American novelist, Johnathan Franzen, is regarded as one of the greatest emerging novelists of the 21st century. His work has garnered widespread critical acclaim, with one critic calling his 2015 novel, Purity, “Piercingly brilliant.”
As talented he may be, though, there’s one thing that Franzen owes to his prolificity as a writer: his preference for precommitments.
For instance, while writing the follow-up to his 2001 bestseller, The Corrections, Franzen wrote on an old Dell laptop, on which he not only removed the wireless card to curb its Internet connection but permanently blocked its Ethernet port as well. [1]
Franzen’s effort to eliminate distraction before it arises is known as a “precommitment,” a technique that, according to Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable, “involves removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsiveness.”
Eyal explains that there are three kinds of precommitments, or pacts, which we can use to ensure we commit to our long-term goals. First, there are effort pacts, which make unwanted behavior more difficult to do, such as restricting Internet access, as Franzen does.
Then, there are price pacts, which, while most suited for behaviors that require a short burst of motivation, involve putting money on the line to encourage us to honor our commitments. Finally, there are identify pacts, which require us to slightly alter how we see ourselves.
As we’ve discussed before, “Complying with a small request—such as putting on your workout shoes after waking up—can, when followed through on, give rise to the potential for a new self-identity: “I’m the type of person who never misses a workout.”
Precommitments help us remain clearheaded in the face of distraction, and moreover, help us act with, rather than against, our best interests.
Footnotes
[1] I want to acknowledge Nir Eyal for introducing me to TIME’s interview with Johnathan Franzen in his book, Indistractible.
[2] Precommitment is also an example of James Clear’s Third Law of Behavior Change: make it difficult. To learn more about the Four Laws of Behavior Change, read Clear’s book, Atomic Habits.
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