How to Outsmart Your Future Self
The pre-commitment research behind that move, and how to use it on yourself.
Ulysses did not trust himself to resist the sirens, so he never gave himself the chance to try. The research behind that move, called pre-commitment, holds up better than almost anything else in the discipline literature. Here is how to use it on yourself.
A colleague of mine spent eleven months promising herself she would finally write the book proposal she had been circling for two years. Every Sunday she planned the week that would finally hold the time for it. Every Friday the week had somehow filled itself with everything except that. She did not lack the idea, nor did not lack the ability. She lacked a wall between herself on Sunday, who wanted the proposal to exist, and herself on Wednesday at four in the afternoon, who did not feel like starting something hard with two hours left in the day.