How to Follow Through: The Secret of Urge Surfing
The common belief is that the key to following through is willpower and discipline. We start a new hobby, like learning guitar or yoga, full of motivation, and when that initial excitement fades, we try to force ourselves to continue. This leads to a losing battle against our own minds, with countless abandoned projects.
To follow through consistently, you must stop fighting your mind’s natural tendencies and instead, learn to use them to your advantage. The two key tendencies of the mind are:
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Curiosity and Excitement: The mind is naturally drawn to new things, and engaging with them can provide a dopamine rush.
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Tolerance and Boredom: The mind quickly adapts and develops a tolerance to any stimulus. This is why the novelty of a new hobby or the taste of a piece of cake fades over time.
The real reason we struggle to follow through on a task is not because the task is hard, but because our minds start to crave something else. Our mind gets bored with the current activity and develops a craving for a new one, like watching TV, playing a video game, or scrolling on our phones.
The Art of Urge Surfing
The solution is to use the mind’s natural tendency to get bored against itself. This is done through a technique called urge surfing, which is used successfully in addiction psychiatry to help people overcome cravings for substances like alcohol and heroin. The principle is simple: no craving lasts forever.
When you feel the urge to switch tasks, you are experiencing a craving. Instead of giving in, you learn to “surf” on top of the urge. This means you acknowledge the craving and its accompanying thoughts (“This is boring,” “I’ll do it later”) but do not act on it. Your mind will eventually get bored of the craving itself, and the urge to switch will dissipate. This allows you to naturally return to the original task.
Urge surfing is a paradoxical skill; it’s about doing nothing in the face of an urge. While the mind might tell you that your cravings are too powerful to resist, it’s often a trick to prevent you from even trying. Your mind will jump to scenarios where you’re destined to fail, but the key is to start with small urges that you know you can handle.
Summary with Actionable/Practical Tasks
Following through is not a matter of willpower but a skill that can be learned by using your mind’s natural tendencies. The key is to manage the craving to switch tasks, rather than to force yourself to stay on task.
Practical Tasks:
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Notice the Urge to Switch: The next time you sit down to work on a task (e.g., studying, practicing an instrument, cleaning) and feel the urge to do something else, stop for a moment. Instead of acting on the urge, simply notice it. Acknowledge the craving and any thoughts that come with it (“I really want to check my phone,” “This is so tedious”).
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Identify the Craving: Go one step deeper and try to identify the underlying craving. What is your mind really wanting? Is it a craving for dopamine from social media, a craving for novelty from a new video, or a craving for an easy distraction? Being able to name the craving separates it from the thought of the task.
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Urge Surf: Once you’ve identified the craving, sit with it without acting on it. Remind yourself that the craving is a temporary sensation, and it will not last forever. Practice doing nothing in the face of the urge. The urge will eventually subside, and you can calmly return to your task. Start with low-stakes tasks to build the skill, and as you get better, apply it to bigger cravings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hePvDEOZYs
Consistency: An Illusion
The common approach to achieving consistency is by building up stats like motivation, discipline, and willpower. But this is a losing battle because these are not the core issues. The real problem is a fundamental ignorance of your true self, a concept called avidya in yoga. You are not a single, consistent person; you are a series of different individuals living in the same body, one day at a time.
You’ve likely experienced this yourself. One day, you’re the motivated person who gets everything done. The next, you’re a different person who procrastinates and leaves the mess for “future you”. Your desires, values, and choices fluctuate daily, so trying to build consistency on an inconsistent foundation will never work. In fact, your mind is hardwired to make this difficult through future discounting, a neurological principle where you value a reward today more than a bigger reward tomorrow.
The Custodian Principle
To achieve consistency, you must accept a new reality: you are not living one long life; you are a temporary custodian of your life for a single day. You’re playing a relay race, where you are a different person who gets to play for a short amount of time before passing the body on to the next person.
Think of it like a video game. If you’re filling in for a friend in a game, you don’t get the satisfaction of winning the match. Your job is to play the best you can for the next 5 minutes and leave the game in a better state for the person who takes over. Similarly, you must approach each day as a custodian. Your goal isn’t to win or achieve a long-term goal for yourself, but to make things better for the person who will inherit your life tomorrow.
The opposite of this is tilting, which happens when you get too emotionally invested in a bad outcome in the past. For example, if you miss a deadline, you might get mad, give up, and make things even worse for “future you.” A custodian, however, would simply ask, “How can I improve the situation for the next person, regardless of what happened today?”
This mindset can ironically help you build consistency. If you live each day as a custodian, your motivation shifts from being tied to the final outcome to simply doing your best in the present.
Summary with Actionable/Practical Tasks
Achieving consistency is not about forcing yourself to act against your nature. It’s about accepting that your nature is to be inconsistent and learning to work with that reality. The key is to live each day as a custodian of your life, making things easier for the next person who inherits it.
Practical Tasks:
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Embrace the “One-Day” Mindset: Start each morning by recognizing that you are the custodian of your life for just one day. Remind yourself that you don’t get to see the final outcome and that your primary goal is to simply leave things in a better state than you found them.
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The “Top Chef” Challenge: When faced with an overwhelming task or a messy situation (e.g., a messy room, a stack of bills), don’t think about the entire job. Just ask yourself: “What is the best I can do in the next five minutes to make things easier for the person who comes after me?” This breaks a large task into manageable, low-stakes actions.
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Cultivate Self-Compassion: A lack of consistency often comes from a deep-seated dislike of yourself. You make sacrifices for people you love. To make a sacrifice for “future you,” you must be able to love and care for that person. Acknowledge this, and practice self-compassion to fuel your willingness to act as a good custodian for your life.