Mini Blog Post 19: On systems - Living a life of zero willpower
(This post is about the mindset of thinking in systems and routines. This post is mostly from my perspective, but the technique is pretty subjective. I’ve written up a lesson plan aimed more at teaching the tools for how to find systems for your problems)
Introduction
This is a post about systems and willpower. Willpower is a pretty fuzzy concept, for the purposes of this post I will define it as “that which is expended when I get myself to do something that isn’t the default action”. I find thinking in terms of willpower a key lens for examining my life, because I consider myself to be a person with unusually low willpower (at least, relative to my social circle of bullshit high-achievers). And this is really, really bad, because willpower is the obvious tool for taking the actions I want to take to achieve my goals. This post is my attempt to outline my various tools and hacks for getting around this, and taking the actions I care about anyway.
The key underlying idea here is that willpower is a limited resource. Every time I need to do something a bit unpleasant, every time I need to make a decision, I expend a bit of willpower. And when I run out of willpower, I just feel super tired, everything feels like it would take far too much energy, and it’s easy to fall into un-fun spirals of procrastination. This is especially bad, because these spirals of procrastination aren’t fun. There are “unproductive” things I can do that rejuvenate me, like going for a walk, meditating or reading a good book. But when I have zero willpower, I tend to do far less rejuvenating things, like scrolling endlessly through Reddit. It’s not that I’m torn between productivity and relaxation - it’s easy to fall into the trap of getting neither. So figuring out how to solve this is one of my key bottlenecks. And if you relate to the descriptions so far, I hope these tools can be useful to you too!
It’s easy to slip into guilt/self-hate about this kind of thing, and seeing it as a personal weakness. But this is obviously dumb. Guilt is a mental mechanism that prompts me to choose to take actions by spending willpower on them. Guilt is an awful solution to lacking willpower. Guilt lives in my mind, while my goals live in the world - if guilt does not help me achieve my goals, guilt is a dumb emotion. I find the framing of willpower as a finite resource far more fruitful. It would be dumb to feel guilty about lacking time to achieve all of my goals - I need to either be more efficient about how I spend my time, or have fewer goals. And exactly the same logic applies to willpower - it’s a more abstract and less objective resource, but a finite resource nonetheless.
And my main tool here are systems. I define a system as anything I can set up in advance, that lets me take actions in future while spending less willpower. It’s easy to fall into the trap of just pushing the Try Harder button - essentially assuming willpower is limitless and I can just try harder next time. Systems are a way to short-circuit this failure mode, zooming out and ensuring that I am deliberate, and focus on the desired actions rather than the mental state behind them.
Thinking in Systems
People often conflate systems and routines, but for me this is a much broader idea. Some important categories:
Routines
Time based: morning, evening, etc
Location/context based: what to do upon getting into work, a lecture
Algorithms
Checklists
Policies - eg having a clear plan for exactly what to do when I am too tired to focus while working
Automation
Eg Calendars, reminders, spreadsheets, etc
Triage - prioritising things, quitting things, managing commitments well
This does seem like a central example of a system, but often quitting something unnecessary can be the best way to free up time and willpower
The underlying point here is that systemisation is a mindset, not an algorithm. It’s the perspective of looking at your life, noticing the parts that are inefficient, or require willpower, or just never get done
Some tips for finding a starting point - a thing that needs systematising:
Think about the abstract resources in your life. For me, the biggest and most important resource is willpower, but this is pretty subjective. For you it might be money, energy, time, health, focused time, mental energy, social energy, etc. Look for the biggest bottleneck, look for the places you spend that resource the most, and think about how you could systematise it
Look for inefficiency. Spend the next 24 hours going through your life mindfully. Notice the things that feel off, the things that feel like “there must be a better way”, and see if you can make a system that improves this
Underlying point - it’s easy to miss the trivial inconveniences in our lives, but these add up substantially. A minute of wasted time a day is 6 hours of wasted time over a year. If there’s a small annoyance that’s easy to fix, fix it!
Managing attention - look for things you always forget, or struggle to remember. Keeping something in the back of your mind consumes attention and willpower. And see if you can find ways to still get the important ones done, without consuming as much attention
Routines and to-do list systems are valuable for this. Eg, I accumulate a bunch of tiny, boring tasks over time. Non-urgent emails to respond to, things I want to buy, messages I need to respond to, etc. These all consume a bit of my attention. My solution is to keep a to-do list in Trello, and every Saturday afternoon to priority order it and do as much as I can - these tasks stop consuming my attention, but still get done!
There are some underlying points to always bear in mind with systems:
Minimise decision points - the main thing that consumes willpower isn’t the process of doing a task, it’s deciding to do the task in the first place. My goal is to get shit done, not to decide to get shit done, so there’s room to optimise!
Minimise switching costs
Batch up similar tasks
Automation does this extremely well
Shape the default - the ideal situation is for doing the right action to feel like the default, so it takes no willpower
This is the underlying point behind routines and habits
This can involve broader things, like changing your self-image
Beware trivial inconveniences - I find it useful to think of decisions in terms of activation energy, the amount of perceived effort required to do it. This is what I spend willpower on.
Thus tiny inconveniences are a big deal, because they feel big, and thus is takes willpower to overcome them. My goal is to minimise willpower required, not actual effort required
Eg, My room is 20 seconds walk from a tap. This means I’m frequently dehydrated, because getting more water is a trivial inconvenience. This was completely solved by getting myself a large water jug
This can also be powerful by creating trivial inconveniences. It’s a minor pain to circumvent blocking software, but it’s a trivial inconvenience, so I often don’t do it.
And a good system should be:
Robust and reliable - something that will work when I want it to, with a minimal amount of active maintenance
Minimising decision points is key! Eg, don’t “go to the gym once a week”, “go to the gym at 10am every Sunday morning”
Note: Some systems can’t be perfectly reliable. Very rough rule of thumb: A robust system > a weak system > no system at all
Efficient - something that actually reduces the effort required to achieve an action
A good slogan to bear in mind: “my goal is to live a life with zero willpower”. This is pretty idealised, impossible in practice, and not obviously desirable in practice. But I find thinking of this as my goal tends to motivate me in the right direction when building systems. If a system requires me to put in a lot of effort by design, I should reconsider. Eg, if every assignment I get requires me to force an all-nighter, I am being an idiot and squandering willpower (and sleep!).
Then, implement your systems! This is the step that I (and everybody else) always forgets - it’s not enough to have a clever idea for solving a problem in your life, it will take some effort to ensure it feels like the default. This doesn’t feel as rewarding, but is key.
And finally, review and iterate your systems. Building a good system is hard, and takes time and effort. It’s unlikely to work perfectly the first time, no matter how hard you try. Once you’ve had the system for a week or two, take some time to review it, notice weak points, and either fix it or discard it.
Conveniently, these can both be systematised! I maintain a list of “to-implement” and “to-review” system ideas, and empty out that list every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons (respectively).
I have a rough algorithm to ensure I go through this all:
Find a problem
Explore the problem - think through examples and hypotheticals, do a mindful walkthrough a hypothetical solution
Make a plan! Strive to be effortless and reliable.
Reality Check: go through the plan and make it robust. My main technique: Imagine a world where it has broken and try to explain what happened
It’s good to separate making a rough plan and making a robust plan, otherwise it’s easy to agonise over details and get nothing done
Implement! It’s so easy to forget this step. I recommend setting a 5 minute timer, and getting started on the implementation immediately.
…
Review!
In practice, the algorithm is a high-effort guideline. It’s useful to do it to build the right skills and intuitions, but in practice I’ll often skip some steps (but never skip the implementation step!). If this mindset doesn’t come naturally to you, I highly recommend following it!
In practice, the mental habits this algorithm has helped me to build are:
Notice when I have a resource bottleneck, and do something about it
Notice when something is inefficient in my life, and try to fix it - in practice this has become a pretty visceral “ew” reaction
Notice the drains on my attention and willpower, and ask myself “is this really necessary?”
Notice when I’m pressing the Try Harder button, and ask myself “is there a clever hack around this?” (spoilers: the answer is usually yes) - eg when I feel guilty for forgetting something
Notice when I have a clever idea for a solution to a problem, but am not doing anything about it, and pivot into actually implementing things!
Personal examples
One of the unexpected benefits of COVID + social distancing, is that I’ve had a lot more control over my life and my routine than normal the last 3 months. So I’ve been experimenting with systematising as much of my life as is humanly possible. This has gone slightly too far, but I think I’ve learned a lot of useful habits that I intend to keep! Systematisation is a pretty applied mindset, and it’s extremely useful to see examples, so I’m now going to outline all of the important systems I’ve currently built up, and hope this provides some useful inspiration!
General warning notes:
This is pretty experimental, and something I’m constantly tweaking
There’s a bit of a trade-off between minimising willpower and spontaneity. I’ve found that spontaneity isn’t that useful to me, and I’m a lot happier trading off towards minimising willpower, but your mileage may vary
Though note: this trade-off is much less stark than most people think it is. Often a good system is done by my outer optimiser, while seeking spontaneity is done by my inner optimiser
Eg, I’m working at specific times, but the details of how I get work done are totally free
Eg, I set out times for having breaks, and do whatever I think is most rejuvenating in these times
Or, even, have an explicit system to ensure I seek out spontaneity, rather than perpetually getting caught up in short-term busywork!
My systems vary with regards to “try to be as robust as possible” and “I can change this if I think it’s a good idea, but it should feel like the default”
My day:
Morning routine
Have an alarm for the same time every day - this seems to notably improve my sleep
Take medication first thing - I keep this next to the window, so it’s the first thing I see when I open the curtains
I have 10 minutes for doing other things I want to do first thing
Check my calendar for what I’m doing, and message every person I’m having a call with to confirm
Complice for planning my day (this reduces decision load for what to do at each point, and practices the skill of “estimate what I can feasibly do in a day”)
Track the previous day in my habits spreadsheet - this is a useful way to remind myself of habits I’m forgetting about, and to track which ones aren’t working
This serves as a good scaffold system, that makes it easier to add new habits
To help this stick, I use Freedom to block distracting websites for the 10 minutes
Then my laptop automatically locks with Cold Turkey - this removes the willpower required to get up and go to the bathroom
Then I spend 15 minutes doing Anki while brushing my teeth etc - Lock Me Out sets my phone to only be able to do Anki
Morning work
I work in 50 minute pomodoros - this is a good “unit of work” to think in terms of, and a time period I can mostly focus for
I fill out a quick form at the start and end predicting what I’ll do, and calibrating what I did - this improves my standards for what I can realistically do in 50 minutes. By default my standards are way too high, and this increases my net satisfaction
Google forms are an awesome way to set up a system - it’s like a more modular checklist, that stores all of my answers to review later, and makes “do things the right way” take minimal decision making
I use Focusmate to arrange several 50 minute co-working calls with strangers (both people working on their work independently, while muted)
This makes “work at the right time” feel like the default, and minimises willpower required - if I don’t show up, I know they’ll struggle to focus, so it feels like the default action
This is a strongly “your mileage may vary” system, but I estimate it’s made me >20% more productive over the last few months - it significantly reduces my amount of wasted time
I set my phone to lock for 10 minutes in each pomodoro break, and a watch alarm to remind me to go outside and eg read, meditate or lie down - I am bad at taking rejuvenating breaks by default
I try to keep the first half of my day for my highest priority project, and the second half for a side project (currently blogging, because this takes too damn long…) - I find it much more fun to have several projects on the go at once, and this achieves that without needing to directly prioritise
I try to have a call over lunch - Calendly makes it easy to schedule things during that hour, and I’m pretty extroverted so I find this energising
I set my phone and laptop to lock for half an hour after that, to get me to take a “no screen time” break, eg reading, going for a walk, doing some chores
Afternoon work - similar to the morning
I try to keep 2 hours of this for various meta habits
Evening
Try to mostly fill this with calls - it’s by far my favourite + most energising way to spend leisure time, and uses a pretty different energy pool from “focus on work”
Calendly continues to make scheduling this effortless!
Night
Take some melatonin (this is not medical advice, and if you take medical advice from me, you’re an idiot. But I think it’s worth looking into!)
I have my phone + laptop lock an hour before my bedtime, I try to go for an evening walk for the first half hour, and read a physical book for the second half hour
Strong recommend for using this time to read something! (Kindles with no backlight are also good). I’ve found it super satisfying to start working through my “To be read” list, and this makes keeping to good sleep hygiene much more motivating
My lightbulb automatically gets redder and dimmer for this half hour, goes very dim for 2 minutes, then turns off. This gets me in a good sleep mindset, and makes “go to bed at the right time” feel like the default - turning it back on is a trivial inconvenience!
Other systems:
Social
I have a spreadsheet keeping track of when I last spoke to friends, and reminding me when to next check in/schedule a call
This was such a good idea - it’s really easy to forget people exist when I’m not seeing them in real life, and this rectifies that without consuming mental energy
With a robust system, this also ensures I keep in touch with less close friends, who I eg want to check in on once every few months
To schedule something, I just send a pre-written message + a Calendly link - this makes keeping in touch incredibly low effort
Calendly is wonderful, because it ensures scheduling functions with 0 input from me, and people can reschedule, cancel, choose their favourite time etc. I find scheduling is a major drain of willpower, because it involves a lot of back-and-forth, people being slow at responding, being busy etc.
Some people find this overly cold - my personal view is that this means I see my friends much more, without being a drain on me, and this obviously outweighs every other factor.
I find this is a good solution to the problem of social initiative - empirically most people will not easily remember “I haven’t spoken to Neel in a while, I should reach out”, so having robust systems to do this myself ensures I stay in close touch with all of my friends
Calendar
Having a digital calendar was an amazing decision - this means I’m organised and remember all of my commitments, so long as I can stick to the habit of “put all events into my calendar” and “check my calendar several times a day”. These took a bit of effort to build, but have majorly paid dividends
This integrates nicely with Calendly!
To-do list
I am a big fan of Trello - it’s a to-do list which lets me add things very easily (eg CTRL+ALT+SPACE -> type the note -> enter will create a new item, no matter what window I’m currently in)
I find it valuable to have a queue of “things to do” rather than reminders - I have busy weeks and quiet weeks. This ensures that if a system breaks during a busy week, I can pick it back up again in a quiet week
Meta
I do a weekly review once a week - I review how the week went, productivity + social, and plan the next week
Nice habits I’ve added:
Noting down everyone I feel grateful to, and messaging them why
Noticing unpleasant interactions, and brainstorming what was bad and how I can improve this next time
Writing down my current biggest bottleneck
Writing down an awesome success this week
Afternoons of Whimsy: I have a free afternoon each week to forget all external obligations and goals and do “whatever I find most intrinsically exciting” - I think following intrinsic curiosity is a valuable skill that I suck at, and explicit practice is helpful with this
I have 2 afternoons a week for debugging - thinking through problems in my life, designing and implementing solutions, and reviewing solutions
I track all of this in a Trello board, this ensures I remember to implement + review things, and keep track of old thoughts
Experimental: I have an afternoon a week for thinking through my high-level goals (I doubt I’ll keep this long-term, but it’s been interesting for the past three weeks)
Life admin
I keep an afternoon a week for doing all the tiny, boring administrative tasks that accumulate - this gets stuff done, and is minimal energy, because most of the cost of these is switching costs. I have a reflex to add them to Trello, and then can forget about them
Conclusion
I’ve found thinking in systems one of the most valuable life skills I’ve ever developed for getting shit done, and compensating for my general lack of willpower. Hopefully at least one of those systems resonated with you! (And you don’t think I’m too weird). If anything seemed interesting, or any of the ideas in this post have inspired you, remember - the default state of the world is that you will forget to implement things. Are you surprised if you never act on the ideas in this post? And can you do anything right now to change the default so that you do?
