Comments on: Playing with rules http://www.nehrlich.com/blog/2003/11/22/playing-with-rules/ Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:12:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || The Paradox of Self-Discipline || January || 2010 http://www.nehrlich.com/blog/2003/11/22/playing-with-rules/comment-page-1/#comment-305762 Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || The Paradox of Self-Discipline || January || 2010 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:43:06 +0000 /?p=16#comment-305762 [...] So how do we avoid this paradox? It seems to me that the bad behaviors like TV and junk food are always lurking in temptation for me, and the good behaviors like hitting the gym and writing blog posts require self-discipline. Part of it is building desired behaviors into habits that I do without questioning: successful examples of that for me include biking to work and flossing while unsuccessful ones include daily situps and pushups, hitting the gym regularly and blogging. Others have success by using a game of sorts where badges are earned for performing the desired behaviors, but I have trouble taking such games seriously. [...] [...] So how do we avoid this paradox? It seems to me that the bad behaviors like TV and junk food are always lurking in temptation for me, and the good behaviors like hitting the gym and writing blog posts require self-discipline. Part of it is building desired behaviors into habits that I do without questioning: successful examples of that for me include biking to work and flossing while unsuccessful ones include daily situps and pushups, hitting the gym regularly and blogging. Others have success by using a game of sorts where badges are earned for performing the desired behaviors, but I have trouble taking such games seriously. [...]

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