How I buy discipline
The struggle to stick to plans is eternal. Exercise daily, don’t eat junk, write weekly are simple plans, but require enormous amounts of discipline.
Discipline is a limited resource. Tapping into it daily makes life very strenuous. Hence I was looking for hacks that would allow me to stick to my plan effortlessly. After sometime googling. I realized that fear and greed were more generously available in me. And I could tap them. Like
- If I don’t walk 50k steps a week -> I loose 5$ #Fear
- If I complete my 3 main tasks for the week -> I earn 50$ towards buying a ergonomic computer chair :) #Greed
The idea that i could now stick to my plans, really excited me. So i wanted to build a system (robot) that would track me and automatically withdraw / deposit money from my account. In other towards I wanted a robot to pin down my free will to slack.
I landed upon Beeminder, an app that charges my card 5$ every time, i miss my plan. Since then, I have stuck to my plan of 50k steps/week for a month now :) Yaaayyyy !!
I setup a IFTTT that deposits 15$ towards my goals on Qapital. So every time, i complete a todo on todoist i get paid towards my greedy goals (which otherwise i feel guilty to buy, like a herman miller chair)