Self-Control is Hard Enough, Why Make It Harder With Self-Sabotage?

Note: This is an excerpt from Growth & Productivity: 14 Principles to Achieve More, a free e-book from Grove Ave, a new startup that helps individuals focus on their growth. Click here to get your free download of the 70+ page e-book.

Self-control. It is one of the important things that separates us from animals. Humans are blessed with this capability. The first step to achieving self-control is to limit your contact with the things that keep you away from your goals and the kind of person you ultimately want to be. If you’re on a diet, would you put a chocolate cake on the kitchen table and leave it there, calling to you temptingly like some kind of siren? If you’re trying to quit smoking, would you go hang out in a smoky bar or take your breaks at the office smoke pit? The answer to both is no. Achieving and maintaining self-control is hard enough, so why would you sabotage yourself before you’ve even had a chance to succeed?

Limiting exposure to goal obstacles also includes people. People who are constantly negative towards you and your goals or who are actively encouraging you to do things contrary to your self-interest are not the least bit helpful. Like the alcoholic friend who tries to get you to drink even though they know you’re in rehab, these are people you need to try to limit your interaction with if at all possible.

One other major roadblock to productivity is social media and email. Getting yourself away from the time-sucking bottomless pit that is your Facebook feed can require a supreme act of self-control. If you can’t control yourself from checking Facebook or Twitter every ten seconds, then one easy way of doing this is to hide the apps off of the home screen and nest it in a category you rarely use, several pages in. In my browser, I use Stayfocused, a free chrome extension, to block certain sites (e.g., Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, those notorious time-suckers) when I really need to get stuff done. You can set some sites as non-blocked, such as Google Docs or Wikipedia, and set the rest of the internet as blocked for a certain period of time. That’s what Stayfocused calls the “nuclear option”. I have to admit that when I’m really demotivated, I do have to resort to the nuclear option. It works.

I also turned on the “social” and “promotions” tabs on my Gmail, which pushed all of those Twitter ads and fundraising request emails to a box I never have to check I unless I really want to. I’m an “inbox zero” person, so this has helped me reduce the amount of times I check email daily by tenfold. Finally, on days I have to get a lot of work done, I limit my email checking to once every two hours.

Another great way of imposing self-control? Set up an accountability system. Consider getting some trusted friends involved. For example, if you need to get an assignment done and aren’t feeling particularly motivated to do so, making it publicly known that you have to do it and that if you don’t, you’ll impose some kind of self-punishment may give you that motivational boost to get that thing done. On the flipside, you might want to consider giving yourself some kind of positive reinforcement at the end. For example, if you get the assignment done, you’ll allow yourself to watch that movie you’ve been dying to see. The great thing about exercising self-control is that once you’ve set up your systems and start putting the principles into practice, it gets easier over time. Talk about a great return on investment.

Summary

• Don’t make self-control harder than it already is; remove temptations whenever possible
• Self-control gets easier with more and more practice, when it becomes second nature
• Develop systems for enforcing self-accountability

Did you find this helpful? I just published an e-book with 13 more productivity principles to help you achieve more.

Check it out at www.groveave.co