Willpower Hax #487: Execute by Default
This is a trick that I use for getting out of bed in the morning - quite literally: I count down from 10 and get out of bed after the "1".
It works because instead of deciding to get out of bed, I just have to decide to implement the plan to count down from 10 and then get out of bed. Once the plan is in motion, the final action no longer requires an effortful decision - that's the theory, anyway. And to start the plan doesn't require as much effort because I just have to think "10, 9..."
As usual with such things, there's no way to tell whether it works because it's based on any sort of realistic insight or if it works because I believe it works; and in fact this is one of those cases that blurs the boundary between the two.
The technique was originally inspired by reading some neurologist suggesting that what we have is not "free will" so much as "free won't": that is, frontal reflection is mainly good for suppressing the default mode of action, more than originating new actions.
Pondering that for a bit inspired the idea that - if the brain carries out certain plans by default - it might conserve willpower to first visualize a sequence of actions and try to 'mark' it as the default plan, and then lift the attention-of-decision that agonizes whether or not to do it, thus allowing that default to happen.
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