Mental reservoir of strength

Challenge: Boosting my willpower

To get something done in life or to start a new habit you need either of two things - motivation or willpower. If the task at hand is something you truly enjoy, finding motivation is easy. But in other cases like going to the gym, the majority of us have to rely on will power and discipline. Willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. It is what helps us forge new habits and what keeps us on a chosen course no matter how difficult the road gets. It is what helps us resist distraction and lead a productive lifestyle. This lack of willpower affects our life much more than we realize at the moment. We would watch movies instead of studying before exams or find excuses for not going for a jog. So to work towards achieving our goals in life we need to find ways to improve our willpower to actually stick to those goals.

Proposed Solution: Subdivide the tasks in smaller chunks 

Research has shown that willpower is not something which we can not train for. It is like a muscle, the more we work on it the stronger it gets. To start with, willpower can be trained with smaller tasks or sub-tasks, like you start weight training with light weights first, and from there on it becomes a self-feedback loop as keep growing your willpower to exercise your willpower muscles even more.
Since the human brain prefers instant gratification over delayed rewards, we can subdivide a task into sub-tasks and once a sub-task is completed, the brain gets the reward. For example, suppose you want to form the habit of regularly going to the gym. The initial 2-3 days will be easy, but later you will start to slack off because there is no immediate reward perceived by the brain. The reward lies months ahead in the future when you finally get fit. So we should focus on going to the gym one day at a time and reward ourself at the end of the day for working out that day. The reward can be as simple as striking the day off on the calendar at your wall which is visible to everyone. The gratification from this seemingly small achievement can keep us going.

Storyboard:

Before

After

Looks like prototype

A simple calendar can be used for this solution.

One day low-cost experiment

Hypothesis

Breaking down a goal into smaller sub-goals and assigning some rewards for all the sub-goals achieved can provide the will power to keep continuing towards the main goal.

Experiment

For one day experiment, I will choose the task of finishing up an assignment as part of any course which is due a few days later. So that I don't HAVE to finish the assignment on that day, but I want to. I will then breakdown the assignment into sub-tasks of finishing up different sections in the assignment. After finishing each section, I will reward myself with watching a short stand up comedy video which I enjoy.

Cost of the experiment

Practically there is zero cost for this experiment as we already have plenty of assignments to work on as part of the MBA course curriculum and internet & electricity are not charged to IIMB students on a pro-rata basis.

Success Criteria

If I am able to finish up the assignment on the same day, I will personally consider this experiment to be successful, as I can almost never get myself to finish course assignments well before the due date.