The Weird Technique I Use to Conquer Daily Guilt and Self-Regret

Effortlessly deal with lapses and make the most out of each day

When the pandemic hit and governments across the world imposed the first lockdowns, my daily routine slowly crept to the dogs.

Long slumbers, Instagram’s infinite scroll, compulsive eating, and YouTube’s auto-play grabbed the reins of my life.

And my life galloped into a downward spiral of→ getting back to a proper routine, lapsing, wallowing in self-disgust, lapsing, again and again, utter misery, and back to a proper routine.

It’s completely normal to lapse in our routines, even the best of us do. But since we’re wired to react more strongly to negative stimuli, even the slightest lapse can sap our motivation and ruin our mood.

And most often, like dominos crashing, more and more lapses are triggered until you’re completely derailed from your routine and left wallowing in self-disgust and regret.

The reasoning is along the lines of — “Since I’ve already messed up, let me mess up more. I can start afresh from tomorrow.”

Thankfully, I discovered a nifty solution to this problem, by accident, in fact.

This solution won’t magically withhold you from doing wasteful things or lapsing in your routine — what it will do is eliminate the accompanying guilt by leveraging the “negative” thing itself.

Presenting You “Negative Offsets”

Let’s walk back to the “self-disgust” phase of the vicious cycle I talked about earlier.

One of those days, I found myself scraping the last bits of a 500-gram peanut butter jar I had opened less than an hour ago. Something snapped deep within and I instantly threw myself into a workout.

And Voila! I had an amazing one that wiped out every vestige of regret and filled me to the brim with motivation.

The negative of downing an entire PB jar had been “offset” by the positive of the workout.

Since then, instead of drowning in regret every time I lapsed, I started neutralizing it with something positive — a technique I now call a ‘Negative Offset’:

• 30 minutes of writing after an unintended binge-watch.
• A cold shower after a NoFap relapse.
• A walk while listening to a podcast after an hour of mindless social media scrolling.
• A couple of minutes of meditation after an altercation with someone. And so on.

Nowadays, I mostly stick to my routine, but negative offsets come to the rescue even when I don't. They can do the same for you.

As simple as they might seem, it’s easy to use them in a purpose-defeating manner. We’ll talk about this in the next section.

How NOT to Use Them

A few weeks after I first stumbled upon these, I started using them for planned lapses. The rationale was — “It’s okay to down a Ben and Jerry’s or scroll through my ex’s Instagram feed. I can always feel better by working out or listening to a podcast.”

This led to me deliberately f*cking up my routine — defeating the entire purpose of the offsets.

Treat them as balms for unintended lapses, not as tickets for planned ones.

What’s even worse is that, if you keep using them as “tickets” — in time, your brain forms an association between the “negative” thing and its “positive” offset.

Habit pairs are great but not ones that involve a negative one as well — what good comes off downing a bucket of ice cream after every hard workout and vice versa?

So, I beseech you — use negative offsets only for unintended lapses.

A crude but apt analogy would be emergency contraceptives — as the name implies, they’re only for the rare unintended unprotected sex. They aren't replacements for condoms.

P.S

If you’ve noticed, throughout this article, I’ve enclosed the word negative in quotes. This is because it's subjective — you determine for yourself what’s negative and what’s positive.

A 4-hour long philosophical conversation with a friend that I consider positive could be a negative to a productivity zealot.

The TL;DR.

Have a daily routine. Try your best to stick to it. But don’t beat yourself up when you don’t.

Instead of wallowing in self-regret, throw in an offset — a quick meditation session, a walk while listening to a podcast or audiobook, a Pomodoro work session, or a couple of sets of pushups.

Again, use offsets only for unintended lapses, not for planned ones.

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