I’ve had my six-pack abs for over a decade now.
365 days a year.
Not for a season.
Through Christmases, New Years, summer family vacations.
Picnics, weddings, birthday celebrations.
Some people think it’s discipline.
I’ve just found out, that instead, I’ve been using time and research-tested decision-making frameworks from some of the best decision-making scientists and advisors.
PREMORTEM
Instead of telling myself, I’ll resist temptation, it'll be different this time, I'll try harder, I asked a different question:
“Imagine you failed, Angela. What made it happen?”
Annie Duke (poker champ, decision-making scientist) suggests listing 5 things in your control and 5 outside it.
Same idea as another technique, mental contrasting, imagining the obstacles before they show up to make a plan to deal with them.
Once you see the failure points, you design around them. You design your path to avoid them. You create barriers to the wrong decisions and actions. You lower barriers for the right ones.
Late-night overeating?
Tempting foods don’t live in my house.
Low energy → bad decisions, more hunger?
Sleep becomes non-negotiable.
Urges creeping in?
I shower. I change state. I interrupt the pattern.
You don’t fight behavior.
You redesign the environment that produces it. Or have a plan of action when the worst happens.
CATEGORY DECISIONS
People ask me all the time,
“What do you eat to get abs?”
I joke: I don’t eat sugar or gluten.
What I actually mean is this:
Most foods that wreck my willpower contain one or both.
So I don’t negotiate. I don't seek out gluten-free options. My life is just objectively better without bread, pasta and sweets.
No scanning menus.
No “just this once.”
No inner debate.
Automatic no.
Not because those foods are evil but because decision-fatigue is. No willpower stands a chance against it.
This single rule eliminated decision-making creep.
That slow slide of “one time won’t matter” that, repeated often enough, changes everything.
The upside?
I feel and look great every day with almost no effort.
The best part?
After enough reps, urges disappear.
Not through restraint. Through clarity.
PRE-COMMITMENT CONTRACTS
This is my clients’ favorite because it allows real-life flexibility.
Before a tricky situation, a wedding, birthday, party, you decide in advance.
2 drinks, then sparkling water.
No starches. One dessert🍦
Or whatever fits your goals and the occasion.
When the moment gets “hot,” your brain doesn’t improvise.
It executes the plan. So make one!
Pre-decided behavior beats in-the-moment willpower every time.
These frameworks didn’t just give me abs for life.
They gave me, and my clients, effortless consistency, where before were years of willpower struggle.
And that’s what most people are missing.
Everything you’ll ever do, build, or become is a product of your decisions.
And just like with eating, just because you’ve been deciding your whole life - doesn’t mean you have a good decision-making process.
Over to you, dear reader,
Where are you still trying to willpower your way through when a better decision model would make it effortless?
