How I Tricked Myself Into Living the Life I Want
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noël Studer and I help chess players train deliberately with what I call the simplified chess improvement system. Deliberate chess players live by three rules to what matters. Do it well and do it consistently. If you're tired of training randomly and want to follow a simple, proven system, this podcast is for you.

I'm really excited for today's episode because it's something that has recently come up in a podcast I did with Grandmaster Avetik Grigoryan, and it was like a light bulb moment because it has been [00:01:00] so clear for me, but I think I've never really talked about it publicly. So if you're struggling with discipline or if you're just thinking,

dude, why is Noël always so focused on planning, on structure, on clear guidelines? Well, this is the reason, and this hopefully explains my idea on just improvement, but just improving yourself in general. That's where I come from. This is my personal situation. What works for me. It doesn't need to absolutely work for everybody, but it's been why I have landed on the systems and plans and ideas that I teach right now in chess, so I hope you'll enjoy this one.

Let's jump into it. So in a recent podcast with Grandmaster Avetik Grigoryan, founder and CEO of ChessMood, he called me the most disciplined person he knows. And just to give some back [00:02:00] story here. Avetik is working like 12 hours a day, seven times a week, while I am working maybe four to six hours a day, five times a week, and I take quite some holidays.

So this was very funny to me to hear from him because it sounds like he's doing way more things, so I had to laugh. Because honestly, I also don't see myself as a disciplined person. I see myself as a very, very undisciplined person. I struggle to eat healthily when I have sweets at home. I struggle to work when I don't write a clear plan and I struggle to go to the gym unless I literally force myself to do it first thing in the morning.

Or I go with my wife, Alessia, and we have an appointment for it, and then we push each other to actually go. What might make me seem disciplined is this, I still manage to get the most important things done, and very often I get them done in a way shorter amount of time [00:03:00] than many others. But the truth is, I don't rely on disciplines.

I rely on systems. Systems that help me, or frankly, force me to do the things I know I should do, but would never do on my own in the moment. So let me give you some examples here. Alessia hides all the sweets from me at home. And this is not a joke. Many people think we are joking when we say that, but usually when we go buy some sweetss, I generally try to not buy them.

But when we buy them, I often ask Alessia, Hey, please, can you put them somewhere? And then maybe from time to time I ask her, could you give me a sweet? And I will have to ask her like three times, yes, I'm sure. Yes, I'm sure. Please go take it. And then she hides it again. Because if I see sweets, they'll be gone usually within the same day.

I kid you not. I can easily eat a hundred grams of chocolate in five minutes. Actually, that was one of my habits In my high school [00:04:00] days, I would come back home from school, just take a piece of chocolate or a full chocolate bar, eat the hundred grams and then move towards the sofa and put on the television.

That was my afternoon habit. So I've really tried a million things with this, and again, Alessia can attest that outcome. Horrible. Always the same. If I have sweetss at home, I eat them fast. I can try diets, I can try making rules that I can only eat on Sunday. I can only do this, I can only do that.

Somehow I seem just not be able to stick to those things. So instead of relying on willpower, I just don't buy them. Or Alessia has to hide them from me basically out of sight, out of snack zone. That's the only thing that has. When it comes to work, I found that I'm terrible with flexibility. I'm my own boss and I have complete freedom over my time and in my workday, and many people think, [00:05:00] oh, this is so amazing because you can just work whenever you feel like doesn't work for me.

Whenever I have a phase, when I'm saying, Hey, I'm just working whenever I feel like it today, or I'm working until I get as much done as I hope for. I literally get nothing done or I work all day. There is nothing in between, so that's why I've structured my days with strict working hours, clear deep work slots, defined times for admin.

And if it's not in a plan, it probably won't happen. So this is both to actually get me to do something because if I don't have a clear work plan, I risk not doing anything. Or in stressful periods if I don't have a plan, I just end up starting in the morning, never finishing in the evening. I still work next day, same until I feel like I'm burning out and the energy is gone and my health is bad, and so on.

So again, this isn't discipline. If I would leave it up for discipline, oh my God, [00:06:00] it would be horrible. So it's me knowing my own weaknesses and building around them and what I believe is my real strength. What differentiates me from other people that maybe have a lacking discipline as well, is that I am very good at making one decision that removes a hundred others, and I am ready to be pretty drastic in these decisions.

So when I feel like, okay, now I'm having motivation and now I have a clear outlook on my life, I want to do a certain thing, but I fear that well in the moment, if I leave it up to the moments, I will not do it. I can make committing decisions when I feel this motivation, and then these decisions make my life easier for the coming weeks and months.

For example, when I was thinking about going for a run or not going for a run, but starting to run regularly, when a friend of mine asked me, Hey, do you [00:07:00] want to run a half marathon with me? Basically the same evening I signed up, paid for the half marathon and committed with this friend. Yes, I'm doing this.

I'll stick to the plan that you're coming up with or that you have from my book. We will do that. So I commit myself, and then that was in November and then until April, it was very easy to train. So instead of asking myself, do I feel like running today or should I run today? The only question was what is on my training plan and when am I executing it?

That's it. Something similar. Also happened with poker. I really liked the game, but there was a time when I realized I was playing more online poker than I wanted because, well, again, I've complete freedom over my time. I can sit at home in the, at the desk and I can start to fire up some poker tournaments.

So it was fun. I really liked the game, as I mentioned already. I have also positive expectations, so it's not [00:08:00] like I'm gambling away my money, so it's not a pressure from, oh my God, I'm just giving away money that I can't afford to lose. This is not the problem, but it's just time invested that I would like to invest differently.

So, deep down, I knew that it wasn't aligned with my long term goals. And so instead of battling with myself every single morning, should I play poker? Should I not? And for those that don't know, especially when you play tournaments, sometimes when you register a tournament, tournament can take seven, eight hours.

So basically one decision can mess up your whole day. Because once you're in a tournament, you're not going to just from your own sake, just refuse to stay in the tournament, give up all your money and just leave. That's super, super hard. So once you register, basically I made the decision that this day there is not really much work going on.

So what did I do? You can self ban yourself from online poker sites. So usually that's what I do when I feel like, oh no, I overdid [00:09:00] it. I need to protect my time. Boom, I just say. Boom, for the next three months, four months, six months, I'm not allowed to play online poker anymore, sir. Even if I tried to log in and would try to play a tournament, it's not possible anymore.

Boom, that's it. And it has just so much simplified my life this way when I say no. This is now really a working period where I really wanna focus on executing and not every single morning decide should I now work or should I play poker? I just do that, and this is something I've come back to again and again.

Make a good decision once while the motivation is high, and then let that decision carry you through the moments when motivation disappears. So it's basically making one decision that eliminates a thousand others. I think that's how Tim Ferris is calling it.

Now even a little bit more personal touch on why I [00:10:00] actually need these systems. So my family has quite a history with addiction and I'm no scientist, I'm no biologist or whatever. But from things that I've read and heard in the past as well, is there is some genetic factor to things like addiction, to how intense you can go on one single thing.

And so this is another layer and a more personal layer for me. Nearly everyone in my direct family smokes or has smoked, and when they did it, they smoked a lot that like, they had like, I dunno think, 20 to 40 cigarettes. For example, my uncle who sadly died early because of this, also sometimes would smoke 30 to 40 cigarettes a day.

So this is really a lot, right? My parents both smoked, my only brother smokes a lot. My other uncle smokes a lot. I think my grandparents probably all of them also smoke. So it's like, it's really in the family. And [00:11:00] overworking is pretty normal as well in my family, spending full days gaming instead of learning or working, I've been there, done that.

I've seen other people in my family do it. So it really seems like there's something in our genes, tendency maybe towards addiction or over consumption, or that we are just more, all in, more intense when we like something, we're really getting into it, which by the way can be a huge positive as well. Because, for example, my chess, right?

Once I became a chess professional, I was really intense about it, and that obviously helped me also. So that can help, but it can be also a huge downside. So I just need to be very, very aware of it. So why did I mention this smoking? Well, what have I done now? This wasn't a super conscious, rational choice, but I've just from a young age decided I will never, ever touch a cigarette.

So, up to this point in my life, and I hope never ever will I know what it feels like to smoke a [00:12:00] cigarette. I never had one in my mouth and I never planned to have one because I'm pretty sure that when I try one, it will be extremely hard to not try the second one and then the third one, and then I'm just getting into that rabbit hole also.

I mentioned being a professional chess player. Before, when I was a professional chess player, I told myself, okay, let's not start playing poker, for example, because I knew I liked the game. I already had some, oh, this game could be very cool. I really love the intensity. I love the psychology of it. I love the game theory behind it, and there are a lot of chess players actually that switch into playing poker.

I was like, I'm not even going to touch it until I finish my career. Because, otherwise probably I'm just too hooked and then my chess is getting worse. I also was pretty strict with gaming in general. What I did in my high school days, for example, when I said I was on summer break, I was allowed to game, then I gamed a lot, usually and then during school time or when I try [00:13:00] to train for a chess tournament, I usually told myself, okay, let's not play any video games.

So this is just why I started having these strict lines because I didn't, and I still don't trust myself a lot to just say I play a little or smoke a little. It just seems to not really work for me. At least with a lot of attempts. I've never figured it out how it should work for me.

So instead, what makes me actually do the stuff that I wanna do, and also I want to stress this a lot. It makes me feel much better about myself, about my life. I'm feeling happier. I'm doing things that is good for my body. It's not like I'm miserable setting these rules. No, I'm helping myself to be way happier because I get very frustrated with myself when I don't manage to eat the way I want or to work the way I want, and so on and so forth.

So it's [00:14:00] really helping myself, not only long term to achieve something, but also short term to really feel better about myself. And these rules help me. Not because I'm disciplined, but actually because of the opposite. Because I know where the undisciplined behavior that I tend to can lead to, and it's not a place I want to be in my life.

And for those people asking, I would love it to be different. If somebody could tell me, well I can teach you to be disciplined, to look at chocolate and say, no, I'm not eating the chocolate. Like I would love to be the type of person who wakes up full of intrinsic motivation, naturally choosing broccoli over chocolate. 

Feeling inspired just when I sit down at my desk, not even thinking about playing online poker or going to YouTube and watch five hours of videos there, or listening to podcasts instead of working, or whatever procrastination method you can come up with. I've been there, done that.

But the [00:15:00] reality for me is just different. If I have to make a decision in the moment, I often favor short-term fun over long-term improvement, which then actually this short-term fun doesn't turn out to be that much fun. And at the end of the day, I'm pretty frustrated about how the day went and what I did or what I didn't do.

And it just doesn't make me happy, doesn't make me achieve the things I want, doesn't make me live the life that I wanna live. Because again, if I leave it up to the decision in the moment, I'll end up watching five hours of YouTube videos. Instead of working, I will eat chocolate ice cream and drink a soft drink in the span of 10 to 15 minutes.

Yep. That has happened. That happens quite frequently if I allow myself to do it. So that's just how I seem to be wired. And at some point I decided, okay, instead of fighting that, instead of trying to be different, I just accept it. I have these tendencies [00:16:00] and I need to build systems that guide me towards the life I actually wanna live.

It's as simple as that for me, and that's where the power of a clear plan comes in for me. That's why this planning thing works so well for me. It's not limiting even, it's liberating for me. Knowing that I do the stuff that I want to do is super liberating in all the time where I then am off. And it's why Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL that is now an author, also on some podcasts and so on.

He has a book called Discipline Equals Freedom, and a motto, a life philosophy, whatever. It resonates so much with me because actually for me, being disciplined means I get to do the things that I want to do, and then I'm so much more happy about myself, about my life, about where I'm going so that I can maybe work four hours, but I do them very well, and then I'm super happy the rest of the day and I can do whatever I want because I know, okay, took care of my [00:17:00] body.

I did the gym. I worked and now I can have the freedom, but I only get that freedom if I'm very disciplined first. Otherwise, it doesn't really work. So I can relax better when I know I've done the things that move me forward. And for me, this is really, I would even say that this is not really discipline for me.

It's really clarity for me. It's systems for me. If somebody is talking of you are so disciplined, it's more like, well, somebody that in the moment he can just stare at the sweet and say, no, I'm not eating that. No, I'm not eating that. If that's the definition of discipline, I am absolutely not disciplined, and I think by now should be pretty clear.

So what are my strengths? It's not discipline. It's being able to create systems that help me live a life that I want to live, to do what matters, to get ahead, to have ambitious projects, to do [00:18:00] the hard stuff, despite my lack of willpower that I have in the moment. And as I mentioned already, maybe that's a better definition or a better way of discipline anyway, because with discipline you need that kind of mental energy every day.

You need that kind of power. You need to feel good, you need to feel happy about your life when you have a bad day. But if you have systems, then even on a bad day, you can just stick to those systems and they make your life easier. It works on the good and the bad days, and if you ever feel like you are not disciplined enough, maybe the answer for you is also not trying any harder to be more disciplined, but instead to start designing an environment and a schedule that makes doing the hard things, doing the things that you actually want to do, doing the things that make you live a special life easier.

[00:19:00] And you don't need to bring up that discipline, that energy every single time. And maybe it's about making one strong, intentional decision today that saves you from making a hundred tough ones in the future tomorrow, after tomorrow, the weeks and months to come. That's usually what works for me, and it might as well work for you.

By the way, guys, if you're out there listening to this and you do all of the things that you wanna do in your life, you do them without a plan, you do them without strict rules. You're super healthy. You are super happy, your chess is improving, your private life is where it should be. Congratulations.

You don't need that. You don't need to change to a strict system right now because it seems the outcome has worked for you. You've won at life. Just don't expect everybody else to have the same superpower because I can tell you [00:20:00] I don't have that superpower and I doubt I will ever have it. So yeah, enjoy your life with your amazing discipline, but it might not be for everyone.

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