Eliminate The Need For Willpower
Lesson 2 from: Design Systems That Fuel Your CreativitySrinivas Rao
Eliminate The Need For Willpower
Lesson 2 from: Design Systems That Fuel Your CreativitySrinivas Rao
Lessons
Class Introduction
03:04 2Eliminate The Need For Willpower
02:41 3Your Physical Space
15:37 4Understanding Tolerations
07:20 5Embracing Nature
06:52 6Your Sound Environment
08:56 7Your Tech Environment
19:35 8The 9 Environments That Make Up Your Life
07:36Attention Management
18:01 10Develop A Flow
14:20 11Deep Work Guest Interview: Cal Newport
21:31 12Habit Formation and Rituals
11:11 13Deliberate Practice Guest Interview: Anders Ericsson
14:54 14Deliberate Consumption
10:11 15Creative Collaboration
08:24 16Bring Idea To Life Guest Interview: Mars Dorian
14:59 17Embrace Community
14:46 18The Art of Being Unmistakable
25:45Lesson Info
Eliminate The Need For Willpower
So let's say that you have a willpower budget of 10 units when you start the day. Well, every decision you make costs you a unit. So, let's say that you wake up in the morning, you respond to an email, you click on a link, you decide what to wear, you decide what to eat, and you decide who you're going to respond to. You've already started the day, and out of the gate, you're hosed, because you took 10 units and you've already wasted five units on things that are fairly low value and you no longer have much left to spend on what is your most meaningful work. And the result of that is what is known as decision fatigue, which makes it more and more difficult to make decisions, it makes it more and more difficult to make high quality decisions. So there's a really interesting story in Roy Baumeister's book, Willpower, where he wrote the story of the New York governor Eliot Spitzer. Now, Eliot Spitzer built his career campaigning against prostitution. And do you know how his career ended? ...
He got caught with a prostitute. And when you think about that, you think it seems absolutely ridiculous that somebody who built their entire career campaigning against something would have that very thing be the undoing of his career. But Roy Baumeister made a really good point. He said, if you think about it, somebody like Eliot Spitzer or somebody who is in a high political office is literally making hundreds of decisions all day every single day. So by the time you get to the end of the day, the quality of your decision-making actually starts to diminish significantly. Which if you've ever been to the grocery store at the end of the day, you might've experienced this, where you've been at work all day, you've made all these important decisions, and then you fill your grocery cart full of all sorts of junk food and things you never had any intention of buying or never had any intention of eating, you've effectively experienced one of the byproducts of decision fatigue. So how do we actually deal with decision fatigue? Well, the key to dealing with decision fatigue is that you wanna basically eliminate and automate any of the decisions that you would typically make in the first part of your day. And you do that by designing environments and designing schedules, which we're gonna talk about in the next few modules. And really, when it comes down to it, if you wanna change your behavior, you have to actually start by changing your environment and automating many of those decisions, like what to eat, what to wear. What you're going to do in the first part of the morning, really, is a way of designing an environment and eliminating decisions that allow you to preserve willpower so that you now have your willpower for your highest value work, and you're able to preserve your cognitive bandwidth.
Ratings and Reviews
Melissa Dinwiddie
What a fabulous class! Srini covered one actionable idea after another that can be implemented immediately to fuel creativity right out of the gate. And the beautiful thing is that each tactic builds on all the others, so every little step you take will improve your overall systems. I loved the stories from his podcast and the guest speakers, too. My only complaint was that some of the slides had a lot of text on them -- too much to read. Other than that, it was well-organized, thoughtful, and super useful. I've already recommended it to several people in passing.
Kathryn Kilner
This is a great course for anyone pursuing creative work. It is easy to get distracted in the modern world and Srinivas provides practical insights and tested systems for empowering creatives to focus and get more done. Although I've read a lot about how to optimize my habits, I was challenged in this course to think differently about how I structure my time and my work space. The changes I've made have helped me be more productive.
a Creativelive Student
I've watched many CreativeLive courses. While I find many interesting, there are only a handful that capture my attention from beginning to end. This was one of those. The speaker mentioned countless gems that were applicable not only to creativity and productivity, but to how one lives daily life. There were multiple "deep thoughts" and several practical ways to alter one's environments (including physical and mental) in order to enhance productivity and general well-being. I've already implemented a few suggestions, and am anxious to revisit my notes on this course repeatedly.
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