The Strange But Effective Way I Stick to Hard Goals

For me the best habits and skills I developed happened when a burn action developed into an enjoyable action, in article's terms. For instance, I once used to work as a windsurfing instructor. On average it takes 10 lessons for a beginner to catch the wind. What I saw was that most people would quit because the first 10 lessons are all 'burn'. Imagine pulling out a heavy sail out of water for an hour straight just to fall back into the water. But, on your 10th you catch the wind and it's fun like nothing else (almost). The problem is that you don't see a gradual increase in enjoyment until you start surfing. What I'm saying is sometimes burn takes a while until you see results.

Doesn't explain how to stick to the hard goal of burning a $100 bill every time you don't go to the gym. I just know that I would stop doing this as soon as it came time to burn the money. What do I do when I don't burn the $100 bill? Burn a $100 bill?

tl;dr increase stake in the goal by committing to destroy $100 bill if you don't.

With a self-aggrandizing tone and link-bait "strange way" I found off-putting.

This idea seems more like how to stick to doing something you don't like, rather than how to stick to a goal. The seem similar but the latter implies you have a choice in how to accomplish it.

If you assume that a goal is a long term accomplishment and the strategies you use are short term, then something like this will allow you to stick to a strategy. However, done to excess would imply doing things you hate all the time, against the peril of doing things you hate more, which will make your life miserable.

This line of thinking reminds me of most school systems, which uses somewhat the same strategy, ie. do this simple task, now, or in the immediate future, to some exact specification, and if you don't do it properly you'll get a bad grade.

I find it much more helpful to tread lightly when considering doing things you don't like in order to accomplish a goal. If you can find a way where you are enjoying yourself and working towards a goal at the same time, it is much better even if it seems likely to cause you to take longer at doing it.

For instance, I often switch projects during the day, rather than work on only a single project, getting bored with it, but pushing on and hoping that I'll get through it quick and be able to go onto the next one. By switching it up, not only am I happier and actually excited to work on the stuff I do, but there is a synergistic effect, since the concepts of one of the projects often applies to the others as well.

It's a similar concept that Tim Ferriss talked about in 4 Hour Chef. You'd (with a friend for accountability) put money in an escrow account for an organization you absolutely despise (political, religious, etc). If you fail on keeping your promise (in this case going to the gym) the money would be released. I think he calls it the Stickk method (there is even a site dedicated to it: http://www.stickk.com/)

Ridiculous. The effective way to stick to hard goals is to figure out how to enjoy them. Weight lifting is difficult and strenuous, and when I first encountered it I found it ridiculous and demeaning (because I was terrible at it). I set goals, researched it, and did it long enough it became a habit I can't live without. Not doing it is more psychologically and physically painful to me than breaking my back on deadlifts at this point. Same thing took place learning physics, software development and machine learning.

I'm presently experiencing the lighting hundred dollar bills on fire every day (except they're thousand dollar bills) in that I've started a company. This is painful, and not in a motivating way. The easiest thing to do is to stop lighting money on fire and get a day job. It would be a lot easier to quit lighting money on fire and lifting weights if lighting money on fire was the only thing keeping me going to the gym.

I used to suffer from compulsions and developed a related trick to break their grip that normal willpower just couldn't provide. Sufferers will be familiar with the 'you must do X, otherwise Y might happen' state (where X is often something pointless and Y is something 'bad' - dying or similar). I found a way to extend that thought with '.. or, actually, if I do do X, Y WILL happen' - hence the best move became not to play. Now years on, this habit seems to have proven enough for my brain to 'snap out' of a compulsion and eliminate the majority of their negative impact.

Didn't read the article, but the comments here remind me of initiatives like these: http://www.pactapp.com/