On Discipline: Fooling yourself is an important skill!

Discipline is an interesting subject. One that I find myself regularly talking about. Or discussing about./images/2012/06/derren_brown_skull.png

In the last year I lost about 20kg of body weight through a combination of diet change and exercise. This apparently give some people the impression that I am very disciplined. I’m not. I do know, however, how to make change easier to absorb. And how to inspect and adapt.

Fooling yourself is an important skill

The best ways to make sure you are able to keep discipline is to make being disciplined easy. And luckily, human beings are exceedingly good at fooling ourselves (click on the picture of Derren Brown, here, to watch a nice youtube clip demonstrating this).

For losing weight, this included:

  • Making sure that what I could eat was as least as nice to eat as what I had to stop eating (more meat, less potato chips)
  • Teaming up with my cousin to make not going to the gym not an option
  • Daily measurements of multiple metrics to get an understanding of progress, and variation
  • A very substantial reduction of insulin use, and improvement in blood sugar values with the corresponding increase in energy levels
  • Setting sensible targets that I adjusted as soon as I reached them.
  • Regular experiments to see what helped (drinking a lot of water), and what didn’t (too much exercise)

It’s just common sense. If you want change, make sure that what you’re changing to is enjoyable, and that your progress is clearly apparent. And a little peer pressure can also be useful.

Many of the practices promoted for agile processes fall in the same mould.

  • Short iterations give a clear sense of purpose for the short term, and a sense of accomplishment when completing them.
  • Visual progress, such as a scrum/task board give a direct view of progress, and the impression of things getting done (plus a little peer pressure…) when everyone on the team gets up and moves post-its a couple of times a day
  • Acceptance Test Driven development gives clear and achievable goals
  • Pair programming helps keeping focus throughout the day
  • Test Driven Development does the same, and again keeps progress visible
  • Retrospectives (and the resulting improvement experiments) give the sense of continuous improvement needed stimulate a positive feeling of support of the surrounding organisation

It might be slightly irreverent to throw all of these things together and talk about ‘fooling ourselves’. Is working in concordance with human needs ‘fooling yourself’? I don’t know, but I rather like the sound-byte:-)