Almost certainly an idea stolen from someone else

Why Condition

I think I’m not alone in feeling that I allot my time poorly. I spend much longer than I’d like on certain activities which leaves less time for the many other things I’d like to be doing. For me, those vices are watching YouTube videos and playing online bullet chess. For others, it may be watching TikTok or Netflix or Twitter or Minecraft or League of Legends. There’s not anything inherently wrong with these things, but I often engage with them beyond the point of negative marginal returns, where just watching one more video or playing one more game makes me less happy. I won’t speculate here as to the Proper Amount or even how to determine it (if it exists). For my purposes, it is sufficient to say that the optimal rate of consumption is greater than 0 and less than my current rate.

There’s also an opportunity cost. Every half hour chess tournament I play is a half hour that I’m not pursuing one of the other activities that I call hobbies: reading, writing, running, juggling, wandering around, or starting some new activity on my ever-growing list. A friend once told me he wished he didn’t have to sleep because there was so much that he wanted to do. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but then again, I do sleep as little as possible while maintaining what I feel to be something like sanity, so maybe I agree through revealed preference.

So I got an idea. If I reward myself with sugary treats for doing the things that I struggle to make time for, perhaps I could condition myself to prefer them. Then once I have positive associations, I may be able to achieve a more healthy balance between them and my vices.

It didn’t work at all. From a psychology perspective, it didn’t work because the rewards were too delayed in time from the behavior. That is, the thought of a bowl of ice cream in a couple hours didn’t help the bad feeling of having to start writing. Even if it worked the first few times, the conditioning part would probably never work which would defeat the purpose.

I also realized that the adding rewards is redundant because I already get a lot of utility from writing, say. By the time I get into it, I don’t need the motivation of reward to continue. I’ll never deny myself hard-earned ice cream, but by the time I’m done, I’m already so pleased with myself that the writing became its own reward. The same holds for running, walking, reading etc. Hardly ever do I come back from a walk less happy than when I left. I get plenty of utility from these things, they just require a higher activation energy to start them which causes me to engage with them less than I’d like.

If I can’t condition myself, what is to be done?

Most activities carry internal inertia. That is, while it may take effort to start them, it also takes some energy to stop once you get into them. For an easy example, imagine showering. It would be almost inconceivable to stop showering once you’d started before you’d finished. I would shower through a fire alarm. But your current state determines how much you feel like showering. If you just got out of the shower, you probably don’t feel like taking another one (I should hope not). On the other hand, if you just finished a run, then showering is almost inevitably the next step. Getting gross and sweaty Naturally Leads towards taking a shower.

Then take a step up the chain. What Naturally Leads to wanting to go for a run? Depending on your preferred granularity, it might be anything from feeling antsy after not running for a while to having just put on running clothes. (Only once have I ever put on running clothes and then decided I wasn’t going to run and changed back, and it felt ridiculous. I wouldn’t recommend it.) But maybe you’re not feeling in the mood for exercise. Perhaps you could make a pact with yourself that if you don’t feel like running on a day when you told yourself you would, you will instead change clothes and stretch out a little. These are low effort things that are fairly easy to start from a state of rest but which may put you more in the running sort of mood.

The same could be done for writing. I find it prohibitively difficult to start writing from a total standstill. If I go for a run to let my mind wander, then when I get back (after a shower), I feel in the mood for writing. A short walk and a cup of tea will also do in a pinch.

By no means have I fleshed out this system. I have decent morning and bedtime routines. In general, I think it’s easy to go from a neutral mood to a productive one. What’s harder is that when I get home from work, I’m in a coma sort of mood, and it’s not always clear how to turn that around other than exhausting myself on those mindless activities. I know there are some videos that leave me more inspired and lift my mood more than others. So that’s an option I’m exploring, but in the back of my mind, I know I can’t keep watching Dead Poets Society every weeknight.