2024 update: the interesting thing about this post is that it’s an unintentionally great representation of my worldview before I began thinking about non-coercion, non-exertion. This is a borderline authoritarian perspective, probably informed by the cultures that I grew up in and was immersed in. What’s especially striking is how, I talk about the importance of surveillance-over-self, and controlling one’s environment, but I hardly talk about inner motivation, about WHY I might want to do the things I want to do. That’s just taken for granted, which is the hidden, invisible mistake. I now would say, if you have sufficient clarity about what you want to do and why you want to do it, all you really need to do is to focus on it, and ask yourself what would be a meaningful next step to take.

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I’ve spent the past year trying to figure out how to be a better person, how to be fitter, happier, more productive. Even before that, I spent several years reading probably about 50 books on the subject. There are few better ways to enjoy procrastinating than by Googling ‘How To Stop Procrastinating.’ (Don’t do it, unless you feel like procrastinating.)

The simplest thing for me, as a writer, is to do this- I come home from work or whatever. I grab my laptop. I have no wireless internet access- if I did, I would shut off the antenna itself.

You have to set aside time for Work, and this time has to be bloody damn sacred. It should be the first thing you do when you get home that requires any sort of concentration or mental activity.

When I say Work with a capital ‘W’, I mean to say any sort of productive endeavour that you want to be involved in. For students, this could be your homework and/or your routine revision. For musicians, writers and artists, this would be your creative period- if you’re feeling Creative with a capital ‘C’, then go ahead and make something new. If you’re not feeling particularly inspired, commit to practicing your existing skillset instead.

Control your environment: The best way to quit smoking, then, it seems to me, is not to develop immense willpower, but to put yourself in situations and circumstances where smoking is not an option. You should put yourself in a place- both literally and mentally- where you won’t encounter any sort of stimuli that even has you thinking about smoking. We all think we are more disciplined than we actually are (or can be, even!), and we all overestimate the influence this inflated sense of discipline has on our behaviour. (Well… I can only really speak for myself.)

“I’ll do it later. I’ve got time. I can stop whenever I want to.” These, I think, are some of the biggest lies we tell ourselves on a daily fucking basis, and I think the main reason why we never call our own bluffs is because we don’t keep track of them. We remember every lie anybody else has ever told us, and consequentially we remember most of the lies we tell others, but we conveniently forget those we tell oursleves. Yet these are the most pivotal and the most important.

I have never met a successful person who gets home from work, plays exactly one hour of World of Warcraft, spends exactly 15 minutes Liking and commenting on Facebook, and then tears himself away and gets down to some serious grinding Work.

Perhaps these people exist. They are legendary warriors with wings on their ankles who can shoot fireballs out of their arses. I am not one of them.

Start tracking. Confront the fucking liar. Disregard everything he says.