The problem with this is I don't think I can make big enough (negative) consequences for not doing the good things. They just have a good consequence of their own, but I think my problem was that I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I want to do things right or perfectly so ended up not doing them at all.
You can always make consequences bigger, just get creative. Write a check for a lot of money to your least favorite political party/organization (radical feminists?) and give it to someone you trust, and if you don't accomplish XYZ externally verifiable thing by a certain date, your friend mails the check off. If "a lot of money" doesn't seem like enough motivation, then how about writing a check for ALL the money you have? How about writing a check for all your money AND also throwing in the deed to your car, and any other valuable possessions you have. How about publicly stating that you are going to do something and making yourself accountable to your friends/family on following through? You can
always make consequences big enough, you might just be
unwilling to do it.
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I do have to ask though, do you really truly actually want to accomplish these goals? Is 100% of you in complete alignment with accomplishing what you have laid out?
Or is there a part of you that doesn't want to accomplish them, and therefore it will subtly and sneakily undercut your best efforts and positive intentions?
Indulge me for a minute with a hypothetical scenario. Lets say you're not very fit/strong. Maybe you're not overweight, but your just kinda puny and soft. You could easily become much stronger by working out consistently for 6 months or a year, and there's nothing stopping you like medical conditions, working 100 hour weeks so you have no time/energy, etc.
Now, lets say growing up your parents were both overweight and extremely sedentary, and they disparaged fit people as "image obsessed," or "dumb jocks." You (being young) were dependent on your parents, so if you went against what they said, then the consequences could have proven disastrous. Therefore, you internalized a "program" that says, "don't be fit and strong, you will be piss your parents off and they will abandon you and it will be dangerous." This program was there to protect you and keep you safe, and it did a good job of that.
Now, you decide you want to be fit and strong, but that little program is still there deep down, and it sabotages your best efforts, saying: "its not safe!" even though you are no longer dependant on your parents. This little part of you makes sure you're not expending energy to do the things you need to do in order to get fit and strong. This causes you to expend your energy fighting against yourself instead, as absurd as that is.
If this is what is really going on, then being given more things to do to get more willpower is counter-productive. The little program running in the background loves "things to do" like reading willpower books, eating the right willpower diet, etc. In reality, doing those things likely is just a way of stalling, procrastinating, etc.
Thats not to say that Caster didn't have some good points - things like focusing only on one thing at a time, giving yourself breaks and time to recharge, etc.
But fundamentally, if there is nothing holding you back, then you don't need any more techniques and there's no secret formula for more willpower. You just need bigger consequences.
Lets look again at what you wrote:
The problem with this is I don't think I can make big enough (negative) consequences for not doing the good things. They just have a good consequence of their own, but I think my problem was that I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I want to do things right or perfectly so ended up not doing them at all.
Can you see the dismissiveness of this?
Dismissing the idea of creating consequences to me seems like an indication that you have some program running that doesn't want you accomplish what you have in mind. Its causing you to dismiss the idea of consequences, because it knows that consequences will probably work. You yourself said, "It's pretty easy for me to do things when I know I HAVE to." You know that having consequences works for you elsewhere, why wouldn't it work here?
I certainly could be wrong about that (I've been wrong plenty before and will be wrong plenty in the future), but thats what it seems like to me from reading what you wrote.
If you do have a little program running in the background keeping you from doing these things, then you need to acknowledge it, sit with it, thank it for protecting you all these years, and gently show it, one example at a time, that doing the things you are trying to do will not actually put you in any danger.