Parent Post
Clayton Christensen
It’s easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time.
If you haven’t made
If you haven’t made a decision, but are only partially committed, then you don’t know what the outcome will be in future scenarios.
Not knowing the outcome of your behavior can create problems in your confidence and identity.
Make a decision and
Make a decision and move forward with it 100 percent.
Each time you follow through, your confidence increases, thus further increasing your motivation and resolve to continue.
Your identity becomes clearer and resonates with the future self you strive to become. Self-signaling is the notion that you judge yourself based on your actions.
Acting according to desired goals will help you perceive yourself as that type of person.
If you’re 98 percent
If you’re 98 percent committed to a goal or principle, you’ll lack the ability to adequately predict your behavior.
You’ll enter situations where you won’t know what the outcome will be.
You’ll deal with decision fatigue in the heat of unideal decision-making situations, such as when you’re being offered your favorite dessert.
If you find yourself
If you find yourself in the heat of the moment and struggle with your resolve, there are two helpful strategies:
- Implementation intentions. Create a pre-planned response when you’re triggered to do something you don’t want to do. You create an “if-then” scenario, such as, “When Steve offers me a soda, I will tell him I’m on a diet.”
- Future self-concept. Rather than deciding based on what your current self wants, you could ask yourself what your future self would want you to do.
Motivation requires simplicity. Complexity
Motivation requires simplicity. Complexity kills motivation.
You want to make a decision, have a clear outcome, and carve a clear path to getting what you want.
As you make progress, you’ll begin to develop efficacy or confidence that you can complete. These notions of motivation come from Expectancy Theory.
Instead of dealing with
Instead of dealing with decision fatigue at 98 percent, you could make a decision at 100 percent. This could solve a lot of willpower problems.
By committing 100 percent to something, you can predict your behavior in future situations.
You can know that the decision has already been made regardless of what is being offered. Therefore, you won’t have to deal with the back-and-forth struggle of decision fatigue.
