Ten Psychological Laws To Increase Your Discipline and Productivity

Use these to get more done in less time.

When I first started getting into self-improvement, one of the fields that interested me the most was that of behavioral psychology. I wanted to understand how our brains worked and find “hacks” and “tricks” to increase my discipline and productivity (I was an avid procrastinator back then).

After reading many books, watching tons of videos, listening to tons of podcasts, and even taking some related classes in college, I learnt about many psychological laws that you can effortlessly apply to increase your productivity, become more disciplined, increase your overall work output, and simply become a better, more efficient worker.

Here’s the top ten cognitive principles to take back control of your brain and become a more productive, more disciplined man:

10. Parkinson’s Law

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

This law is one of the better-known ones, perhaps because it’s incredibly important. Parkinson’s law simply states that how long a specific task will take depends heavily on how much time you have available to complete it.¹

Basically, if you have more time available for a specific task, you’ll take it easy and do it more slowly, whereas if you have a strict deadline, you’ll do whatever it takes to complete it by then.

How to use it to your advantage: Set short, stricter deadlines for each task to avoid slacking off.

---

9. Hofstadter’s Law

Everything takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.²

Hofstadter’s law is a self-referencing principle that explains the tendency to underestimate how much time complex tasks will take.

It serves as a warning and complements Parkinson’s law nicely: it’s not enough to just set strict deadlines, you also have to take into account their complexity and our tendency to underestimate their difficulty to make the deadlines realistic.

How to use it to your advantage: Set short, stricter deadlines for each task to avoid slacking off.

---

8. The Zeigarnik Effect

Unfinished tasks stick in your mind and create mental tension until resolved.

The Zeigarnik effect was discovered in a series of experiments in 1927, which concluded that incomplete tasks are more likely to be remembered³.

What this means for us is that the more incomplete tasks we have, the more our brain will be focused on them, and thus be unable to focus on new tasks. This causes anxiety, stress, and distracts us from the task at hand (which is exactly why multitasking is so bad for productivity).

How to use it to your advantage: First, begin tasks you’re procrastinating on, even if it’s just for 2 minutes, which will make your brain want to finish them. Secondly, actually finish a task before moving on to the next, to increase your ability to focus on one thing at a time.

---

7. Implementation Friction (Choice Architecture)

Small barriers or nudges in your environment dramatically influence your behavior.

The field of choice architecture studies the different ways in which choices can be presented to decision makers, and the impact of that presentation on decision-making.

In summary, what researchers in this field have found is that it’s relatively easy to influence someone’s behavior by introducing small barriers or nudges in their environment. For example, it’s more likely that someone will stick to a habit of reading if they have the book close by. Similarly, it’s less likely that someone will spend hours scrolling social media if they have to log in every time they open up the app on their phone.

How to use it to your advantage: Add friction to bad habits (logging out of social media, installing app blockers, and so on), and remove friction from good ones (keep your Bible on your desk or near your bed, meal prep ahead of time, lay out your workout clothes the night before, etc.). All of these significantly impact your behavior. Make it easy for yourself to stick to good habits and make it difficult for yourself to engage in bad ones.