Parent yourself by using the Economics of Nudging

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Originally uploaded by mitten

An article in the NY Times from last week called "Sometimes, What’s Needed Is a Nudge" made me think of how we can parent ourselves to improve our well-being.

The main point of the article is that you can significant improvements in the well being of people if you install in place small and simple mechanisms to make them do things they need to do. Like a parent nudging his child to do homework. This has even a fancy name "Libertarian paternalism" which means the state should help you make the choices you would make for yourself—if only you had the strength of will and the sharpness of mind.

This is an interesting idea on the political and economical level, but one can also apply the idea to his own life, and parent himself. How?? Make small changes in your life and acquire habits and routines that will help you do the right choices without thinking about it too much.
This is what life - hacks is all about.

There are two ways this can be done and we can summarize it in the biblical phrase: "Turn away from evil, and do good." (Psalm 34:14). And here are a few example

Turn from evil:

• Limit your surfing on the web with Time2Go

Do Good:

• Do the next action. (based on GTD) Always have a small list (three is a good number) of next actions. Having this list it is easy to decide what to do now.