Overcoming resistance to create the life you want for yourself

Procrastination is all too familiar to most people. How often do you set ambitious goals and find yourself watching cat videos on Youtube instead of working on yourself?

You have a looming work deadline but you find yourself binging Netflix or tending to your email inbox. You might have a weight loss goal but find yourself not exercising and shotgunning cookies left on the kitchen counter.

As humans, we are complex and full of contradictions.

Despite wanting better for ourselves, our actions often don’t match our words and intention. We all know what we need to do but often lack the motivation to get started or take consistent actions toward our goals.

Here’s An Example:

Green Bank, one of the largest banks in the Philippines, set out to get customers to save more money. Getting customers to save more money would allow them to have money for health and education as well as help the Bank’s bottom line.

Researchers came up with a counterintuitive idea to provide a product that gave customers the option to put their money in a locked bank account.

This account offered no other incentive (i.e higher interest rate) other than reduced access to their money and financial penalties for withdrawing their own funds.

Sounds like a bad deal doesn’t it?

Despite this, 202 customers signed up for the new locked product. A year later, researchers conducted surveys and checked the saving patterns of participants.

The results astounded researchers.

The average savings balances increased by 81 percentage points for those assigned to the locked bank account relative to those assigned to the control group.

On further follow-up, the pattern remained the same. This represents a lasting change in savings behavior, not just a short-term response by participants.

Similarly, when given the choice, 68% of students at MIT chose to have self-imposed deadlines (with late penalties) spread throughout the semester rather than having flexibility for their deadlines.

As it turns out, students who could choose to self-impose deadlines handed in work that had about 50 percent fewer errors than students who were randomly assigned a single final deadline.

The opportunity to self-impose deadlines proved enormously useful to beating procrastination, much like having access to a locked savings account.

What do both of these examples have in common?

Both are what researchers call commitment devices.

Creating Your Own Commitment Device

We are overly optimistic about our ability to use willpower to overcome temptation. After a long and tiring day, the option to binge Netflix becomes more appealing than exercising.

Commitment devices force you to create consequences for inaction.

There are two types you can use:

1. Hard commitment devices.

2. Soft commitment devices.

Hard Commitment Devices:

If every time you missed a workout you had to donate $50 to a political party you don’t like, how much more motivated would you be to exercise?

This is an example of a financial commitment device that is paired with one of your goals. You can apply this to waking up early or eating healthy. You are creating your own personal tax system.

As a human, you are primed for loss aversion. Losing money stings more than gaining money, especially when your hard-earned dollar goes to an organization you don’t like.

By levying a financial cost for your inaction, you are creating immediate consequences to your procrastination, which can be the motivating factor to get you moving.

If you have a goal you really want to achieve, add a hard commitment device like a financial penalty. You’ll find yourself more motivated to take steps to achieve your goals.

Soft Commitment Devices:

Another tool you can employ is a softer commitment device like a public pledge. You can announce on social media that you’re going to exercise at least 4 times this week.

You can tell your friends and family about your plans to become healthier so they can give you encouragement and keep you accountable. There are no real consequences to breaking your pledge other than letting other people down.

But a commitment that comes with only a psychological price tag for failure is surprisingly effective for two reasons:

1. We don’t want to be seen contradicting ourselves in front of people we respect and love.

2. We want to be consistent with our past pronouncements. Cognitive dissonance, where we say one thing but do another, can cause unpleasant feelings within us.

Through soft commitment devices, you are using the power of social pressure to promote behaviors you want to change in your life. And if your goals are made to show, they are made to grow.

Summary:

Whatever goals you want to achieve, attaching a commitment device to it will greatly increase your motivation to take action.

Commitment devices cut through ambiguity.

Often there are no immediate repercussions for procrastinating until much later. By self-imposing consequences such as a financial loss or damage to your reputation, the consequences of inaction become clearer.

Commitment devices provide an incentive for action as the cost of inaction is high. Hard and soft commitments create accountability for your goals and immediate feedback on whether you’re achieving them.

Combining a mixture of hard financial costs with a soft public pledge and you’ll create a potent system for beating your procrastination and taking real steps towards your goals.

Good luck!

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