Shane Parrish

Just have a drink tonight.

Just have some dessert tonight.

You can go do that tomorrow.

But tonight you deserve a break.

And that's often how they phrase it.

You deserve a break.

And you'll believe them and you'll do it.

And that takes you farther away from the place that you've identified you wanted to go.

But if you have a rule, and I got this from Daniel Kahneman when I was talking to him in New York in his house.

If you have a rule, you don't argue with it.

But not only do you not argue with it, other people don't argue with it.

So our tendency to follow rules can work for us and create this positive inertia where we just create a rule.

We pre-decide before we're in the moment.

My rule is I don't eat dessert.

You don't argue with yourself.

You're not negotiating with yourself.

You've pre-decided before you're in the situation what's going to happen.

And that negotiation with yourself is super important because that negotiation is where you start telling yourself stories.

I'll just opt out this one time.

The contract is done, man.