I've called this the snowball of success where you make small, disciplined actions that you call "success" (_setting an alarm_) than then "snowballs" into larger "successes" (_cleaning your room_). The opposite is true as well, in my experience: if you fail to make the _small_ actions, it will "snowball" into you not making the larger actions throughout the day.
I've been calling these the "virtue cycle" and the "viscous cycle" - both being behaviors that reinforce "similar behaviors". Most people are familiar with the term "viscous cycle" and the idea of a downward spiral of reinforcing behaviors, but that same interlocking mechanism works in reverse too. One can generate an expanding series of positive behaviors to eliminate bad habits, promote positive behaviors and instill a more positive general attitude simply by proving to yourself that you are indeed in control of yourself.
Really good way to say it! In my experience, there's something to do with starting a "flow" that I as a human get stuck into. If the "flow" is doing things that I don't want to do but I _need_ to do for whatever reason (_because I told myself I would, because it will help my future self, etc_), I will be in a "flow" state of doing those things, causing the "snowball" effect or the "virtue/viscous cycle" as you describe it.
As someone posted above, there are limits to this but I wonder if there are systems or ways that we could _stretch_ those limits, possibly by making the _hard_ things not a choice and to be in this _flow_ state without needing to actively expend energy to be in it. Something like a muscle where the more you stretch it past its ability, the stronger it gets (_within reason_). As an example, when I started running, I could hardly do 1 minute without heavy breathing and now am able to run half marathons that, while tired at the end, are completely within my wheelhouse without feeling almost dead.
When I started running, I couldn't make it three city blocks without an asthma attack and cramps. Now I do 3-5 miles of hill running per day in the country summer sun. (Tennessee)
Over the past few years I have been developing a system based on incremental flow, as you mentioned. You can absolutely use small habits, and also leverage the Flow State proper in order to train. Eventually you are able to graduate to multiple spinning plates. (to reference your other comment). As you say the greatest danger is dropping all the plates in the presence of a minor stressor since you are operating at your current capacity.
What you end up needing to train is getting back on the horse. It's similar to the notion of "Returning to Breath" in a meditation practice. I have a leveling system and an economy built in, so that I gamify the practice of picking up the pieces. I'm currently working on smoothing out the difficulty curve, comparing several game mechanics like leveling down, adaptive difficulty, and triggering special modes. The idea is to have some sort of a pressure relief valve built into your life.
Fellow Volunteer here so totally empathize with the summer sun making the runs even harder!
I used to be far more systematic with my life many moons ago, in my late teens and early 20s. That helped immensely and I credit a lot of my personal growth towards that.
I don't think this is the best forum to get into the weeds about it, especially since everyone is different and YMMV. The root of the systems were to 1) create a singular, specific goal that was _the most important thing to me_. More important than pride, than sleep, than food. That's not healthy and only works so far so I then added 2) retrospectives every week on how I'm doing in relation to that goal. Are the steps I'm taking actually helping me reach that goal? Is that goal actually more important than anything else? Is that goal the actual goal I'm after or was it just a flag bearer for what I think the goal might look like? Being solely focused on one thing that influences everything and iterating on that goal are the two "systems" I now use in a general sense.
As an example, I wanted to get into software but dropped out of school and worked manual labor jobs. I decided that my only goal in life was to become a software engineer so I spent all my free time, all of my energy, all of _me_ in order to reach that goal. That came at the cost of the manual labor jobs which meant I had to couch surf for a few months/a year and get food from my friends so I could literally focus my whole life around that goal. I was blessed to have that support network, privileged one might say these days. I'm not saying that's a good choice and I doubt most people have the support network of friends with couches that they'll offer you. But I do think the _severity_ of my desire for that goal was the root cause of success.
Having a singular, focused, concrete goal is the biggest takeaway from all the other "systems" I used. Happy to chat more if that's your jam!
US Marines are trained to make their bed with military speed and precision as the first thing they do each morning. If one can't do that little thing how can one accomplish everything else with military speed and precision for the rest of the day?
It makes more sense if you think of it in terms of identifying risk.
Rather than, "a marine who doesn't make their bed with precision is incapable of precision," think of it as "a marine who doesn't make their bed with precision is experiencing problems that could prevent them from acting with precision in more important situations."
That does sound plausible but I do know. When I come across suchlike justifications for petty rules, I rather tend to feel there's some kind of petty control frreakery behind it. Then again I have no military experience.
Requiring them to make their beds doesn't strike me as unreasonably petty, and to the extent that they do make soldier follow petty rules it's often done with a purpose, usually to install obedience. Not that there aren't lots of dicks in the military, but you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the way organisations do things because often there's a good reason.
Eg. tidiness slips in small actions, accumulating, then at some point I just clean it all up as one act and I may-or-may-not break that act into smaller bites (that probably just make sense from an order of operations/batching standpoint.)
Also, generally for things like tidiness, I keep a couple rules. Pick up daily before bed. This covers 80%. But sometimes I'll let that go or only clean halfway, then I must catchup on Sunday. But, cleaning is definitely a full mode I put myself into. If I started doing small unrelated tasks hoping it prodded me to get up and clean, I never would.
That's true, to a degree. At some point you will hit both a time delay barrier inhibiting the training...
Having to learn delayed gratification is hard for an AI and hard for humans.
And then you'll hit the resource barrier. There's only so much and so hard any one person can control and influence with any given means.
100% agree here. In my younger days, I used to think that "willpower" was an unlimited resource but totally agree that there _are active limits_ to it and even more so you _cannot change things outside your control_. Someone once said that humans can only handle so many things at once and the moment you give them even one more thing than they can handle, all of the spinning plates come crashing down. I think that when we focus on learning to spin just one plate, that can snowball into learning to spin many plates, even though we still can only spin 10 plates at a time before all hell breaks loose.
Neither did it for me. What has worked somewhat, is shifting the mindset. I could make my bed everyday and I never felt more productive for achieving something small first. However, when I set my mind to become a more tidy person overall, putting things in the right place, stops being as cumbersome.
