I'd like to draw your attention to a really smart comment made on the recent Opportunity Cost post by Random --
I have three fundamentals in life and I know the exact success blueprint for each of them. 1. Get and stay lean. Success blueprint: paleo+IF diet, NEPA cardio every day (bike to/from work), 3-4 vigorous martial arts and/or barbell sessions every week, track weight. 2. Attain financial independence at an early age. Ie be able to live a somewhat frugal but still comfortable life indefinitely without having to work. Success blueprint: work full time as highly paid IT consultant, test software product (SaaS) ideas in spare time, pay off debts, invest in hedge funds with good risk/reward ratio, train myself to resist consumerism using good design patterns and social support (ie the whole minimalist movement and the ERE folks). And last but not least: get enough SLEEP that I can sustain all of this without having a nervous breakdown. 3. Enjoy life now AND in retrospect. Success blueprint: don't put things off, generate good experiences for memory bank (and record them so sneaky brain can't deny them later), reduce general anxiety by cutting down stimulants and dealing with neuroses/phobias in a sane way, increase hedonic sensitivity by meditation and having feeling good as a priority in life.
If that was the whole comment, it'd be pretty sharp and smart by itself. But Random goes on --
That's it. If I only do those things in the coming year it will be my best year ever. 2013 was my best year ever, largely due to being forced by work and other lifestyle factors to only focus on essentials.I still have a huge problem with chasing non-fundamentals, though. I believe the reason is that I'm wired for novelty-seeking. Novelty-seeking makes me disparage common sense and tried & true success patterns. Novelty seeking makes me yearn for smart fixes and cool knowledge. Novelty seeking makes me bored with being on the right track and slowly-but-surely inching toward victory. Novelty seeking makes me tinker all the time with my schemes and goal. Novelty-seeking makes resent having to do mundane self-improvement. Novelty-seeking makes me stay up late reading blogs and ordering esoteric supplements and buying into the latest lifestyle design fad.
This is the part of the comment that takes the insight to the next level.
I think about this a lot. I'm obviously wired for novelty seeking as well. Realizing this took a while, and I personally went through some interesting stages with it. At first I disliked the idea and tried to regiment myself heavily, with greater or lesser success. Over time, I came to terms with it and realized I could use it to grow my skills peripherally if I could harness and channel it, instead of letting it take over more well-established successful patterns.
Random continues with some practical guidelines and slogans --*As you say, it's easy to realize intellectually the value of fundamentals and the bad trade-off of giving in to novelty-seeking. I find it's a must to frame the trade-off in emotional terms. Here a few ways I'm doing it:*Slogan: Smart people should be winning at life. Do what it takes to win.*Slogan: Humans are not automatically strategic. Be superior by being an agent.*Slogan: you are committing a crime against your (future) self by not focusing on essentials.*Visualization: imagine myself 5 years ago, and how I could have acted much, much better by focusing on fundamentals. Resolve not to have the same thought again, 5 years from now.*Visualization: imagine bragging about my achievements to friends ,family, co-workers. I can only do that if I focus on fundamentals, the esoteric side-shows are generally not brag-worthy to ordinary folks.*Visualization: wading through a bunch of boring stuff in order to win is not something to lament. It's what separates you from most everyone else.*Reminder: being smart doesn't count for jack shit unless you consistently act on it. Being smart and acting smart consistently is the hallmark of high human performance. And novelty-seeking is not smart.*Reminder: what I am doing is building a platform and removing my main cognitive drains. Once I am lean and muscular enough, am financially independent, and truly enjoy life, I will have VASTLY more time and energy to do other things.*Reminder: remember what you have to show for all that esoteric goose-chasing: almost nothing. I can't point to any underground supplement or weird self-help technique that actually gave me a worthwhile advantage that matches the time, cognitive load, and money spent pursuing it.*Reminder: look at friends who are currently going through the "chase 100 esoteric self help tactics" phase and whom you consider to be ineffective jokers who should just focus. Do you want to be like that?*Visualization: on the value of money: spending an extra 1000 bucks on a laptop doesn't just mean I lose that 1000 bucks now. That 1000 bucks could have sat in a hedge fund for 5-10 years and doubled, and then it could have provided me with recurring income for the rest of my life. The cheaper laptop would be almost as good for my daily use, anyway.*Budgeting: realizing that I have a need for novelty-seeking but seeing it as part of my entertainment budget (with regards to time and money spent). It's also easier to close down 100 self-help tabs in Chrome if you know it's just entertainment, not something you MUST read.
Really just an incredibly excellent comment here -- good practical high-level template, good recognition of potential obstacle, and good guidelines and and individual pieces of the puzzle to help reach that.
I'm grateful we have such smart readers here -- with my schedule, I don't always respond to every comment these days, but I read all of them, and this one was a masterpiece.