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How to Be Effortlessly Disciplined: 5 Mindset Shifts

2023-12-05 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:39 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: Health, sleep and habits, Productivity and time) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Evidence-based framing, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present, Aimed at students

Ali gives five evidence-based methods for becoming more effortlessly disciplined (mental contrasting, implementation intentions, reducing environmental friction, monitoring and tracking, and making the task enjoyable) and argues that you only need discipline for things you do not enjoy.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — How disciplined are you? Discipline hype and what the video covers

  • ★★ Ali sets out five science-backed methods to become more effortlessly disciplined, and says that focusing too much on discipline might be the wrong move. (hedged) — 00:00:29

00:01:09 — Mental contrasting

  • ★★ In Gabriele Oettingen's study, Ali says, people who vividly contrasted where they are now with where they want to be were far more likely to take responsibility for acting towards their goals than those who imagined only a positive or a negative fantasy. — 00:01:44
  • ★★★ To use mental contrasting, Ali advises first imagining the end goal, such as running a marathon, six-pack abs or launching a business, then working out where you are now and imagining the obstacles in your way. — 00:02:13

00:02:51 — Rize, the time-tracking app sponsoring the video

  • ★ Ali says he liked the time-tracking app Rize, the video's sponsor, so much that he reached out to its founders and invested in the company. — 00:04:10

00:04:23 — Implementation intentions and MCII

  • ★★ In a study Ali attributes to Angela Duckworth, high-school students who imagined obstacles to exam success and wrote if-then plans to overcome them completed 60% more practice questions than a control group. — 00:05:08
  • ★★★ An implementation intention, Ali explains, is a plan of the form "if X happens, I will do Y", such as flossing after brushing your teeth; this is sometimes called habit stacking. — 00:05:38
  • ★★ Mental contrasting paired with implementation intentions (MCII), imagining the future and the obstacles and then planning how to get past them, is in Ali's words a well-validated, evidence-based strategy for increasing motivation and discipline. — 00:06:07

00:06:20 — Reduce environmental friction

  • ★★★ To become more disciplined, Ali advises designing your environment to make the thing easy: lay out your gym clothes to put on first thing in the morning, and do not buy junk food at the supermarket. — 00:06:36 · friction
  • ★★ When students at his talks ask how to get more discipline, Ali usually starts by asking whether they have designed their environment to make the thing they want to do much easier. — 00:07:05 · friction
  • ★★ At medical school Ali kept his medical textbooks right next to his desk rather than across the room, because walking over to the bookshelf was too much friction. — 00:07:05 · friction

00:08:02 — Monitoring and tracking

  • ★★ Studies show, Ali says, that people trying to lose weight who simply weigh themselves every day end up losing weight, because they become more aware of what they are trying to do. — 00:08:04
  • ★★ Ali gives three reasons monitoring helps discipline: seeing progress drives intrinsic motivation, it gives a feedback loop for adjusting your actions, and it shows clearly what is working. — 00:08:33 · identified motivation
  • ★★ Ali tracks every new habit with the Streaks app on his iPhone home screen; it currently reminds him to exercise 30 minutes a day, do a meditation exercise and film for his vlog channel daily, and keeping the streak up motivates him. — 00:09:02 · iPhone

00:09:44 — How to make it enjoyable

  • ★★★ You only need discipline for things you do not enjoy, Ali says: nobody needs discipline to watch Netflix, but you need it for the gym or exam study only if you do not enjoy them. — 00:10:00 · feel-good productivity (concept), Netflix

    “So you only need discipline to go to the gym if you don't enjoy going to the gym.”

  • ★★★ Bringing play, power and people, the first three chapters of his book Feel-Good Productivity, into any task, however boring, makes it more enjoyable and energising, Ali says, and reduces the discipline you need. — 00:10:29 · play, power, people, Feel-Good Productivity (book)

  • ★★ For exam study, Ali suggests asking what it would look like if it were fun: Lord of the Rings instrumental music in the background, a different library or coffee shop each day, pretty notes and colour-coded timetables. — 00:10:29

00:11:27 — Pointer to his Trident method video and sign-off

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: discipline · friction · implementation intentions · mental contrasting · play, power, people

Also: People: Angela Duckworth · Gabriele Oettingen

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Grit (book) · The Lord of the Rings

Organizations: Netflix

Concepts: habit stacking · identified motivation · Trident calendar system

Products: Google Docs · iPhone · Notion · Rize · Scrivener · Streaks

Also centred on discipline: First Live Hangout + Rapid-fire Q&A · Is discipline always the answer? 🤔

Also centred on implementation intentions: How to Stop Procrastinating (Forever) · How to actually exercise consistently 🏃‍♀️

Also centred on mental contrasting: Why Positive Thinking is Bad for You

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