This sounds like a recipe for almost manic-depressive-like oscillations in behavior. What damps the cycle?
Maybe nothing. PCT suggests, however, that if your behavior leads to sustained chronic intrinsic error (e.g., you get stressed enough), your brain will begin "reorganize" (learn) to change your behavior (or more precisely, change the control structure generating the behavior) until the error goes away.
Unfortunately, because automatic reorganization is a fairly "dumb" optimization process (Powers proposes a simple pattern of "mutate and test until errors stop"), it is subject to some of the same biases as evolution. That is, the simplest solution will be chosen, not the most elegant one.
So, instead of elegantly negotiating suitable amounts of time for each goal, or finding a clever way to serve both at the same time, the simplest possible mutation that will fix the error in a case of conflict is for you to give up one of your goals.
Over time, this will then lead you to tend to give up more quickly, as your brain learns that changing your mind ("oh, it's not really that important") is a good way to stop the errors.
PCT proposes that intrinsic error (errors in perceptual signals whose definitions are hardwired by evolution) triggers a neural reorganization process, in which the brain tries out different reference levels and changes to inter-controller connections, for controllers involved in the error... that is, a mechanism for driving "trial and error" learning in the general case, but which can operate autonomously from conscious control. Powers proposes that this process can actually be quite random and still work, since the overall process has a selection step, driven by the overall levels of intrinsic error or conflict. IOW, learning is a control-driven optimization process using a meta-perception of errors in the primary control systems as its fitness function for optimizing.
Of course, this process can also be directed consciously, by thinking things through -- and Powers suggests that directing the learning process is in fact the original function of consciousness, since the raw control structures themselves aren't much more than a huge network of glorified thermostats.
So the main addition I've made to my training methods since grasping PCT, was to devise an algorithm for mapping out all the relevant control structure (using methods I already had for identifying subconscious predictive beliefs) in order to be able to get the big picture of the control conflicts in place before attempting to make changes, using the other methods I already had.
I already knew that subconscious predictive beliefs ("if this, then that") played a major role in behavior, but PCT helped me realize that the "if" and "then" clauses actually refer to the controlled perceptual variables that each belief links.
That is, memory (belief) is used to store value-change relationships between controlled variables, whether they're as trivial as "if I fall, I'll hurt myself" or as abstract and Bruce-ish as, "if I go after what I want, I'm selfish and unlovable".
So, by examining beliefs, one finds the linked variables (e.g. "fall" and "hurt"). And by hypothesizing changes to each newly-discovered variable, one finds relevant new beliefs. This process can then be iterated to draw a multi-level map of the salient portions of the control structure affecting one's behavior in a particular area.
At this point, the work is still at a very early stage, but results so far seem promising. To be really sure of a substantial improvement, though, it's going to take a few more weeks: in both my own case and in the case of clients trying the new method, the relevant behaviors have a cycle time of up to a month.
There is a flipside to the trivial inconvenience: the trivial impetus. This is the objectively inconsequential factor that gets you off your rear and doing something you probably would have left undone. It doesn't have to be a major, crippling akrasia issue. I'm not talking so much about finishing your dissertation or remodeling your house, although a trivial impetus could probably get you to make some progress on either. I'm talking about little things that make your life a little better, like trying a new food or permitting a friend to drag you along to a gathering of people and pizza.
An illustrative anecdote: the first time I tried guacamole, I was out with my family at a restaurant and my parents decided to order some. The waiter came out with a little cart with decorative little bowls full of ingredients and a couple of avocados, and proceeded to make guacamole right there with all the finesse of one of those chefs at a hibachi restaurant. He then presented us with the dish of guacamole and a basket of chips.
If my prior reasons for avoiding guacamole had been related to concerns about its freshness or possible arsenic content, this would have been a non-trivial reason to try the new food, but they weren't - I was just twelve, and it was green goop. But on that day, it was green goop that someone had made right in front of me like performance art! I simply had to have some! It was delicious. I have enjoyed guacamole ever since. I would almost certainly have taken years longer to try it, if ever I did, had it not been for that restaurant's habit of making each batch of guacamole fresh in front of the customer.
Not all trivial impetuses have to be so random and fortuitous. Just as you can arrange trivial inconveniences to stand between you and things you should not be doing, you can often arrange trivial impetuses to push you towards things you should be doing. For instance, I often get my friends to instruct me to do things when I'm having trouble getting moving: sometimes all it takes to get me to stop dithering and start making the pasta salad I agreed to bring to a party is someone agreeing when I say, "I should make pasta salad now". Or "I should go to bed now", or "I should probably pay that bill now".
Does anyone have any other ideas for trivial impetuses that could be helpful in fighting small-scale akrasia (or large-scale)?