During the last two days of 2014, I was wondering what my new year’s resolution should be. I thought of making many resolutions like: I should read more books, blog more often, tweet more often, study academic stuff on a regular basis to avoid the eleventh hour rush, study non academic stuff to be an aficionado in the subjects I love, stop procrastinating things and blah blah blah.
But then, I realized these were the resolutions I have been making for the past 3 years. My success rate of standing up to my resolution has been little. Every year, I would be confident of succeeding for a short period of time, say, a couple of months. Something then happens to my mind and I gradually go off the track. Last year, I told about my state of mind to my friend and he replied that he had lost control of his resolution within a just a week. Hahaha. I felt a lot better!
Interestingly, the factor that should be the foundation of any resolution is something called ‘Self-Control’. You call it determination or discipline or dedication or will power. The essence is: to be able to control one’s self. If someone asks me a question ‘What is the most difficult thing in this world to do?’, I, without a second thought, would answer, controlling one’s self. If one could master this, I must say, he could win anything in his life.
When you say things like that to your friends, all that they would do is to nod at you in agreement. So much for self control, you would also be looked at like an eighteenth century philosopher. The obvious reason why they think so is that they don’t find your advice plausible for they are not yet convinced that they could get happier by having more self control.
It is of course difficult to have a good self control, because you need to sacrifice many things you ‘love’ to do in order to do the things which you ‘ought’ to do. The key is to prioritize your tasks after thoroughly weighing the pros and cons associated with a task.
Let me elaborate this with an example. Assume that your semester exams begin tomorrow and there is great Cricket match running live on TV. Before making a decision as to which task to pick: Watching the Cricket match or Studying for the exam, try to list out the pros and cons of both the tasks.
If you wish to watch the match:
Pro: Thrill, entertainment. And you get to know the vital stats right after the match. So you can have a ‘Fifth Umpire’ session with your friends tomorrow, perhaps after the exam.
Con: You lose invaluable ‘previous-night’ preparation time. So you might not answer that one question which you could have answered if you had studied the previous night. So you score less marks.
If you wish to study for the exam:
Pro: You prepare for the exam well, write it well and so you score well.
Con: You would miss cheering your favorite team and miss monitoring the over-by-over progress of the match.
What I want to highlight through this simple example is the fact that one should realize the importance of categorizing an event as an asset or a liability. As an Economist would put it, one should know the ‘opportunity cost’ of an event. The opportunity cost of an item is what you give up to get that item. Let us apply the concept of opportunity cost to our example.
There arise two consequences depending on the task you choose to do. If you choose to watch the Cricket match, you are giving up your study-time. The consequence of which is scoring less marks. On the flip side, if you choose to study for the exam, you are giving up the live cricket match, the consequence of which is missed out entertainment of the match.
Okay. We have applied the opportunity cost concept and arrived at two possible consequences. Now what? Now comes into into the picture the act of ‘Rational Thinking’. When people think rationally, they become rational people. Rational people do the best they can do, systematically and purposefully, to achieve their objectives. Basically, rational people think at the margin. So, when you apply rational thought process to our example, choosing one task between the two becomes easy.
Upon thinking rationally, you would understand that you need not miss anything important from the Cricket match, should you choose the task of studying for the exam. Though you don’t watch the live match, you can know of the vital stats of the match by watching 3 minutes of news or by taking a glance at the tomorrow’s newspaper. Even better, you can watch the highlights of the match on YouTube, perhaps after your exams. But you can never go back in time and write your exam they way you wanted to write, should you choose the task of watching the Cricket match.
Now the problem is solved, right?. In a situation where you have two tasks: ‘A’, an essential but laborious task and ‘B’, an unnecessary but entertaining task, it is a natural tendency of our mind to choose the latter task. But by applying the concepts of opportunity cost and rational thinking, you can certainly take the right decision.
The summary of my post is that Self-control is essential in behavior to achieve goals and to avoid futile actions and negative emotions. ‘Opportunity Cost’ and ‘Rational Thinking’ are two priceless tools which help you master your self-control. If you wish to lead a happier and more successful life that what it already is, you ought to start improving your self-control exercises.
Each thought is a little hammer blow on the lump of iron which our bodies are, manufacturing out of it what we want to be. -Swami Vivekananda (VII. 20)
P.S.
On the New Year’s eve, I tweeted:
“I will not make new year resolutions anymore.” My paradoxical #NewYearsResolution
For I thought, improving my self-control is a rudimentary and better resolution than anything else.
