I’m currently listening to Brian Tracy’s No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline for Success in Your Life on audiobook. I’ve been a Brian Tracy fan for years, and I often re-listen to No Excuses since it’s free as part of my Audible membership. It’s a powerful reminder that you don’t always need a better strategy or a fancy new goal-setting system—sometimes, you just need to put on your big boy/big girl pants and get to work.

My friend Erin recently hipped me to a great podcast episode: The Knowledge Project’s interview with psychologist Dan Ariely. Ariely is a household name in the worlds of psychology and behavioral economics, and the interview is full of interesting insights and actionable tips. At exactly six minutes in, he casually mentions a clever way to encourage yourself to eat more fruits and vegetables. Place them right in the middle of the fridge.

There’s an area of psychology called Applied Behavior Analysis that focuses on behavior change. ABA is widely used and highly effective, but what’s most interesting about it is what it doesn’t cover. In Applied Behavior Analysis, a person’s internal states—their feelings, emotions, motivations—are irrelevant. ABA is only concerned with behavior (what people say and do) and environment (their surroundings). The central idea is that our behavior is determined by our environment, so if we wish to change our behavior, we just need to tweak our environment in the right way (using a technique called functional analysis to figure out what needs to be tweaked).

Are you too hard on yourself? I’m betting you are, at least at times. I sure am. In fact, most driven, highly productive people seem to be quite unforgiving of their own errors. They don’t like failing or making mistakes, and they often engage in emotional self-flagellation after any missteps. Friends and family (my wife, in particular) tell them to be kinder to themselves, but they worry that if they ease up on the gas, they’ll lose their drive.

As an academic advisor, I obviously spend a lot of time talking to college students. Occasionally, though, I’ll get a phone call from a parent. Often, the parent is concerned about the student’s academic progress and wants to know how they can support their kid during a rough semester. I love getting these calls, and I don’t mind sharing strategies with the parent. Sometimes, though, I’ll hear from a concerned parent who’s doing everything for their kid: monitoring their daughter’s school email account, texting their son to remind him about every upcoming quiz, even picking out classes for the next semester on their child’s behalf.