Symptoms or consequences of presentation include, but are not limited to:
1. Unable to do the same thing for a long time
2. Attention is easily diverted
3. There are problems in emotion management and great emotional fluctuations due to external influence
For years, I have not read a complete book
5. Due to shallow reading and emotional fluctuations, language expression ability deteriorates, and words cannot be smoothly translated into spoken language for expression
Mental state ups and downs, so that affects the physical coordination ability, language organization ability ups and downs
Short-term memory problems, in a few seconds, will forget before the things to do, want to say.
Many people think that the root cause of their failure to complete their plans, their procrastination, and their life’s bad habits is their lack of self-control. They think that with more self-control, all their problems will be solved.—-This is wrong.
So what is it? Hold on a second, we’ll come back to this later, but before we do, let me tell you a story about one of Harvard’s top students.
1. 75% true story
Tal is a junior psychology major at Harvard University and a leading player on the squash team. He gets up early every morning to go for a run, then he goes to school, and at the end of the day, he goes to the court for a routine with his coach and plays games, and after that, he goes to the gym to get fit, and then he goes home, does his homework, reads and studies, and goes to sleep. Day after day, without fail.
So Tal was considered to be a highly disciplined and high achiever. Tal felt the same way about herself, until winter break.
As a student with excellent grades, the winter vacation is certainly not satisfied with spending Christmas and watching the backlog of movies before. Tal plans to take two classes for the next semester, complete a Research Project, and maintain an average of more than an hour of exercise every day.
Happy ending: Tal gets down on his knees. His only achievement is to finish a semester’s worth of movies and, oh yeah, gain four pounds. What, you mean by study, research and exercise? Tal only read 10 pages in the first two days, which adds up to an hour of exercise.
At this point, I knew someone was going to jump out and say, «No! It’s not true! How can winter vacation plans fail? ! You must have made it up!»
Yes, as you can see, I made up 25% of the story, but that’s just the details of the failure. The fact remains the same — Tal is dead. Here’s what he said, along with a screenshot.
Some of you recognize Tal, yes, he’s now Professor Tal at Harvard, and this is from episode 11 of his popular positive Psychology course, 39 minutes and 47 seconds in.
2. The troubles of students with excellent grades
Professor Tal proved that when it comes to winter vacation planning, high-achieving students have the same problems as the average person. Some people would say that Tal is an exception, but now, many of my friends are high achiever students, even those who are doing PhD at MIT, have the problem of sleeping at home until noon and not being able to follow through on their study plans.
Of course, some people will raise their hands and say, «No, I know students who have great winter vacation plans and they put them all into practice!» Yes, that’s right. Let’s call them «mature overachievers,» and let’s call those who failed «early overachievers.» A good number of the high-achieving students you see are still in «infancy,» and will still suffer from the same self-control and procrastination problems as the rest of us.
So how did «high achievers at an early age» grow into «high achievers at an older age»?
Though the plan fell through, the top student was a top student, and soon showed what set him apart from the rest of us:
The average person is like this: failing a plan -> getting frustrated -> scolds himself -> making a new plan -> failing again
The best students are: plan failure -> frustrated -> scold themselves -> think deeply about why the plan failed -> improve the problem -> make a new plan
Of course, the new plan may or may not work, and after the failure, the high-achieving students repeat the process. Over time, the new program has fewer failures and more successes, and the high-achieving students have evolved from childhood to maturity.
So why did the plan fail? Obviously, excellent grades of students usually have a high degree of self-control, is the winter vacation self-control will fail?
This is where the illusion of self-control comes in.
3. The illusion and truth of self-control
I don’t know if you have such a feeling: before the college entrance examination is the peak of their learning and self-control, at that time, I had to do a lot of questions every day, study late, but the next day is still energetic, continue to fight; After going to university, the time is rich, but become lazy, no previous study momentum and perseverance, to the holiday is too lazy to get out of hand, stay up late to watch drama, sleep late, eat and drink too much that is common.
Why is that? Does the more time you have, the less self-control you have? This is clearly unscientific. Is it because the more time we have, the easier it is for us to slack off and degenerate? But that’s a result, not a cause. We think our self-control, once strong, weakens when we go to college, and becomes weaker after vacation because we’re slacking off — this is the illusion. So what’s the truth?
Mr Tal revealed two truths for us:
1. It’s our habits, not our self-control, that keep us productive.
Think about the intense study atmosphere before an exam. We passively develop many habits — regular classes, self-study, eating and sleeping every day. We have clear goals — what to review every month, every week or even every day is arranged for us by the teachers. We take these things for granted, just as naturally as you get up every morning and brush your teeth.
Think about the process of brushing your teeth when you wake up: get dressed (ok, I know some people don’t), grab a cup and toothbrush, walk to the bathroom, get water, squeeze toothpaste, and start brushing. Even if you’re still feeling a bit bleary-eyed, you can follow this process with great precision and effortless execution. Does this process require a little bit of self-control? Hardly any, right?
So the learning process in high school doesn’t really require much self-control. When you enter college, the curriculum becomes free, and you lose those passive habits and start to plan your study and life on your own, it is when self-control is needed. At this point, many people have to face a second truth:
2. There is a limit to one’s self-control
Many people don’t realize that self-control, like muscle strength, is limited. This is a result of a lot of psychological research, and you can look it up on the Internet, and I’m not going to go over it here, but I’m going to use an analogy to help you understand it:
Imagine moving from one dormitory to another, or classroom to another. Your arms get sore, your backaches, or you can’t even lift a glass of water because your muscles are exhausted as you wrestle with piles of heavy books from room to room.
The same goes for self-control. In our daily lives, we face all kinds of temptations: that new snack on our desk yesterday, that new product on Amazon, that new show on You… We have to resist these temptations over and over again in order to focus on important goals like studying and losing weight. Every time you turn down a temptation, you’re depleting your self-control. If there are too many temptations, there comes a time when we’re too tired to resist and let our lives be dominated by overeating, binge shopping, or staying up late to watch TV.
Of course, the reality is not that terrible, the muscle soreness will return in a couple of days, the self-control is good, and you can get back to normal with a good night’s sleep. What’s interesting is that different people are born with different levels of strength and different levels of self-control. A small percentage of the population either have high or low self-control, and most people fall somewhere in the middle — neither good nor bad.
So we conclude that the high-achieving students are the ones who are naturally superior to self-control? If that’s the case, then I’m not even writing this article.
The children’s shoes with wit immediately reacted over: Oh! Since we can exercise muscles, self-control can also be exercised, right? We just need to exercise self-control to a strong!
That’s true, but there are limits to muscle strength, and there are limits to self-control. With so many temptations in our lives, the self-control we have acquired will still be insufficient. On the other hand, as mentioned in the first point above, whether it is the «mature students» on campus or the elites in society, their efficient study and life do not depend on strong self-control as we often think, but on the habit, system built up.
What I want to talk about most is how to use our limited self-control to build such a system. It was only after realizing this problem that Tal started his turnaround journey and successfully evolved into a mature student with excellent grades. Finally, he became a professor at Harvard and stepped to the top of his life. (Okay, don’t hit me. I made that part up.)
But building habits is not easy, for two reasons:
1. Many people do not realize that there is an invisible enemy hindering our efforts.
2. Many people don’t know the principle behind habits.
4. The Invisible enemy
Many of us want to lose weight and get fit, but most of us decide to lose weight or work out, make a detailed plan, buy a bunch of equipment, and spend thousands of dollars on gym memberships, only to put it all away after less than three visits.
Why is it so hard to establish an exercise habit? Because too many people don’t understand the principles behind habits, and more importantly, because too many people are in a hurry, eager to see significant change in a short period of time.
Yes, we all hope to become rich and famous overnight. We all like to see the stories of «a poor boy who starts a business from nothing and becomes a billionaire in a year» and «a fat girl who loses 80 catties in half a year and wins the heart of a man». But it’s not our fault. We’re inherently short-sighted, and love instant feedback and satisfaction, because an invisible enemy lives inside our brains. First you have to recognize it, then you can overcome it.
Millions of years ago, when our ancestors were drinking blood and resources were scarce, the brain needed a constant secretion of chemicals that encouraged people to find and eat food, the more calories the better, and the more fat they stored. Without this mechanism, humans would probably not be alive today.
But we’re not hominids. We’ve evolved more advanced control units, so we’ve learned to plan, to give up short-term gains in order to achieve long-term goals. But the primitive part of the brain doesn’t die out. It’s still fighting for control of the body, prompting us to relentlessly seek instant gratification.
So do you get it? Why in serious study, suddenly can appear «study so long, watch a movie!» The idea of; Why to eat a lot of dinner, bedtime or unable to control their hands to snack; Why do you want to open the phone endorsement, but the ghost of the poke open the face; It’s all the work of the primitive brain.
Okay, here you are, aware of the enemy, the primitive part of the brain; You’re also aware of its usual trick — instant gratification. But that’s not enough. To defeat it, you have to master the weapon of science, which is the principle of habit.
5. The principle of habit
The formation of a habit depends on four parts: cue, routine, reward and belief:
Cue: What triggers the habit, you can think of it as the trigger of a pistol. When you press the trigger, the bullet goes out. There are many ways to touch a machine, which can be time, place or scene. You brush your teeth in the morning by getting out of bed; Go to lunch because it’s time (and, well, hungry); For those of us who have a habit of checking Weibo before going to bed, the trigger could be lying down under the covers. Touch itself is not good or bad, it is the inertia it causes that determines the good or bad habits.
Routine: inertia is called because it is unconscious, such as the first to open the computer to read entertainment news online; For example, be sure to check Your Moments before bed. In the process of building a new habit, our self-control is used to modify the old behaviors that are causing procrastination and replace them with new habits. When you’re trying to correct a bad habit, you need to pay attention to the trigger that triggered it, and to your own behavior to keep reminding yourself not to repeat it. This step is the process of the consumption of time and energy, may see-saw with old habits again and again, because the establishment of good inertial behavior not only need to have the discipline to overcome the old behavior, also need to get a positive feedback at the end of the behavior that is to say the following the «reward».
Rewards: This is one of the most important and often overlooked parts of habit formation. Why are bad habits easy to form and hard to change? Because their rewards are often immediate and obvious: which is not? Good habits are hard to form precisely because the short-term rewards aren’t obvious. Memorizing words, exercising and practicing calligraphy often take a long time to see the effect. Some people are naturally able to get spiritual inspiration from the process, but many people can’t, so we need to give ourselves artificial rewards: Keep track of your growth and progress, tweet to yourself from time to time, celebrate with a nice meal when you achieve a small goal (and don’t overeat!), etc. A little more about rewards. Things like learning and working out are a bit anti-human, so is there a way to quickly build positive rewards? This expansion could write two books… There are many excellent answers about learning and fitness on Zhihu, so I won’t repeat them here. I want to offer a kind of thinking: positive, open, growth thinking. Look at how people who enjoy learning and fitness do it, and try to learn from them, and focus on the positive, rather than thinking you can’t do it.
In addition, strengthening your «beliefs» can help you get positive mental feedback.
Belief: This is the inner motivation that underlies your habit building: you want to memorize words every day in order to beat the English test; You want to learn to play guitar so you can perform at parties. You want to have a regular diet, go to bed early and get up early in order to be healthy. If you want to get fit and lose weight, you may want to win the heart of a goddess/god. In short, you want to be a better person. Beliefs will give you positive mental feedback on forming good habits, and the stronger your beliefs, the more you will be able to tolerate the pain and repetition of change.
Knowing this will help you build habits, and there are so many tips on how to build habits, such as avoiding temptation, breaking down goals, building a record and feedback mechanism… Many can write a book (in fact, there are a lot of books about habits, I will recommend a later), I want to say something on the state of mind here, but also I stepped on countless pits, with blood and tears for the important experience:
6. Three points of attitude
1. Accept yourself as a human being
Really, we’re all ordinary people, and there’s no shame in admitting it. Take my favorite muscle model for example, I always feel, establish a habit or ability or, with exercise muscle is the same thing: you can only lift 30 jin dumbbell today, next week you lift 35 jin at most, you can’t say tomorrow I will lift 60 jin. Similarly, if you’ve never been to a gym before, don’t expect to go three times a week to start. A more scientific plan is to go once a week. If you were addicted to playing games seven days a week, don’t expect to quit tomorrow. Aim for a more scientific goal of playing only six days next week.
It’s also a sign of maturity to admit that you can’t eat at one sitting and face up to reality, isn’t it? Positive Psychology suggests that for the average person, one or two habits a month would be good. Don’t be greedy, you can do it, at least 12 habits a year, and you’ll break most people.
Give yourself permission to fail. Give yourself permission to rest. On top of that, I particularly want to emphasize: be less critical and more encouraging.
2.. Be less judgmental and more encouraging
Our upbringing places too much emphasis on strict self-discipline and self-criticism and too little on self-encouragement. Too many people give up on change because, after repeated failures, they snuff out the fire within themselves with criticism and criticism.
My university most depraved two years, by this kind of thought, finally let me come out, not only unwilling to degenerate, but also after every failure, like to treat friends, sometimes even like to treat children, encourage yourself, coax yourself: «this week plan to exercise three times, only exercise once? It’s fine. It’s better than no exercise, isn’t it? Try it twice next week!» «I didn’t finish what I planned to learn today, and I spent two hours surfing the web this afternoon… Never mind, it’s better than yesterday! Brush most of the day yesterday!» .
When a plan fails, most people feel shame, pain, and blame themselves. But few people comfort themselves with «it’s okay, you’re human, you’re going to be vulnerable sometimes.» Few people encourage themselves as much as they encourage their friends, saying to themselves, «Come on, there’s still a chance, come on! Think about how you can do better next time.
Really, most of the time we don’t have teammates in the struggle with desires and weaknesses. You just have to pump yourself up.
Well, some people worry that too much self-comfort will make them relax, so the last thing I want to emphasize is action.
3. Take action, starting now
Whether you criticize or encourage yourself, it’s action that will bring about change. Whatever you want to do, do it now, not later. In my opinion, 90% of «tomorrow» is «forget tomorrow». If you want to read a book, pick it up before you go to bed tonight, even if it’s just one page. If you want to exercise, hop up today, even if it’s just a 4-minute fat-burning session. If you want to learn to draw, draw today, even if it’s just a water glass.
As long as you do it, no matter how much, you are doing it, and it is all change, and as I mentioned above, even the smallest change deserves recognition.
Even though 90% of people read this article, they will forget it in two days. But I think, it doesn’t matter, we are ordinary people, don’t be hard on yourself, at least such a long article, you are almost finished, right? You’re still great! And read this article itself, be «start from now» embody!
You see, learn to use it, that’s how I see it. (￣▽￣») ~~
Finally, a word I love to give you:
Incremental change is better than ambitious failure.
End. Why write this article
I used to be a poor grades of students, very slag very slag of that kind: I carry a notebook to the library, but brush a half day of the web page, and watched a half day of the movie, I scolded myself in the evening, decided to study hard tomorrow, the results the next day and backslide; I used to skip school all day and play video games. I stayed up until 7 in the morning and slept until 1 at noon. Then I got up and ate a bowl of instant noodles and continued playing in the afternoon. It’s not that I didn’t want to change, but every time I made up my mind, the blood would last less than three days, and I would soon fall into a vicious circle of plan failure -> remorse -> replan -> plan failure.
For a long time, I thought that self-control was the biggest obstacle to my progress. I hated myself for not having perseverance. I felt that I had no future in my life. It was only later, after meeting many, many people and reading many, many books, that I realized that many of my previous understandings about self-control, habits and efficiency were wrong. After that, I slowly shed problems such as self-control failure and procrastination, and became known as a «good student.» I’ve found something I love to do, and every day is busy and meaningful.
In order to reach today’s state, I took too many detours, I also saw too many people, fell into the same pit with me, want to climb out, but because the strength is used in the wrong place and in vain. Even though it seems to be a small thing like the failure of the winter vacation plan, there are too many knowledge hidden behind it, which are scattered in different books and courses. People who do not have enough experience can hardly see the whole picture. As a result, they fall into the pit repeatedly.
I often wonder, if someone had told me the right way to do things, my life would have been so much better.
So the fact that I wrote so much, even if it was only useful to one reader, was worth more than 30 hours of deliberation and revision.
Finally, two more words for you:
«There are many times in life when you have to face your flaws and weaknesses, when the fact reminds you time and again that you are an imperfect person who needs to change. But human nature is lazy and fragile, and most people choose to numb themselves into short-term, immediate stimulation (online shopping, video games, overeating, social one-night stands). A few choose to change themselves, and there’s pain, and there’s relapse, and there’s success, and there’s quitting.»
«No one is born perfect. Every personality that approaches excellence is the result of repeated self-transformation. Those who do not try to change go on with their daily routines, looking at the familiar landscapes they have seen before. For those who are changing, every day is new.»
There is no shortcut on the road to change, only unremitting persistence and scientific methods, I wish you every day is different from before, every day is new, everyone encourages.