Why principles are principal to progress in pursuits
#116 - a booster shot of Cambridge motivation
Hi there,
First week back and the focus is straight back on those impending exams, nudging1 closer by the day. After enjoying a bonus day off on Monday as well as a highly productive Saturday, we go again this week, with an eye towards upping the revision times…whilst performing in 2 concerts (my last at Vesey 😔) at school.
In following with advice that has now been hammered into me of prioritising and in the post below, I’ve also hit ‘Pause’ or the ‘Cancel’ button on a few School Captain things this week, which I’ll write about in due course - difficult but ultimately for the right reasons.
Highlight of the week: visiting Sidney Sussex today, for the first proper time. I very briefly nipped in and out when I went round all the colleges on July’s open day. The sunshine probably helped in an overall relaxed and motivating day, meeting fellow students and visualising being there in 6 months (hopefully)
Say hello again to my Economics textbooks, this time we’re focusing on the behavioural economics concepts of… rules of thumb and bounded self-control.
As humans, we are pattern-seeking and routine-loving creatures. We like familiarity - that’s why change can be so anxiety-inducing - and find following a plan or structure helpful.
This is where ‘rules of thumb’ come into their own. Ideas like ‘five a day’, ‘10000 steps a day’, ‘2 litres of water a day’ or ‘a gram of protein per pound’ are prevalent because they are easily memorable principles that we can just grab when we need to make a decision - to use a concept of the late Daniel Kahneman, System 1 thinking.
I’ve found one to be surprisingly useful in the past 3 months - how I’m going to split my A-level revision. With the scarce resources of time, focus and attention, whilst it is tempting to churn through another paper of normal Maths and not learn much new, I need to be clever and prioritise what needs prioritising. Taking a hint from the famous 80/20 rule (or the Pareto principle), we should aim to spend time on our weaker subjects and weaker areas.
To that end, I’ve allotted the ratio of 15:20:30:35 for Maths, Economics, Further Maths and Physics and it has been such a useful principle to work towards. It takes the decision of “what should I be studying next?” out of my hands, which saves a lot of mental energy to make choices and wrestle with my willpower. For example, with about an hour of revision time available before my blog post after today’s trip, I chose Economics but it was the furthest away from the 20% goal.
This principle also means that I know that I’m giving the subjects the right amount of time and also that “once I get through this tough Physics paper, I can do some Further Maths (which I enjoy more, obviously) as a reward”. Overall, it allows for self-discipline over procrastination - I know I need to be studying X subject next, it’s the ‘rules’. Throw some accountability into the pot, and you might be onto a winner.
Along with the rules of thumb examples above, others I find useful are
“practise my musical instruments at least thrice a week, and definitely the day before my lesson”
“reply to messages, check emails and news on the bus journey in the morning, but then put it away when you’re waiting outside the gate - talk to human beings” and
“Sunday nights mean The Sun’s Out and then the Apprentice2 with ironing, after watching the first half of Dragons Den on Friday and 2nd on Saturday
Others you might like to explore are the 2 Minute Rule, the 5x5 rule, the Pomodoro technique or the 80-20 rule. The best has to be Adi’s Apple Pie Rule.
Writing about this today reminds me of a post by Julian Shapiro, in which he calls them “Memorised Rules”. Here’s a bit from his wonderful post linked above.
Here's an example of advice I memorized from Sahil Lavingia: "You can be twice as rich by deciding you need half as much." I call this type of advice a Memorized Rule: a shortcode lodged in my brain for making decisions on a daily basis.
By committing six Memorized Rules to memory, something critical happens: You remove the friction that makes advice unlikely to be acted on. You no longer have to look at your notes. The most profound realization, however, is that adding a new Memorized Rule redefines your identity. These principles become your intuitions for what the right thing to do is.
Having read back now, the bit that is most pertinent to our post:
Memorized Rules give you a better justification for your behaviors—and they help you feel at peace with your choices. You know why you're doing what you're doing. You're not purely YOLO'ing.
As discussed, it removes the need to think. In the words of Nike, you just do it. Setting rules for yourself can seem like being strict unnecessarily. In fact, they are forms of discipline that are pathways to freedom - it’s one less thing to worry about, giving you the space and time to think about and solve more important issues that are worth our precious resources. What rules will you set yourself to propel you to success on autopilot?
Podcast of the week🎙️
Art of Manliness: How to Create a Distraction-Free Phone
A pretty radical approach in some of the ideas, others are quite reasonable actually. We can all spend a little less time with our phones.
Thing I’m grateful for this week 🙏
The staff and students at the college today - all very welcoming and friendly, stressing the value they put on ‘being human’ and not uptight like some colleges are.
Quote of the week 💬
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants - Isaac Newton
Another rule I have failed to set myself is to use the 3 study periods I get every 2 weeks properly. Hoping to do better tomorrow…
Adi
Wonder if any economists pick the pun up
No spoilers please! I’m behind 😥