The Art Of The Good Life #3: The Pledge

I have not played any form of electronic games for more than half a year. Whether it’s on mobile phones, gaming consoles or computers, I have literally banned them from my life.

You see, games are one of the biggest time suckers and my experience tells me that I lack self-discipline to control myself on this front. When I had my six month sabbatical some years ago, there were weeks when I spent more than 10 hours a day hooked to the PS 4.

I believe overall, my quality of life has increased from this particular pledge.

So the author, Rolf Dobelli is right that sometimes, “it’s easier to stick to your pledges 100 percent of the time rather than 99 percent”.

Besides the dessert example Dobelli gave in the book I am sure it definitely applies to other bad and addictive habits like consuming cigarettes and pornography.

I also think it’s good to incorporate some pledges in your financial life.

For example, I pledge not to be involved in direct leverage in the equities market and ensure that no individual position exceeds 15% of the portfolio. This will dramatically decrease the chances of financial ruin. One could also pledge to save $10 a day to nurture the saving habit.

What intrigued me more was the part about signalling your inflexibility in negotiations or two-player games to gain an advantage. It’s morally debatable in life-death situations but I have somehow successfully seen it work in my line of work. =p

When parents/students want to shift or reschedule lessons, more often than not, the default would be to cancel the lesson. Due to a packed schedule, I would rarely offer make-ups and rather take the hit to the income for that week.

Well, it can be quite stressful to have to re-arrange 4 or 5 lessons just to slot in an additional slot.

Paradoxically, because of the default arrangement, a very small proportion of my lessons are cancelled. I once probed a parent further and she mentioned that since I don’t do make-ups, she would rather shift other tutors’ lessons.

So these days, I rarely have to rearrange lessons or see my income suffer. Ta-dah.

“Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.”  – Barry Schwartz

Thanks for reading.