(a) One reason
Why is there not enough self-control?
The above case actually expresses the dilemma we all face in modern times, knowing that we need to get up early to exercise, improve our self-control and become self-disciplined, but we just can’t do it.
The usual explanation is because you are lazy and not willing to suffer and have enough self-control. The usual advice is that you need to get over your laziness, be willing to suffer, and build your self-control like a muscle.
If you’re a little more motivated, you’ll think you’re not a lazy person and need to exercise and get stronger, so you’ll keep getting up early every day to run, but before long, three days, a week, or half a month, it’s raining or something and you can’t get up, and a few days later you’re back to your old self.
The problem is not being solved at all because the root of the problem is not being captured.
1. What’s the problem?
First of all, our actions are controlled by the thoughts in our brain, and the problem is that your brain usually has many different thoughts. One voice will tell you: get up early to exercise; another voice will tell you: sleep more, you’re so sleepy right now.
Your brain understands not only the right things, but also the “wrong” things, like not getting up early and getting more sleep, and not working out and lying in bed makes me feel better.
It’s interesting that those “sophomoric” reasons are easier to convince you of, and you listen to them more.
But why do you find people who get up early and exercise every day and are very disciplined? Are they naturally different, good at suffering and not knowing how to enjoy it?
In fact, those people are not that far from us, and they are not that disciplined because they don’t like to be comfortable and happy, and they are naturally good at suffering, but because they don’t want to suffer, and they are just as hungry for enjoyment.
Don’t worry, let’s take it one step at a time.
2. The Triple Brain
For a clear analysis, we have to refer to a model from Cognitive Awakening – the Triple Brain.
The human brain can be divided into three parts, and they are the instinctive brain, the emotional brain, and the rational brain.
The instinctive brain, which is the most primitive part of our brain, dates back to the reptilian era in biological evolution. Its primary function is to respond quickly and instinctively to the environment, essentially a reflex module. When you touch boiling hot water, you quickly retract your hand, and that’s the instinctive brain at work.
The emotional brain, which governs our emotions, such as sadness, fear, pleasure, and so on, emerged in mammalian times. When our primitive ancestors saw dark bushes at night and were too scared to go any further, that’s the emotional brain at work.
The rational brain, which emerged in primate time, is located in the neocortex, or prefrontal lobe, of our prefrontal region. It’s in charge of our cognition, and when you’re learning and making plans to do analysis, that’s the rational brain at work.
In short, this trio of brains work together to manage our life systems.
The reason we feel like we don’t have enough self-control is because the instinctive brain and the emotional brain are direct players in the process of doing things. The former controls our breathing, heart rate, and other bodily functions, while the latter controls our feelings and emotions, and they are able to respond quickly to external stimuli. Their main characteristic is short-sightedness and instant gratification. In more modern language, this means that we take refuge in the easy, and we are eager to achieve.
The rational brain, on the other hand, is visionary, good at trade-offs, future-oriented, and has a lot of sense, but it is generally not directly involved in what is going on, but rather directs it from behind the scenes.
When the rational brain says to get up early and run for exercise, the instinctive brain is the first to say no because it uses up a lot of energy in the body, and then the emotional brain adds to the instinctive brain, creating feelings of pain and struggle. The result is that the instinctive brain keeps your body comfortably under the covers while your rational brain stands by and gives you a lecture about being lazy, while the emotional brain feels comfortable and at ease on one side and blames itself and feels guilty on the other.
3. Why is there not enough self-control?
As you can see, what we call not having enough self-control is really saying that our rational brain is not strong enough.
First of all, the instinctive brain and emotional brain (collectively referred to as the perceptual brain below) have much older roots in evolutionary history, having emerged as far back as reptiles and mammals, while the rational brain is much later.
Second, in the history of growth and development, the perceptual brain matures as early as adolescence, whereas the rational brain matures only in adulthood.
Finally, the perceptual brain also has a great advantage in terms of the number of nerve cells and the speed of computation.
In summary, the sensory brain is very responsive and strong, while the rational brain is very intelligent but slow and weak.
To use an analogy from Cognitive Awakening, the rational brain is like the young CEO of a company, visionary but not yet senior and without authority in the company, while the instinctive brain and emotional brain are the two older employees of the CEO, strong and senior but ratty.
Our CEO can’t directly replace his employees because he is physically thin (you can’t imagine controlling your heartbeat and blood circulation with your own sanity at all times). So the only way for your rational brain to take advantage of it is to use its intelligence to convince and guide our instinctive and emotional brains so that they not only don’t resent your “thankless” strategy, but also happily do the work for you.
Scientists who are addicted to research are not more hard-working than you are, but in fact they’re just as pleasure-seeking, and they’re able to persist because the work itself brings them joy.
So the way to improve your self-control is not to use your willpower to force yourself to do something, but to find ways to design programs and use tools to get your perceptual brain hooked on what you’re doing.
(2) One strategy
Designing programs to induce the perceptual brain with the rational brain[1]
1. Environmental stimulation – -Designing an upwardly mobile environment
I’m sure you’ve heard the story of Mencius’ mother who moved three times so that Mencius could learn to do well, in order to imbue him with a good environment.
People are a product of their environment, and the environment influences a person’s thoughts, which in turn determine a person’s choices, which in turn determine a person’s fate.
A child who grows up in the mountains has a completely different perspective and outlook than a child who grows up in the city.
This is why many parents want their children to go to key high schools, to go to 985 and 211, to get out of the mountains and go to the big cities, in order to enter a more privileged environment and to be able to meet better people.
The underlying principle is that the direct stimulation of the environment is in line with the perceptual properties of the perceptual brain, which is short-sighted and only values meticulousness, and the direct stimulation of the external environment will tell it in a quick and concise way that what you have to do now is to be as motivated and study hard as they are. Of course if you are in an inferior environment, it will also tell you in a quick and concise way that what you have to do now is to eat and drink and have fun with them. You hardly need your rational brain to step up and do rational analysis to think about what you are going to do now.
So the first step you need to take is to put yourself in a situation where you are motivated and disciplined.
In the context of the question, you can choose to join an early morning running community, or you can organize your own community, preferably in a combination of online and offline formats, because then you can be more fully stimulated by the environment.
Of course one of the problems here is that you may be in a downward trending environment, so here are two thinking tools for you to use as a reference to gauge whether you are in a good enough environment.
1) Foolishness Index:
Ask yourself how long ago you felt you were a fool.
For example, if you were pretty stupid ten years ago, your fool index is ten years; if you were pretty stupid one year ago, my fool index is one year, and the smaller this index is, the better. The smaller the index, the better your environment is, and you’re in an upward spiral.
②Friend Index:
Ask yourself how many great new friends do I have around me?
Both of these words you can define for yourself: one, you think he is excellent; two, you think this is a new friend. As long as you have more great new friends in your life, then your friend index is higher, which in a way is a reflection of the good environment you’re in.
2. External monitoring – allowing yourself to be “kidnapped”
Seeking external monitoring is a way to keep your self-control strong, in other words, to allow yourself to “kidnapped.
In fact, its underlying principle is similar to that of environmental stimulation, and it also takes advantage of the perceptual brain’s tendency to take refuge and be eager to achieve.
I set my profile in one as a person who lights up the road, which is actually a way for me to kidnap myself. This profile means that I tell all users that I want to be a person who lights up myself and illuminates others, and wants to share the world I see and the path I discover through writing.
I already have 91 users following me and received over two thousand likes and over a hundred comments on my first post. With all these users adding to and inspiring me, it’s hard to let myself step back from the stage anymore, but rather I need to keep exploring forward. Once I step back, it takes more effort to get outside attention, while continuing would allow me to grab the advantage I already have, which satisfies my emotional brain’s need to take refuge in the tendency to be easy and eager.
One can think of a company’s KPI or a school’s final exam, or ONE an implicit promise to all users to make daily changes, or all kinds of consumer-facing branding and advertising.
It’s really all a way of seeking external scrutiny, the only thing it does is put you in plain sight and under rigorous testing, and it’s hard to bear the heavy price to pay for one mistake and failure, so there’s no reason not to ensure and optimize your image and the quality of your products.
Specifically in the context of the question, you could choose to announce to the world at tiktok that you will wake up at 6 o’clock every day and run three kilometers. After a while, all your friends around you know you are an early riser, and you have successfully “kidnapped” yourself, so it is hard to hold yourself back because your emotional brain can’t afford to lose face.
3. Uncertainty feedback – addictive
All people are fed by feedback.
The thing that the perceptual brain loves most is to get feedback immediately upon action, to get immediate taste pleasure from eating delicious food, and to get immediate visual pleasure from looking at a handsome woman.
The point here is that the most effective and fascinating feedback to train people is uncertain feedback, which is what we usually call surprise.
What does that mean? It’s when you do something and get what results when he’s not sure, he’s the most charismatic.
For example, you take a selfie and send it to twittertiktok, and then you repeatedly open twitter to see who liked it, who commented on it, and what they commented on. Why do you have that itchy anticipation in your heart? Because your friends are uncertain about liking you and commenting on you, and it’s that uncertainty that entices you to keep going back to check.
Every day when you open ONE one, you also have that itchy anticipation of what different story will you see today? What kind of golden words and pictures will you see again? If you see the same thing every day, I believe you will soon lose interest in ONE one as well, so uncertainty is sometimes the fundamental motivation to move up in life.
Specifically in the context of the first question, you can find ways to create uncertain feedback, such as recording your early wake-up and exercise every day and sharing it on tiktok, your own thoughts, or sharing it with a community, or dragging your loved ones or friends along for an early morning run, etc. Whatever form it takes, just capture the point that it’s about gaining feedback on uncertainty by increasing interaction with the outside world.
4. Goal decomposition – motivating the perceptual brain
One of the most important reasons for disrupting self-control is that goals are too ambitious, and the perceptual brain is already eager to achieve and needs instant gratification. Once the goal is too ambitious, our perceptual brain finds it extremely difficult and is not motivated to do it at all.
So in order to satisfy the perceptual brain’s need for instant gratification, the fourth step is to break down the goal.
For example, let’s say you find it difficult to get up early, you can break down getting up early into these steps:
First, open your eyes, and good congratulations on completing the first step of getting up.
Second, lift the covers off and sit up right away. Congratulations on completing the second step of waking up.
Third, put your clothes on, top first. Congratulations on step three of waking up.
Fourth, put on your pants. Congratulations on completing step four of getting up.
Fifth, put on your socks. Congratulations on step 5 of waking up.
Sixth, put on your shoes. Congratulations on step six of waking up.
Seventh, go into the bathroom. Congratulations on step seven of waking up.
Eighth, grab your toothbrush and toothpaste and brush your teeth. Congratulations on your early wake-up success.
You see, when you break it down like this, doesn’t getting up early seem so hard?
In short, one of the tricks of goal decomposition is to make the steps of something more detailed and clear, because the hard thing to do may not be because you don’t have enough self-control, but because you don’t see it clearly enough and allow your emotional brain to make it vague and difficult.
(3) A summary
You will find that the word “self-control” is a pseudo-concept, usually understood as the ability to restrain your desires and beat yourself to death. In fact, here’s a more humane definition: self-control is the ability to use the rational brain to devise strategies to guide the emotional brain to action.
So how exactly do you improve self-control?
The four programs above are really just references.
Grab these three directions and you can design some programs on your own.
1) Know your perceptual brain – eager to achieve, take refuge in the easy, short-sighted, instant gratification, etc. We recommend a related book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which divides the human brain into System I and System II, with the former being the perceptual brain and the latter being the rational brain. The book is an in-depth and systematic experimental study and analysis of the patterns and laws of these two brains, for which the author, Daniel Kahneman, won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
②Strengthening Your Rational Brain – Learning the knowledge to make our rational brain smarter and more powerful gives us a better understanding and control of your perceptual brain. Also many experimental studies have shown that exercise and meditation can help your brain become clearer and smarter.
③Guide your perceptual brain – use your rational mind to find tools and ways to meet its needs so that it can feel happy and comfortable and still get things done for you.
Note: One thing to keep in mind is not to use your rational brain’s intelligence and wisdom to fight your emotional brain, call it lazy, and not to let it do whatever it wants. Rather, accept it unconditionally, as you would your own child, and then, in a gentle but firm manner, figure out strategies to guide it to do what is really valuable to you.
I hope you will meet a better and more self-controlled version of yourself after reading this Q&A.
Note [1]: This strategy references how to push yourself to become an up-and-comer in Luo Zhenyu’s “Knowledge is Power”.