Run Yourself Like a Sims Character
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Armoo's operating model for self-discipline: split yourself into the player and the character. The player issues instructions — go to the gym, do not eat now, type on the laptop — and the character executes them, regardless of how the character feels. Because a Sims character simply does what it is told, the question becomes 'if a Sims character can do it, why can't you?'. Two supports make it hold. First, reduce any goal to its two mechanical inputs so instructions are unambiguous; getting in shape became eat less, move more. Second, rewire what counts as fun so the hard input itself becomes pleasurable — a bench press PR, an 18-hour fast — rather than attaching the reward to the treat at the end.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Separate the player from the character
Treat yourself as an avatar you are directing rather than a bundle of moods you have to negotiate with. The instruction is issued from outside the feeling.
Pro tip The prompt Armoo uses: if a Sims character can do it, why can't you?
- 2
Reduce the goal to two mechanical inputs
Ask what the two things are that produce the outcome. For being in good shape the answer was eat less, move more. Two inputs make the instruction unarguable.
Watch out If you need five conditions to state the input, you have not reduced it enough to act on.
- 3
Issue the command and execute regardless of feeling
The character does not get a vote. Sometimes you will be hungry and the instruction is still 'not eating now'; sometimes you do not feel like the gym and you go anyway.
- 4
Consult your future self at decision points
At the fork — midnight McDonald's, cancelling the session — ask what your future self would do. Armoo credits Ben Hardy's Be Your Future Self Now for this prompt.
Pro tip Remove friction on the desired action: he keeps a gym at home as well as a nearby membership.
- 5
Rewire the definition of fun
Deliberately reassign pleasure to the difficult input rather than the reward at the end. Armoo takes genuine pleasure in a bench press PR and in completing an 18-hour fast; Abdaal notes the research on training a dopamine response to discomfort.
Pro tip Books he points to: Psycho-Cybernetics and Designing the Mind — the idea that you can assign different meanings to different things.
Watch out If the dopamine hit is attached to the donut at the end, you are compounding in the wrong direction.
- 6
Target procrastinating less, not zero
Armoo never tried to eliminate procrastination — he judged that impossible for him — so he set the goal as procrastinating less. His form of it is doing the less important thing, not nothing.
Pro tip Simply becoming aware that you are doing the lower-priority task is most of the fix.
Watch out Declaring war on procrastination sets a standard you will fail, which costs more than the drift did.
- 7
Choose the surface you drift onto
Procrastination on a computer tends to build skills — marketing subreddits, tinkering with web design; procrastination on a phone tends to be scrolling. Pick the device you drift on.
In the wild
Armoo notes he is now in good shape and previously was not. He reduced it to two inputs — eat less, move more — and then simply ran them as commands to the character. Sometimes he is hungry and issues 'I'm not going to eat now'; the character does not eat. Sometimes he does not feel like training and issues 'gym'; the character goes. He removed friction by having both a nearby gym and a set-up at home, and reframed the pleasure so that hitting a bench press PR or completing an 18-hour fast is itself the enjoyable part.
→ A sustained physical change driven by instructions rather than motivation.
Both Armoo and Abdaal describe procrastination as doing the less important thing rather than nothing. Abdaal's version: knowing he should do homework, and instead tinkering with web design — which over years built the skills he later monetised. The distinction they draw is the surface: drifting onto a laptop leads to marketing subreddits and design experiments, while drifting onto a phone leads to scrolling Instagram or Twitter. Same behaviour, opposite compounding, decided almost entirely by which device is to hand.
→ Years of low-priority drift that produced marketable skills instead of dead time.
Common mistakes
Waiting to feel like doing it
The whole point of the split is that the character's feelings are not an input to the instruction. Negotiating with your mood reinstates the problem the model was designed to remove.
Trying to eliminate procrastination
Armoo judged 'I will not procrastinate' impossible for him and set 'procrastinate less' instead — a target he could actually hit, which is why it worked.
Attaching the reward to the treat
Training yourself to feel the hit from the donut or the drive-through at the end of the effort compounds in the wrong direction; the pleasure has to be moved onto the effort itself.
From the transcript
“so when you have a SIMS character and you just like tell it to do stuff it just it just like goes and does stuff”
“okay what are the two things that I need to do to be in good shape well eat less move more done”
“so rather than trying to stop procrastinating I just said I will procrastinate less and that helped me”
From the episode
From Council Estate To Selling A Global Business For Millions At 27 - Timothy Armoo Founder of Fanbytes
Timothy Armoo