain performs tests by comparing your present self with
these standards.

When your present self falls short of the standard, self-regulation kicks in and
initiates the actions necessary to bring up the self. Along the way, your mind
will constantly check the progress until the target is hit.

You can imagine this process like a torpedo being shot at a target. The torpedo
will steer itself in the right direction, constantly taking in feedback and adapting
to it by getting back on course. More to the right? A little bit up? In this way,
the torpedo will respond to feedback until the target is hit.

Now, for the monitoring process to work properly, it needs fuel in the form of
motivation and willpower.

3. Motivation
This is the driving force behind change - your motive for action. Why do you
want to do this? What does it give you? Why is this important?

As explained before, we all experience motivational conflicts. Albert wants to

be healthy, but Rex desperately needs those chocolate cookies. Albert wants to
earn more money, but Rex prefers checking the news instead of working.

In order to increase his chances of controlling Rex, Albert can set goals that are
so compelling that they can beat Rexs impulses.

Lets say that Albert wants to run a marathon. Rex will never feel like doing
that much work, so Albert needs to use some tricks to convince him.

First of all, Albert needs to find the reasons for why he absolutely MUST do
this. These are things like:

- losing weight
- having more energy
- pride
- living longer and getting to see his grandkids grow up
- being happier

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In addition, Albert puts some leverage on himself by making a bet with his
friends Newton and Feynman: If he doesnt run at least 40 miles every week for
the next 3 months leading up to the marathon, he owes them $100 each.

When Rex hears that, he is shocked: He absolutely HATES losing money, even
more than he hates working out. You can bet that he will be running tomorrow,
if only to keep his money.

4. Willpower
In 1998, social psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues designed a
series of experiments that shaped the way we now think about willpower.

They allowed participants to chose between eating chocolate cookies and

radishes, and then gave them a frustrating and impossible puzzle task.

What they found was that the participants that had resisted the temptation of the
chocolate cookies before gave up the puzzle test after 8 minutes compared to 19
minutes for participants who ate the cookies.

They attributed this effect to ego depletion, which is the idea that willpower is a
limited resource that is used up anytime you resist an impulse. When you wake
up in the morning, you have the maximum of willpower available. Any time
you resist the thousands of temptations around you, from junk food to checking
social media, you use up some of your willpower.

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When your willpower decreases too much, you experience what psychologists
call decision fatigue - a decline in the quality of your decisions. The more
decisions you make, the more tired your brain gets, leading you to give less
thought to choices and go for the easier, safer, or default choice.

Former president Barack Obama once said, Youll see I wear only gray or blue
suits. Im trying to pare down decisions.

Obama, along with successful business people like Steve Jobs and Mark
Zuckerberg, knows about the straining effect of having to make too many
choices every day. By limiting his daily amount of decisions on unnecessary
matters, he leaves more willpower for the important choices.

Unfortunately, decision fatigue can have very real consequences in our lives,
especially when it comes to making important decisions.

In a 2010 study, Shai Danziger investigated over 1,000 parole hearings in Israeli
prisons. What he found was rather disturbing.

Danziger noticed that judges were more likely to give parole in the morning and
right after lunch break. In between breaks, when the judges had to make several
decisions in a row, they experienced decision fatigue and went for the safest and
easiest choice: Deny parole and lock them up.

The study found the following results:

Prisoners that will be successfully paroled start off fairly high at around 65%
and quickly plummet to nothing over a few hours After the judges have
returned from their breaks, the odds abruptly climb back up to 65%, before

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resuming their downward slide. A prisoners fate could hinge upon the point in
the day when their case is heard.

In other words, the time of hearing had more influence on the parole decision
than the type of case or the actual crime.

The fact that food breaks help judges recover from decision fatigue may be due
to the replenishment of glucose. Roy Baumeister, who originally came up with
the concept of ego depletion, also found that the brain uses glucose when
resisting impulses. When glucose runs low, the effects of ego depletion occur.

The good news is, you can counter this effect by taking in glucose in the form of
food, which makes the effects of ego depletion disappear.

Mind over matter

In a 2012 study conducted by Miller and his colleagues, they found that ego
depletion effects matter, but only when you believe in them. Participants that
believed that willpower is a limited resource had less self-control after engaging
in activities that require willpower.

On the other hand, participants that thought of willpower as limitless did not
experience ego depletion effects.

Another study by famous Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her

colleagues surveyed students beliefs about willpower and their weekly self-
control failure. Surprisingly, they found that students with a limited theory of
willpower experienced significantly more self-control failures, including 35%
more procrastination, eating 24% more junk food, and worse grades. In short,
believing that willpower is limited became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This was also confirmed by another study conducted by Clarkson in 2010,

which found that the perception of ego depletion better predicted the subsequent
performance than did actual depletion. In other words, whether you believed
that you were tired had a bigger impact than whether you actually were. Its
truly all in your head.

Why your environment matters

In 2012, Google faced a problem that might pale in comparison to the usual
projects, but nevertheless led them to create a team of behavioral science PhDs

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to investigate the following: Why do employees eat too many M&Ms? And how
do we stop them?

According to the rationale, eating too much of the free candy might hinder
Googles efforts to keep employees happy and healthy.

So their team went to work, and they surveyed employees, collected data on the
proximity of employees to the M&M bins, consulted academic papers, and
eventually launched an experiment.

What if the company kept the sweets hidden in opaque containers and covered
them with a lid while openly displaying healthy snacks such as pistachios and
dried figs?

The result: In the New York office alone, employees consumed a mind-blowing
3.1 million fewer calories from M&Ms over only 7 weeks. Thats 9 vending
machine-size packages of M&Ms for each of the office`s 2000 employees!

Now, did the employees suddenly decide to eat healthier? Certainly not. All
Google had to do was make the convenient choice the healthy one. If you still
really wanted M&Ms, you could get up and get them. But because only healthy
choices were displayed publicly, workers went with the new easy choice
without even thinking about it.

The Power of Default Choices

This concept can be explained in one single picture:

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Now, why is there such a vast difference in organ donors in similar countries?
Coming from Germany, I can tell you that there is not much of a difference
between us and Austria, for example.

The reason is so simple its nearly unbelievable. You would think that people
actually make rational decisions when it comes to important things such as
organ donations. But the truth is, environment nearly completely determines
whether you are an organ donor or not. Heres why:

In countries with low donor rate, the form was opt-in, meaning that you had to
check the box to become an organ donor. In comparison, countries with donor
rates close to 100% have an opt-out form where you have to check a box in
order to drop out of the organ donor program.

When people are then faced with a choice, even an important one like this, they
simply go with the default choice because it requires less thinking.

Now, if a simple difference in a check-box can determine whether you become

an organ donor or not, you can bet that default choices affect every other area of
your life as well.

For example, when you come home Friday night after work, the choices you
make are largely determined by one question: What is convenient, readily
available, and leads to gratification?

If you have chocolate bars lying around the house and cake at eyesight in the
fridge, that will likely be what you eat. But if you hide the sweets (or get rid of
them entirely), and instead display healthy snacks like Google did, the choices
you make will be significantly improved.

Using the ladder

A few years ago, BJ Fogg, researcher and professor at Stanford University,

decided to restrict his ever-increasing popcorn consumption. Because he knew
about default choices, what he did was simple:

Fogg took the popcorn, went in his garage, took a ladder, climbed up, and
placed the popcorn on a shelf. Now, if he really wanted his popcorn, he could
still climb up the ladder and get it. But because he made it harder to get, Fogg
dramatically decreased his popcorn consumption.

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You, too, can use the same technique to change your default choices. Whether it
is climbing up the ladder, hiding sweets in the closet, or changing the way you
use to get home in order to avoid the supermarket you usually get alcohol,
sweets, or cigarettes from, making it harder for yourself to engage in the
activities that you want to avoid will pay off in a huge way.

Creating Default Choices for Good Behaviors

The same principle can be used to create more positive behaviors when you
often lack the willpower to follow through.

Struggling to begin a workout routine in the morning? Place the alarm clock or
your phone far enough that you need to get up in order to turn it off. Increase
the room temperature overnight so you feel comfortable getting up. Have your
running clothes ready so you have one less excuse not to run. Have a friend pick
you up at 6am so you cant back out.

By designing all these small environmental changes before actually making the
decision, you make it much easier for yourself to follow through even when you
dont feel like it.

Want to make better food choices? Throw out all the garbage and replace it with
healthy snacks that you can openly display in all the areas where you usually
just mindlessly gobble down two chocolate bars. Go to organic food stores
instead of the supermarket because the food choices they offer will naturally be
better and you will make good choices simply because there are no bad choices
to distract you.

Whatever changes you want to make in your life, design for laziness. Assume
that when it is time to make decisions such as what to eat and whether to run or
watch TV, your brain will usually go for the easiest choice. To make sure that it
is also the good one, make your bad behaviors harder to do and your good
behaviors easier. Design for laziness, and you wont even need more willpower
to make better choices.

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Tips and strategies to control Rex
As you could see so far, decision making is quite complex and hard to control.
Heres some practical tips for keeping Rex on a short leash and building
willpower to make better choices:

1. Eat right

As shown by the prison study, having enough glucose in your brain is critical
for making good decisions. The better you eat, the better your decisions.

2. Willpower is unlimited

Believing that willpower is limited becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So does

the opposite. Believe that your willpower is limitless, and you will have more of
it.

3. Have clearly defined goals and a plan for accomplishment

When you give your brain a goal to strive for, it will expand energy to reach it.
Every choice you make will be monitored as to whether it brings you closer to
your goal or not, allowing you to track your progress. Only by having a goal can
you make full use of your fuel: motivation and willpower.

4. Find your why

Why do you need to do this? What does it give you? Find reasons for why you
absolutely MUST achieve your goals, and you will have the motivation to do so.

5. Use leverage and accountability partners

As described before, put some leverage on yourself. It doesnt matter what you
bet on and with whom, as long as it motivates you to follow through and makes
giving up impossible.

Last year, my girlfriend and I made a bet on who would give up and eat sweets
first. If I lost, I had to eat fish, which I hate. If she lost, she had to run a 10k,
which she didnt want to do. We didnt eat sweets for two months until my
sisters birthday when we both decided to end the experiment, but it was the
easiest diet of my life.

You can also find accountability partner and commit to working out with them.
Its easy to let yourself down, but not as easy to do with someone else.

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6. Use implementation intentions

Anyone can follow through on the good days, its the bad ones that make or
break you. When you feel sick, tired, stressed out, or frustrated, it is hard to
stick to your positive routines. On the days where you dont even want to get
out of bed, it is extremely challenging to motivate yourself to go for a run or
work on that big project. But these are also the days when you need it the most.
To help you keep moving forward even on the worst days, you can use this
simple tool:

If X happens, I do Y.

If I feel too tired to go for a run, I just run for one mile and then see if I feel
better.

If I dont feel motivated to work on my book, I watch inspirational videos.

If I am mad at my partner, I think of all the great times we had together.

If I am stressed out, I meditate and then make a plan to tackle my tasks one by
one.

If I cant meditate for 20 minutes today, I meditate for 5 minutes.

You get the point.

What this allows you to do is plan for failure. There will be times where you
feel overwhelmed or dont have time for all the things you want to do, but its
still important to follow through. Stick to your habits, even in the smallest ways,
to keep the momentum alive and create stronger habits.

7. Meditation

Regular meditation has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression and
improve mood, focus, and decision making, which are critical to self-control.

8. Set up your environment for success

Make good choices easy and bad choices hard to do by changing your
environment. Hide the junk food and replace it with fruits and nuts, and you will
find yourself naturally going for the healthier alternative.

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9. Make your most important decisions in the morning

Right when you wake up, you have the maximum of willpower available to you.
Use this time to make your most important choices before decision fatigue can
reduce the quality of your choices.

10. Choose the path of MOST resistance

The best way to improve your mindset and strengthen your willpower is by
doing things that are uncomfortable or scary. Go for a cold shower tonight. Give
that presentation you always wanted to do. Ask your boss about that promotion
you have been waiting for. Do the things that you dont want to do, especially
when you dont feel like it, and you will find your willpower growing like a
muscle in the gym.

I hope that this guide was helpful and that you now have a better idea on how to
think more like Albert and less like Rex. If you want to learn more on making
better decisions and improving your life, visit my blog maxweigand.com for
more articles.

You will find articles on topics like overcoming procrastination, building self-
discipline, and the compound effect of small daily improvements.

I wish you all the best on your journey!

Max Weigand

Max Weigand / maxweigand.com