Harsh on the present, Kind to the past

Jul 19 2025|Written by Slimane Akalië|productivity, good life


After a long day at work, you take a deserved break. You start brewing a cup of coffee, meanwhile, you look for some fun on your phone. You tap on the TikTok icon, and the doors to dopamine and serotonin open widely. You keep scrolling and sipping your coffee. After a while, you need to go to the bathroom because of all the coffee you just consumed, of course, you take your phone with you and keep scrolling in the bathroom. You switch from TikTok to Instagram, then from Instagram to YouTube Shorts, and back to TikTok again.

After you’re fed up with all the fun, you get that bad feeling and a voice in your head telling you: “you just wasted hours of your life scrolling, you’re an indisciplined person”, heck, you don’t even want to look to see what time it is. You say to yourself: “This is the last time I’m doing this, I must get disciplined”, but your brain reminds you of all the times you said that to yourself and you didn’t change anything.

You’re too exhausted after all of this, you automatically look for ways to relieve the emotional pain you just went through, you reach for the remote and play Game of Thrones, and eat something sweet while watching. The next day, the same thing happens.

Who to blame?

You can blame the multi-billion-dollar attention economy for this, and you’ll certainly have some valid points. You can blame your boss or your customers for draining your self-discipline battery early in the day.

You can blame other people and other entities, and you might be right, but your blame won’t fix anything. Activists couldn’t change that much about the oil industry, and Communism didn’t work; your only hope is YOU.

Infinite loop

Every programming person knows a simple concept called Infinite loop, which is defined according to Wikipedia as the following:

“In computer programming, an infinite loop (or endless loop) is a sequence of instructions that, as written, will continue endlessly, unless an external intervention occurs, such as turning off power via a switch or pulling a plug. It may be intentional.” - Wikipedia

It’s basically a program that keeps repeating itself. In humans, we call this a habit, and they are very hard to break.

The bad habit cycle

The first step to break a bad habit is to identify the habit and its cycle.

The bad habit we are talking about in the scenario I described above is: Being harsh on your past self when trying to fix the present.

Now to the habit cycle, according to James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, it’s a four-stage cycle:

  1. Cue: The trigger that initiates the habit.
  2. Craving: The motivational force behind the habit (this is omitted by Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit).
  3. Response: The actual action you take in response to the craving.
  4. Reward: The outcome of the response

Let’s apply this to our habit:

  1. Cue: Realizing that you just did something stupid (in our scenario, scrolling your phone for hours).
  2. Craving: Need to prevent yourself from doing the stupid thing you just did.
  3. Response: Blaming your past self for doing such stupid things.
  4. Reward: Hope that you won’t do such stupid things in the future.

The only problematic part of this cycle is your response to the cue and the craving because you can’t change the past.

Changing the Response

So what should your response be when you do something dumb, like spending hours watching cat videos on your phone (they are ridiculously cute, to be fair)?

Go for a 20 km run and crank out 1,000 pushups!

Just kidding.

Instead of blaming yourself, pause and ask:

Why did I do that? What are the factors that pushed me to fall into that stupid trap?

Have a conversation with yourself. Keep digging until you get to what really caused you to do what you did.

Once you list the real factors, remove what you can. And when you can’t, change how you react.

Kind and Harsh at the same time

Be understanding and kind to your past self, but be harsh on your present self to do the right thing next. If you fail, reflect and repeat because your present self today is your past self Tomorrow. Blaming will never help.

“It is not things themselves that disturb us, but our opinions about them.” - Epictetus

Generally speaking, you have more control than you think when it comes to removing factors that cause certain behaviors or changing your reaction to these factors.

Tools for the present

Write down on a piece of paper your bad feelings, or record a video of yourself talking about how you feel about yourself after doing what you just did; this will help you to remember the pain that comes after the fun.

Accountability partners are also a good idea; it doesn’t have to be someone you talk to regularly. if you have 4 kids or work for a company that doesn’t tolerate underperformance, or you’re enrolled in a running club, you won’t have 3 hours to scroll on your phone.

Having a clear goal you remind yourself of daily can help. If your goal is to reach a certain weight, for example, it becomes much easier to skip the junk food than if you had no goal at all.

Example of a discussion with the past

If we apply this to the earlier scenario, once you realize you’ve spent hours on your phone, pause and have a conversation with yourself:

  • Q: Why did I do that?
  • A: Because I was tired and I deserved a break.
  • Q: Does having a break mean going to TikTok?
  • A: Not necessarily.
  • Q: Then why did I go to TikTok?
  • A: Because it’s so much fun.
  • Q: Does that fun justify the pain I feel now?
  • A: No.
  • Q: Was there something else I could do to take a break without feeling guilty afterward?
  • A: No, I was so tired.
  • Q: Why was I so tired?
  • A: Because the work is hard and meaningless.
  • Q: Do I want to do easy work?
  • A: Yes, I want to enjoy life, work less, and make more money.
  • Q: Who are the people I admire?
  • A: X, Y, and Z.
  • Q: Do I think they were doing easy work?
  • A: I mean, they have powerful characters, so they must have gone through some difficulties
  • Q: So I don’t want to do easy work?
  • A: Okay, okay, but even if the work is hard, it must have meaning, at least X, Y, and Z were working on something meaningful.
  • Q: Why do I have to do meaningless work?
  • A: Because I need to pay the bills.
  • Q: Is doing meaningless work the only way to pay the bills?
  • A: I think so
  • Q: Do I think X, Y, and Z were not paying the bills?
  • A: I bet they were.
  • Q: How?
  • A: By doing something meaningful while making enough money.
  • Q: How?
  • A: By being a genius.
  • Q: Are all of the people I admire geniuses?
  • A: No, they were just smart.
  • Q: What does that even mean?
  • A: They had the right skills to do meaningful work that people were willing to pay money for.
  • Q: What are the skills to do meaningful work that people are willing to pay money for right now?
  • A: mm, I guess A, B, and C
  • Q: How to get those skills?
  • A: I need a degree.
  • Q: Do I?
  • A: I mean, not exactly. I know someone who didn’t have a degree and got to make money by using A, B, and C, the lucky bastard.
  • Q: How did he do it?
  • A: He learned stuff on the internet on nights and weekends.
  • Q: So, why don’t I do the same?
  • A: I can’t even focus for 5 minutes on something?
  • Q: Was it always like that?
  • A: No, in school, I was good, I focused on problems for 4 hours.
  • Q: What changed?
  • A: Kids are better at focusing.
  • Q: Can I identify an age at which I lost the ability to focus for 4 hours on something?
  • A: Probably 15.
  • Q: So I was also a kid back then, what changed?
  • A: I got an iPhone.
  • Q: So, the phone destroyed my focus ability?
  • A: Kind of.
  • Q: Can I revert that?
  • A: I think I can, I heard some stuff about neural plasticity.
  • Q: So, how can I cut my phone addiction?
  • A: I heard about some studies on using a phone in Grayscale mode, I can also remove social media applications from my phone and check my screen time regularly. I can disable notifications too.
  • Q: How about accountability partners?
  • A: I don’t like that self-help crap.
  • Q: It doesn’t have to be a coach. I like running, so let’s enroll in a running club.
  • A: It’s expensive
  • Q: How much?
  • A: X amount of money per month
  • Q: How much money do I make per hour?
  • A: X/2 amount of money per hour
  • Q: How many hours do I spend on TikTok each day?
  • A: 2 hours on average
  • Q: So, the running club will cost 2 hours of my time and will help me save up to 60 hours per month.
  • A: Yes, it’s worth it.

Credit to James Clear's newsletter

What triggered me to write this short article is a quote in James Clear’s newsletter. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s definitely worth a read.

Disclaimer

The fact that I know this doesn’t mean I apply it always, I’m like everybody else, I do stupid things all the time.

I’m not sure if being kind to your past self and harsh on your present self is the right thing to do, but from my experience, it helps tremendously.

Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two very different things.