What surprised me was how much power came from, “I’m unambiguously declaring my intent to not do this thing, and there’s even a bit of ceremony/higher reason.”
It rarely felt like I had to “decide” to not have sugar. It felt like that was just a thing I wasn’t doing any more. Those two things might not sound very different, but I seem to experience them completely differently. I’ve strongly updated my beliefs on the power of “just committing”.
Yeah, I went from playing 20+ hours a week of computer games to zero, with only a couple moments where some web flash game didn’t quite register as a “game” until I had already started, but then once I realized it was quick to deactivate.
Kinda freaked out actually, although wary of using this power too often.
Yeah, I think it’s an important feature of Lent that it only comes around once a year, so you can commit and enjoy the group ceremony bit of it knowing that you’re not going to be asked to do this sort of thing all the time.
Reminds me of the distinction of symmetric and asymmetric techniques (I think that’s a CFAR handle, but I don’t remember).
“Just committing” seems to be a powerful asymmetric symmetric technique. Here’s the process that I roughly follow to get utility from the technique, without “just committing” to things which are bad ideas:
Define exactly what the thing is that I’m committing to doing or not doing.
I gave up obvious sugar.
What surprised me was how much power came from, “I’m unambiguously declaring my intent to not do this thing, and there’s even a bit of ceremony/higher reason.”
It rarely felt like I had to “decide” to not have sugar. It felt like that was just a thing I wasn’t doing any more. Those two things might not sound very different, but I seem to experience them completely differently. I’ve strongly updated my beliefs on the power of “just committing”.
Yeah, I went from playing 20+ hours a week of computer games to zero, with only a couple moments where some web flash game didn’t quite register as a “game” until I had already started, but then once I realized it was quick to deactivate.
Kinda freaked out actually, although wary of using this power too often.
Yeah, I think it’s an important feature of Lent that it only comes around once a year, so you can commit and enjoy the group ceremony bit of it knowing that you’re not going to be asked to do this sort of thing all the time.
Reminds me of the distinction of symmetric and asymmetric techniques (I think that’s a CFAR handle, but I don’t remember).
“Just committing” seems to be a powerful
asymmetricsymmetric technique. Here’s the process that I roughly follow to get utility from the technique, without “just committing” to things which are bad ideas:Define exactly what the thing is that I’m committing to doing or not doing.
Make a very specific deadline for the next time this rule will be evaluated (make it a time and place where you don’t face the pressures of the decision context).
You don’t get to argue with the rule until the next deadline (unless lives are at stake)
For me, I notice that it’s very hard for me to completely relax into a hard rule unless I trust myself to reevaluate it later.
(relevant: hard rules)
I think you mean symmetric? Symmetric is the one where it doesn’t matter whether the thing you’re doing is good or bad. The handle comes from SSC.
Oops, that makes more sense.