Automating Yourself

The calendar reset recently, and that often brings reflection on the past with it. This year I’ve been thinking about the changes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned in the past few years that have had the most positive impact on my life. When doing an exercise like this, it can be tempting to point to the large changes, like moving to a new job or a new city. However, these are obviously harder to repeat or model new changes on, and often are more of an effect than a cause - the accumulation of many smaller changes. What I found to be the truly valuable changes were the ones that automated my personal decision making. This serves to avoid requiring willpower to make good choices, and frees up that mental energy to be used elsewhere.

The science is inconclusive as to whether humans have a finite amount of willpower, but regardless of whether or not we do, it is simply more effective to remove willpower from the equation. It is far harder to start from zero and just one day decide you are going to start “making the better decision”. This is why most fad diets don’t work; people can’t stick to them because it takes too much work. And yet I, as someone whose diet growing up was pitiful, now get comments nearly daily about how healthy my diet is, and my energy levels are higher for it. The keys I’ve found to making improvements are: principles, systems, and habits.

Principles are simple decision-making guidelines that are either always followed, or have only specifically-defined cases where they can be exempt. The key is to always follow the principle, then deciding between two options, which could be something like a healthy vs. unhealthy situation, never comes down to willing yourself to do what’s “right”. You have a principle and that tells you all you need to know. Once a principle is applied to a specific scenario, it often manifests into a system. Systems don’t necessarily have to originate from a principle, and are basically just a more specific version of a principle. A personal example is that I don’t eat before noon. It’s much easier to turn down the donuts your coworker brought in Monday morning if you simply can’t eat at all in the morning. Even more specific than systems are habits, which are formed when a system is applied in a specific way for long enough that the result becomes part of your day and not something you “decide” to do. Example: One of my systems can be described as ‘Always take the stairs unless someone with you takes you to the elevator, or you’re late and the elevator is faster’. Because of this, my walk up to the sixth floor at work every day is enough of a habit that I’ll often be confused momentarily when someone comments about how I’m walking towards the stairs – I completely forget there’s another option.

These three tools are all ways of automating yourself, which is hugely valuable, because we can only focus on a few things in our life at a time. If someone decided to start greeting strangers more, exercising every day, eating a perfect diet, sleeping more, and learning a foreign language all at the same time, having not already implemented principles, systems, and habits to do these, they simply wouldn’t have enough time in a day to do these, because they all take attention, if not automated. That’s the point of the automation - to free up energy and attention, because there will always be new projects or self-improvements that will inevitably require those at the start, but if they’re tied up elsewhere, you will never get to the new projects.

As a final note, anyone who drank an alcoholic beverage with me between January and September of 2018 (and coming back in 2019!) knows I have a certain system related to that. I had a set exercise I had to do before every drink, depending on the type. This would get questioned probably 95% of the time, and the premise of this post is exactly why I kept doing it. Yes, I could keep track and do the exercises tomorrow, but (1) that would negate the other impact, me drinking less, and (2) that would require keeping track of the drinks and remembering the next day, which isn’t required when you have a system.

Here are some more examples below of my principles, systems, and habits, as a starting point for those interested in personal automation.

All else being roughly equal, pick the faster option

Owning more “stuff” causes clutter and complexity, it better be worth that if you get something new

Don’t drink sweetened drinks

Write things I need to do in the morning on my bathroom mirror in dry erase marker

24 hr fast first Friday of every month

Put phone on airplane mode from when you go to bed to when you arrive at work

Go to the gym after work Monday-Friday

Don’t eat before noon

Salad+mixed nuts for lunch every day at work