Eye-opening truth: Sports, Movies, other Content are distractions from achieving your Intentions

Image by Nile from Pixabay

I came across video footages of a man sharing some eye-opening truths. 

Here's one about watching sports:

Does it make sense to be cheering for people who don't know you... in a game that doesn't matter ... while you can't pay your light bill, you can't educate your children the way you want and you can't take a family vacation?  But you are jumping up and down cheering for people you don't know...

It doesn't make sense for a broke person to watch a sports game - how can you watch someone win when you're losing? Unless you are studying how to win.  And then you're delusional to call all those people on that team 'your' team... They might be your team, but you ain't 'their' team... 

You're broke and watch somebody play get paid for playing a game... You are broke and trying to figure out how to pay your life bill... but you're getting excited because your team won?  No, you are making your team lose because you're real team is your family.

And here's one about about watching movies:

You're broke and you're watching a movie.. you are watching people who are rich pretend to be people who don't exist... to distract you from intention in your life... from making your family's life better for generations... You're watching fake people live fake lives to create real feelings in you that anesthetize you from the fact that your life isn't working.  

Spot on, right?

And you can easily replace sports and movies with other content or activities like streaming, shows, social media posts, etc.  - anything that distracts you or keeps you away from the things that you are supposed to do in your life with utmost priority.  He advocates being hyper-focused on intentions, instead of distractions.

I tried to research who the man is and his name is Myron Golden.  Interesting nuggets of wisdom.  And he did say that when you can afford to (e.g. you're not broke anymore), you can watch and do these activities if you want to. 

But I was thinking - even if you are not broke, it would be great to continue pursuing purposeful activities and being intentional (most of the time... and with occasional bouts of spontaneity).  Case in point - for more than a year now, I've deactivated my Netflix account.  Since then, I had more time to pray and to go to Holy Mass on ordinary days (I am work in progress .. still a long way to go, but God is patient!), to reflect, to connect with others, to walk in the park, to listen to podcasts about topics I want to learn about, and to cross off personal tasks that have been on my list for a long while, among many other things.  

When you allow distractions to consume much time in your life -  that is real time taken away from your life that you will never gain back.  A movie could easily take away 2 to 3 precious hours, and doing a tv series marathon could easily take away 12 to 24 precious hours (or even more) from your life which you would never be able to recover - no matter what.  Been there, done that.   

More than a decade ago,  I played a virtual game - spent hours virtually planting crops and harvesting.  Real time spent but no real vegetables & fruits to harvest.  Isn't that ridiculous?   And to think it is not even hard or expensive to plant (e.g. herbs).   Of course, while I was into the game, I didn't realize how ridiculous it was.  To borrow the term by Golden, I was anesthetized!  Why not spend time planting real plants so you'll have something real to harvest and eat? If you're curious what jolted me to wake up, here's my old blogpost.  

Just to reiterate one final time - time wasted is permanent loss.  Unlike lost money which you can possibly gain back with effort, or health which, with proper discipline & care, could be recoverable,  time is the only form of wealth that can never be regained.

The secret to having self-discipline and self-control

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Do you think the reason why you can’t build and maintain good habits is because you lack the self-discipline? That maybe a myth because according to the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, there is no difference between people who appear to have self-control and those who don’t. He says that people who are most self-disciplined are just better in structuring themselves in this way, they spend less time in tempting situations which doesn’t require self-control. It’s easier to use self-restraint when you don’t have to use it often. Makes sense, right?

So the way to improve ourselves is not by wishing we had more self-control but by creating a more disciplined environment.

To build good habits, we need to make the cues for the habits highly visible and obvious and reset our place so that the environment is friction-less to perform the good habits.  For example, if you want to develop an exercise habit, bring out your rubber shoes and whatever you need for your workout the night before. 

If you want to eat healthy, have ready-to-eat pre-cut fruits in your fridge so there’s healthy food available any time you want to eat.

If you want to develop a writing habit, have your writing materials ready on your desk everyday.

If you want to regularly go to the gym, find a gym that is close to your home or office. Distance would create friction since traveling requires extra effort.

Or whatever good habit you want to build, join a group where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. After all, according to the Atomic Habits, we tend to imitate the habits of 3 social groups namely the close (friends), the many (the tribes) and the powerful (those with status and prestige).

In the same way, if we want to stop bad habits, we need to increase friction so we don’t end up doing them or simply avoid tempting situations.  For example, if you want to lessen time watching tv, unplug it after every use and remove the batteries of the remote control, so it takes a lot of effort before you can use the tv.

 
If you want to lessen time spent on social media, log out every time you use it or change passwords frequently that chances are, you won’t remember the last password and have to reset the password every time you use social media.  Or to add another level of friction, uninstall the app after every use and reinstall it every time you need to use it.  

If you are trying to lose weight, stop hanging out with friends who love to eat out.  Just do other activities with them that doesn’t involve eating or you can meet them for coffee or tea instead. 

The key to self-discipline is we have to redesign our life so that the habits that benefit us are the easiest to do and the habits that don’t add value to our life are the most difficult to do.  

It's great to know that self-discipline doesn’t require superpowers after all (yay!😅) - but that is only if we don’t subject ourselves to the wrong cues and tempting situations.

The inspiring story of British Cyclists and their 1% improvement strategy

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Improving by 1% or getting worse by 1% each day sounds immaterial, right? Think again.  1% better or 1% worse every day, when compounded, makes a big, big difference according to Atomic Habits by James Clear.

If you get 1% better each day for 1 year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the year is done.

1% every day for 1 year: 1.01365 = 37.78

Conversely, if you get worse 1% per day, you’ll end up with zero.

1% every day for 1 year: 0.99365 = 00.03

1% improvement everyday can transform non-winners to world record breakers.   Case in point - the inspiring story of British cyclists.

Since 1908, for 110 years, the British had just won a single gold medal in Olympics and zero win for Tour de France.  Then in 2003, a new coach named Brailsford was hired.  His strategy was to continuously search for tiny margins of improvement.  Brailsford's exact words were - “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

What kind of 1% improvements did the team make?  Here are some -

- Redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable

- Rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip

- Asked riders to wear a special kind of shorts

- Used sensors to monitor how each cyclist responded to workouts

- Tested various fabrics against the wind to determine which is lighter and more aerodynamic 

- Tested massage gels to see which one resulted to fastest muscle recovery

- Hired a doctor to teach the cyclists on the best way to wash hands to minimize risk of catching a cold

- Determined the type of pillow and mattress which helped the riders sleep better

All these small improvements resulted to astounding results.  How astounding?

In 2008 (5 years after), the British cyclists won 60% of the gold medals in the Olympic Games in Beijing.  😮💪 In 2012 in London, they set 9 Olympic records and 7 world records. 😮💪  (Prior to the 1% improvement strategy, I just want to remind you that they had so far only won 1 gold medal in 110 years.)

From 2007 to 2017, British cyclists also won 178 world championships and 66 Olympic or Paralympic gold medals and captured 5 Tour de France victories. 💪💪💪  (Again, prior to the 1% improvement strategy, I just want to remind you that they have never won any Tour de France.)  

Incredible, right?!!!  Such phenomenal results for continuously seeking out tiny improvements even in various unexpected areas. 

Applied to more simple scenarios, Clear said -
Imagine the body you can build if you don’t stop training;
The knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning;
The fortune you can build if you don’t stop saving;
The friendships you can build if you don’t stop caring.

So whatever good habits you have now, just imagine the compounded effect if you continuously seek out 1% improvement. 💪 

The big difference between saying "I can't" vs "I don't"

Imagine you've just started with a new fitness goal or a new diet plan. One day, you're eating in a restaurant and the waiter asks you - "Would you like a slice of chocolate cake for dessert?".

Would your answer be - "I can't" or "I don't" eat chocolate cake?

Without thinking really hard, either answer seems ok, right?

But guess what?  Each answer has a very different psychological impact on our behavior.

"I don’t" is a choice you've made.  It affirms your willpower.

"I can't" is a restriction you've imposed on yourself.  It undermines your sense of power.  

In a study, students who had healthy eating goals were told to either say "I can't" or "I don't" when faced with a temptation. On their way out of the lab, they were offered a chocolate bar or granola bar as reward.  What were the results?   64% who answered "I don't" were able to refuse the chocolate bar and opted for the granola bar vs 39% who answered "I can't".

In another study, women with fitness goals were also asked to answer "I can't" or "I don't" when faced with a temptation to skip gym, etc. and to stop using the phrases if the phrases don't help them stick to their fitness goals.   By the end of the study, 8 out of the 10 women were still using the "I don't" strategy vs only 1 out of the 10 women who used the "I can't" strategy.

I did't realize how your choice between "I can't" and "I don't" could have a tremendous impact on our behavior until I read this old article from Forbes.  

Anyway, this is something to try if current strategies don't work!😉  I think the "I don't" strategy could also be used to get rid of our bad habits. Haha... 🙈😜

Using the Premortem Technique to Create Back-up Plans

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After each project, we usually have a postmortem.  We review the project in hindsight - after it happened.  But do you know what there's such a concept as premortem?  It's an exercise in hindsight in advance.  You envision what could go wrong, what will go wrong -  in advance, before you even start with the project.

I read this from "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday".   Premortem is a good exercise to anticipate possible scenarios so you can have backup plans.  

Holiday shares:

"Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don’t have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish". 

This concept of premortem though is nothing new. The origin is credited to the Stoics which they call premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils). 

In one my past blogposts about Stoicism, this was referred to as retrospective negative visualization.   But the examples in that blogpost were mostly serious life situations like visualizing the loss of a loved one.

But for the purpose of this blog, we could use the premortem technique for simple projects, plans or goals.  Here's a simple framework you can use to start thinking about the possible negative scenarios of your projects and goals, and the corresponding possible solutions and back-up plans: 

What if ______?  Then I will  ______.

What if ______?  Instead I’ll just _______. 

What if _______? No problem, I can always ________.

And in case there is is nothing that can be done, Holiday says that the Stoic way is to manage expectations.  Because sometimes, he says, the only answer to "What if . . . " is, "It will suck but we’ll be okay".

Buffett's secret to achieving goals: 2-List Strategy

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When we write down personal goals, we usually write as many as we can but oftentimes, most of them remain semi-achieved, others are temporarily parked and some are never even started.

When I started realizing this, I started limiting my personal goals to 3 to 4 per year max.   It sounds very few but when you have a full-time job, trying to achieve 3 to 4 personal goals on your free time is a lot.    In fact, I can't even work on all 4 goals at a time.  I can only work on 1 or 2 at a time before I move on the next.   This is also because I'd rather do a great job in completing one than have 4 semi-achieved/half-baked goals.

So it seems that having a long goal list is counter-productive, right?   That's what Warren Buffett thinks too.  He is for eliminating, sometimes important goals, in order to focus on the few that will bring the success we desire.

I was actually surprised to read about Buffet's stance coz most books encourage writing as many goals as we can.

To illustrate Buffett’s way, there’s this story about his personal pilot and how he helped him to focus and prioritize his goals using a 2-list strategy.

First, Buffett asked his pilot to carefully think about, and write down his 25 top goals. When he came back and presented this list of 25, Buffet asked him to pick out the top 5 most important goals. Thus, at this point, there are 2 lists:  the list of 5 goals and the list of 20 remaining goals.

The pilot thought he would then focus on his top 5 and work towards the other 20 if he could find time.  But Buffett told him that that is actually the path to becoming unsuccessful.  Rather, Buffett said, the pilot should throw away the list of 20 – no matter how seemingly important they are – and focus solely on the top 5.  His reason is because the list of 20 would be a source of distraction that would prevent you from focusing on the top 5.  The article which I read suggests another alternative - instead of throwing the list of 20, you can make it as your "Avoid-at-all-cost list" - in short, it's a reminder of what you shouldn't focus on. 

25 and 5 goals are a lot for me. I think my 2-strategy list is just composed of 10 and 4 max.  I sound like such an under-achiever. 😂

Anyway, no matter how many are our goals, the biggest takeaway is we need to learn how to prioritize, focus and stick to completing the important few rather than be busy trying to accomplish a lot but end up not completing anything. :)