Michael Thelen

How honest should you really be when you're writing?

I mean, don't we all have that false presenter's voice that kind of creeps in slowly until it's masking your true inside-thoughts the way a news anchors plastic-veneer corporate-speak unconsciously seeks to optimize itself inside you for maximum acceptability and minimal vulnerability? Where is the line, on one hand, between self-absorbed inner monologue overshare and simply falsifying your own thought process to put on performatic show for the audience on the other hand?

I actually don't know.

But these questions help:

• In person are you overly assertive or overly agreeable? If you're agreeable in person, you're much more likely to struggle revealing what you actually think because you're used to trying to match your speech to the other person's feelings.

• Can you anticipate which points people might love (or resent?) If so it becomes easier to fall into defensiveness or audience capture where you're unconsciously seeking the choir to which you can preach.

• Is what you write inherently true to you, or is the audience your test? It's helpful to throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it's done, but if you're testing your ideas that way with your audience, be wary you might be drawn more to what "they" think, than what you believe.

This morning, 97 minutes after I meant to check the weather, I finally closed Twitter.

The feeling is like stepping out of a club into the cool 3:00am night air and realizing your body is still vibrating from the chest pounding music. Your head spins a little, and you're a little out of breathe as your heart races. The more you scroll, the faster your craving pace becomes.

But faster your scroll, the less satisfied you feel.

Just stop. All of it. Pause. Is the room moving? Can you be still?

Imagine a dark cozy room with heavy silent drapes, the deep burgundy felt ones you'd find in a mansion's oak wooded library.

One candle's flame atop a desk wobbles like a slow Hawaiian bobble-head in the stillness. It's light barely reaches the walls but spotlights a person sized bubble of space around it on the big desk. There's a book beneath the flame-light open to the first page.

Can you resist wanting to have a seat and read?

Interest and attention pours out of the human spirit when it's not drugged with endless digital media like a circus animal abused and prodded to keep the bright lights and music of the "show-that-must-go-on," spinning.

Less is more. One candle lights more curiosity than a hundred flames. Try it.

Hold the warmth of one candle flame between softly open hands and ask yourself if you'd find more satisfaction beneath all the bright lights and flashing screens of Time Square.

Should you keep scrolling? Is your satisfaction that way...?

I know all the excuses well. If they had a punch card that got a hole punch each time I used them, there'd be no card left:

• I'm not feelin' it today.

• If I start with a bad attitude, I might lose interest in the whole thing.

• If I do an awful job NOW, it'll only be harder to come back to later.

• I'll feel way more into it tomorrow.

Rationalizing excuses are just fear masquerading as wisdom.

They often require as much of an emotional hammer as logical finesse as an antidote to their deception.

Action Can Generate Motivation

Five minutes into a run you didn't want to go on, or three sentences into a draft you didn't want to start, you'll meet a secret truth of the universe hidden in plain sight: desire often follows instead of precedes action.

It's Easier to Actually Start Than Just Imagine Starting

Imagination takes energy! And it takes more mental energy to imagine your whole wardrobe, imagine your whole weekend, imagine what you should pack from your whole wardrobe to prepare for the weekend than to just get a suitcase out and start putting some clothes in it.

You Only Have To Put-Your-Face-In-It!

Ask yourself, do you really feel like reading that novel right now? The story's vague after abandoning the book 2 weeks ago, it's kind of a big, "meh." But, what happens if you just opened the book and read ONE PAGE? Brain circuits don't wake up til you bring your senses to it. So put your face in the problem and watch how much easier it becomes.

Consequences Build More Skill Than Fears

The musician who plays off notes when they're tired finds their tune much quicker than the perfect practioner who only plucks pleasant notes on peachy afternoons. The consequences of making mistakes will actually make you grow. But the consequence of avoiding fear is permanently stunted growth.

A whirl-wind of challenges knocked me (way!) off my diet, broke my writing streak, and threw me off my gym routine. But I couldn't care less.

Because as much as I LOVE chasing the thrill of keeping a streak going, I've decided to focus on what really drives long term change: Achieving Habit Resilience.

The key to driving progress is consistency over time. The driver of consistency is creating habit RESILIENCE.

Context Independence is Key

If you only order a salad because your co-workers always go to the same salad place, how healthy do you eat on a road-trip? By forcing yourself to fulfill your habit in the face of new challenges you increase your habit's stickiness even when the context you're used to disappears.

Streaks Are Brittle

I used to bike EVERY DAY when I bike-commuted to work. But, because I never had to struggle to fit cycling into my habits when it was INCONVENIENT, once I moved beyond cycling commute range I discovered I had zero habit RESILIENCE. Most of us won't hit 1,000 days straight of anything - so being able to start again differentiates the amateur from the pro.

Less Resistance, Less Learning

Like an electric powered bicycle, a streak helps you get further with less effort and take advantage of momentum. Great! When you need a boost.. But stopping and going is literally what builds strength.

If you feel unmotivated to move towards your goals, you have a dopamine problem. Period.

A mouse with no dopamine will still eat (or mate!) if his face is literally drooped into the food bowl. BUT, if deprived of dopamine, he will not move even one single body-length to go get food (and avoid starvation).

If you're failing to feel motivated, there are only five ways to intervene (behaviorally) to fix your dopamine driven motivation system.

1. Vision: Invest in wanting it

Pioneers wagon'd across inhospitable land for 6 months facing death and starvation to reach "streets paved with gold" in the West. McDonalds ads make you visualize slo-mo close-up cheesy melted goodness and laughing with friends.

Have you invested in your fantasy at even 1/10th that intensity to cement your desire for it?

2. Milestones: Create undeniable proof

Waking up and wagoning across a continent day-after-endless-day must feel like an eternal purgatory. But, crossing the Mississippi means you're half way.

Do you want to get fit, or "check in at the gym 30 days in a row?"

3. Progress: See the it coming closer

Dopamine mediates motivation to make sure the amount of effort you expend is "worth it" based on how much progress your brain perceives.

Do you have a way to see yourself moving towards the horizon? Or are you watching your feet?

4. Encouragement: Link action to identity

You can't wait to arrive to the other shore to tell yourself you've done a good job. There's too many reasons to be discouraged along the way.

Do you remind yourself while you walk, "this step, is a step towards progress. Good job!"

5. Celebration: Make action worth it

The brain produces drive to pursue behaviors that have been rewarded in the past.

Do you celebrate a good day's effort and small victories?

A soft yelp is heard as an electric shock runs through floor of the dog's cage.

Yet for some reason, although the walls are barely higher than its head and there's no top, an easily escapable situation, the dog just whimpers and lays down. This isn't his normal behavior. This dog used to try to escape before it learned that its efforts were futile.

This is happening to humans everyday.

Learned Helplessness: When forces outside your control repeatedly force you into suffering DESPITE your best efforts, the mind can give up.

It's a belief, that's so deep that it happens to DOGS, that says, "even if I try it doesn't matter. Something will go wrong. Something always goes wrong."

This Achilles' heel of the human mind's motivational system is viciously resistant, but has a path out.

1) Teach your brain that you can WIN

Define small battles.

You must upset the brain's learned "lesson" that you lose each battle you fight. Can you wake up on-time 10 days in a row? Run/walk ANY distance 7-days straight? Choose a target small enough that with effort you can CRUSH it.

2) Show your brain that you can GROW

Measure otherwise invisible progress.

When your brain doesn't believe progress is possible for you, anything you can't do NOW feels impossible FOREVER. Go walk around the block and count how many laps before you want to quit. Promise after 7 days of daily mini-walks, you'll do another test. FIND GROWTH.

3) Map Out an An Upward Spiral

Avoid reaching for any big leaps.

Imagine you're at the bottom of a dome-shaped mud hole in the ground. If you run straight up the wall you slide backwards more disappointed. But if you can run up the walls at low-slanted angles you can auger yourself upward.

The key is slow progress, but every step upwards.

Every hundred-billion dollar internet algorithm is in an arms race to harvest your attention.

They use random intermittent reward, social threat insinuations, and every imaginable attention hack to dial in your dopamine (craving), epinephrine (alertness), and acetylcholine (focus).

To rest some control back from the ubiquitous digital addiction, you should use the 85% rule to make YOUR aims for your attention as salient as possible.

The brain's neuroplastic potential is maximized when the FAILURE rate for a given skilled task is approximately 15%

1. The 85% Rule To Maximize Learning

To learn is to change the brain.

To maximize neuroplasticity, your brain requires three neurotransmitters to spike simultaneously while you're engaged in the skill: Dopamine as a reward for progress, Epinephrine as the brain's adrenaline because you're alert, and Acetylcholine because you're paying very close attention to that task.

That magic mixture of reward, difficulty and the resultant intense focus it requires is achieved when you challenge yourself that you're 85% successful when you're trying your hardest.

So whether it's how to sink a free-throw, or understanding crypto, choose learning materials or methods that enable a sense of 85% mastery and 15% out of your element.

2. The 85% Rule to Maximize Goal Progress

Want to REVOLUTIONIZE the world in [your fantasy here]?

That'd get your motivation pumping, right? Or maybe if you could have easy goals you'd pick up steam! Wake up, drink glass of water, and take shower, boom! You're on a role!

Turns out the same Goldilocks rule applies.

If you have the flu, your normal daily todo list is TOO ambitious to motivate you to get out of bed. On the other hand, if you regularly finish 100% of your goals, you're hiding from your true potential.

Use the power of uncertainty to challenge your brain without overwhelming it.

I know, you do it too. When somebody shows you a picture of their little wrinkled dough-ball of a baby you acquiesce to the urge and feign with your whole body that you're overcome by their cuteness.

But why??

Because deep down we all inherently know the terror somebody would face if everyone looked at their baby - and thought it was a hideous ugly creature.

That baby comes to represents you, and if it's ugly - everybody might start to conspire to kick you out of the tribe. Our acceptance hinges on them finding our baby cute!

And I've noticed every time I start procrastinating I've fallen for the same fear - this thing I'm about to do represents my inherent worth, if it sucks it means I suck.

• I don't feel like cleaning my room (means: If I do a half-ass job, I'm a slob)

• I don't feel like going for a run (means: If I get tired halfway, I'm a wimp)

• I don't feel like replying to that email (means: If I can't decide what to say, I'm an idiot)

Until it gets to be too much. And I reach a breaking point. Enough!

Cue Johnny Cash , "I'm gonna break! I'm gonna break my! Gonna break my rusty cage and run!"

And that's when realize the punchline. If I had a really ugly bulldog with slobbery crooked teeth and a snortling waddling walk - I'd find it absolutely hilarious. And I'd love the gremlin even more.

But you? Could you love your ugly infant the same way? Could you love your lazily made bed, your half-ass run, and imperfectly worded email just for existing and not for representing the ideal you?

Just call them ugly, have a laugh, and enjoy being fugly.

Ever catch yourself dreaming of simpler times? When it'd didn't matter if a lumberjack had a hangover or felt emotionally flat after a bad night's sleep - the wood either got chopped or it didn't? (So he just did it btw)

It seems so beautiful. And simple. And natural!

In my nostalgic pining I often find myself lamenting a small truth - my frame of mind massively affects the quality of my work and my ability to do it - and then letting that truth collar me to it's heel and walk all over me.

Because yeah, whether it's writing code, or this article (past my bedtime after way too much pizza for dinner), if you're head's not in it, you're just creating more work that needs to be cleaned up later. Right?

Yeah, that is, until you find yourself in endless procrastination spirals and have to harangue yourself into action.

If this is you, I've created a simple game.

If you hear 3 or more of the following thoughts go through your mind you scream BINGO! And then force yourself to do the damn thing anyway.

• I'm just not feeling inspired right now

• I didn't sleep well last night

• I ate way too much for lunch/dinner

• I've got no energy and it's too late to drink coffee

• It's too late, and if I start now my brain will be active ALL NIGHT

• Oops! Social media rabbit hole. Maybe it's better to start fresh tomorrow

• Everybody else is out enjoying [X]

• If I force myself to do this when I'm not feeling it, I'll burn out

• There's no way I'll make anything worth sharing in this mood

• Tomorrow, with coffee, I'll think of something

You can boo-hoo all the tough love, but my-truth is that I feel much better after dunking my head in ice water and just getting it done than I do after binge eating three extra large excuse burritos.

Just look at Captain Hook: we all know a life at sea is a crucible of adversity with potential brutal effects on both body and mind.

But what if sauna, one of the cultural secrets of one of the earliest sea-faring cultures, the Finnish Vikings, held the keys to longevity, mental, and physical wellbeing not only for battle-hacked sea-warriors, but the rest of us?

Here's The Science on sauna as the Viking's secret weapon:

1) Greater Sensitivity to Joy

It turns out the heat-discomfort of sauna is caused by the release of dynorphin, the opposite of good-feeling endorphines, which will sensitize you to future endorphin exposure by creating more mu-opiod receptors.

2) Shake Off the Blues in Dark Times

Carefully administered single-session hyperthermic (heat) treatment for 90 minutes has been shown to significantly reduce depression symptoms for more than 6 weeks.

3) Heart Health w/o the Treadmill

Whether it's a peg-leg or just achy bones, your injury doesn't prevent you from getting a simular cardiovascular workout in the sauna which triggers heart-rates ranging from 120-150 bpm as arteries also swell to accommodate additional blood volume.

4) Out-Think Your Enemies

Sauna triggers the release of heat shock proteins, which related to the FOXO3 genetic pathway, trigger a host of neuroprotective effects including reducing amyloid beta plaques in the brain which are linked to Alzheimers disease.

5) Out-Live Your Enemies

Frequent sauna use lead to a whopping 40% reduction in all-cause-mortality, that's a cutting the risk of death almost in half, was achieved by modern Finns who use their sauna 4-7 times per week compared to Finns who only use it 1 time per week.

So whether you've got an old battlefield amputation keeping you up in the long arctic night or not, sauna might be the key to a happier future.

Recently I wrote how discipline is a cake-walk if you have an unquestionable supreme motive, something you want like Batman wants vengeance. Otherwise, you're just whipping a confused horse that's not sure if it wants the carrot or the water today.

But how many of us are singularly focused zealots shouting, "I don't care if I get fired from my job and have to live on the streets, I will NEVER miss one of my kids swim meets!" Ok, none of us...

We're often stuck in the cozy but tortuous limbo-hell of competing wants and indecision.

And sometimes you have to slash your way out. No, not burn the entire Amazon rainforest, but when yours arms, legs, and ankles are slither-wrapped and pulled in opposite directions by competing vines of desire on the rack of pain known as indecision - you have to slash and burn your way free.

"Nothing is worse than indecision. Be wrong. But be decisively wrong"

~Alexander the Great, Virtues of War

If you want to be free, get willing to be a little mad and whittle yourself to clarity any way you can:

• What worst-of-all fate awaits me if I languish in this holding pattern for another 5 weeks/months/years?

• What kind of person would ALWAYS choose each of these paths - and which of those archetypes do I admire?

• Is this an act-first-and-face-the-consequences or the wait-and-see-and-miss-the-boat kind of situation?

• If what I choose now, and not choosing is a choice too, were to become my permanent identity, who do I want to be?

In a world of self-care and "do what feels right," we can drown in a sea of self-soothing cupcakes and convenient excuses that enslave us to our short-term desires. Breaking chains takes a touch of grit.

Let's pop a bubble real quick so we can build something stronger and more useful.

Discipline is not strength, it's not toughness, it's not pain-tolerance, and it sure as hell isn't the measure of character you think it is.

The nueroscience of dopamine ties together a tricky paradox that motivation is actually the horse-power under the hood of discipline.

Even motivational-speakers love to eschew motivation and motivational speakers. Whether it's Jocko Willink preaching, "Discipline Equals Freedom," or Tony Robbins or Les Brown raising an audience to ecstasy declaring those who wait for motivation will be waiting a lifetime. And they're wrong.

The word for what they mean to degrade as flippant and unreliable is EXCITEMENT. Not motivation.

There is only one molecule that drives you to take any action in life, to strive for glory, to run for safety, or to keep your promise - dopamine. And dopamine is molecule of wanting something.

Ask yourself what these discipline heroes have in common:

• The father that takes a 3rd part-time job to pay for his special-needs daughter's therapy

• The powerlifter who'd rather walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes with a fever than stay in bed and break her 300 day workout streak

• The perfect attendance co-worker who's never been late for work once because she leaves 30 minutes early just in case there's traffic

Clear motive drives clear behavior - every time.

There's no way to have self-discipline when you sorta-wanna do this, and and sorta-wanna do that.

The person who says, "I'd rather be dead-brained and exhausted all day than be one of those slugs that show up late," doesn't struggle choosing to snooze the alarm or not. It's a clear choice between discomfort and HELL.

If you just add more intensity and stress to confused priorities you just get more self-sabotage and disappointment. If you work out your motives and what's worth doing above all else, discipline comes for free.

Even if you've stumbled on your New Year's Resolutions you can still supercharge your habit formation skills.

But to do so, I'm going to ask you to think like a behavioral scientist.

I need you to admit exercise-before-work isn't a one step exercise-before-work habit. It entails choosing between old T-shirts and smelly gym shirts, choosing treadmill or elliptical, learning to eat breakfast during your morning meeting, and dozens of other decisions and adjustments.

Literally speaking, your brain doesn't, "know how to do" the simple thing - until you actually do it.

So before you make your massive habit tracker or start cluttering your house laying out all your gym clothes and journals so you stumble into everything you're supposed to do, DO THIS ONE THING ONCE!

Procedural Memory Visualization

1. Close your eyes and imagine yourself carrying out all the KEY BEHAVIORS

2. Define the short recipe-list of actions that enable/carry-out this habit

3. Repeat your short memorized action-list when it's go-time.

The person who repeats, "Shoes, Shorts, Treadmill, Go" instead of, "should I go to the gym today?" makes it to the gym with 90% less effort.

Falling into analysis mode is death to any new habit. By visualizing the key actions you prime the upper motor neurons that will be responsible for the behavior you want and then by committing a procedural list to memory, you give yourself a neuronal grappling hook that can literally pull you out of analysis and procrastination brain into the action mode part of the brain.

A single session of procedural memory visualization can multiply your habit completion rate.

We, errr, I mean humans, tend to overthink. And it's literally why it's harder for a human than a lab mouse to get over old anxieties.

But it doesn't have to be that way. You could conquer your fears like a science mouse.

2 Ways A Lab Mouse Conquers Fear Faster Than You

1. They notice, "Hey! Wasn't so bad!"

The fancy science term of Reward Prediction Error refers to the happy dopamine reward you get when something goes better than expected. When a mouse trained to expect a shock after an LED flashes is suddenly surprised by the fact that the LED flashes and no shock comes, they get a flood of dopamine. Relief!

The mouse notices, "Hey! Wasn't as bad as I thought!".

Humans? After we give our public speech and nobody throws bananas, do we go, "Hey! It wasn't as bad as I thought?" or do we go, "No, but I'll bet they secretly hated it."

2. They don't distract themselves: 

Acetylcholine is released in brain circuits that you focus your awareness on. And it's a critical for neuroplasticity.

A mouse that's just seen a flashing LED and is trained to expect a shock is hyper-focused on those circuits that say, "light means shock coming." So when the shock no longer comes - they're primed for unlearning the habit.

Humans? When we're nervous about going to a new gym with the secret fear that, "everybody is going to look at me weird and know I have no clue what I'm doing," do we pay close attention to whether that is actually happening?

Or do we distract ourselves with headphones and then go on assuming it's happening anyway?

Lab Mouse Fear Conquering Method: Pay Attention!

1. Notice what the anxiety actually expects to happen (Focus/Acetylcholine)

2. Stay present to observe the actual outcome (Reward Prediction Error)

3. Celebrate when it's not as bad you imagined (Dopamine)

It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.

~Miyamoto Musashi

Cold shower for energy, bedtime journal for clarity, plan your day before opening social media... yeah!

Sound great right? Especially if it's tomorrow. But, suddenly tomorrow is today and you're shivering naked as you turn the water on and you're having second thoughts.

Turn your fear into forward propulsion

1. Plan on feeling uncertain: because when you try to engage a new or unpracticed habit, you literally lack efficient brain circuit networks to carry it out, your brain tries to turn up the volume to "wake-up" dormant circuits. It uses stress.

2. Relish the stress: the stress you feel before doing something is your brain calling in the cavalry. It's cortisol and epinephrine, or stress hormones, that wake up dormant neurons.

3. Reward yourself for facing discomfort: the two critical factors for neuroplasticity are epinephrine (alertness/stress!) and dopamine. You've got the stress now, but the dopamine depends on you being proud of yourself for being here.

4. Pay close ATTENTION: the closer you pay attention to what you're doing, the greater the intensity of acetylcholine released on those circuits. acetylcholine + epinephrine is literal Miracle-Grow for neuroplastic growth. Don't just go through the motions, watch yourself struggle.

5. Stress-Reward-Recover: Actual brain-rewiring occurs during periods and deep sleep LATER. And it happens where stress plus reward plus focus occurred to mark the circuits for growth. So pat yourself on the back, then literally close your eyes and rest for 30-60 seconds.

If you can learn to be proud of yourself for facing the suck instead of judging yourself for it being hard, you can turn challenge into satisfaction.