On Giving to Charity and Building Scaffolding

My good friend M was telling me about another good friend of mine, A. A was not present, but M and A have been very close friends for longer than I have known each of them. M was advising me on something, and he brought into the conversation a trait about A which he has always admired.

Whenever A leaves the house, no matter what the reason, or the duration he is leaving the house for, he always takes out money for Sadaqah. Every single time. And that made me think about how easy we make it for ourselves to do good.

Taking Sadaqah as an example... why don't I give money in Sadaqah every time I leave the house? Let's see... I don't remember to. If I do remember, I don't have any coinage on me. If I do remember, and have coinage on me, I don't want to take my shoes off (petty I know, but bear with me). If I don't have my shoes on, the Sadaqah collection boxes are not close by. Or missing somewhere. And so on, and so forth.

These things are minor, yes, but they are obstacles nonetheless. And stack enough obstacles in your path, on a bad day, when you're running late, and you won't fight as hard. Willpower is a depletable resource. Maybe you won't fight at all. So you get round them by building a "scaffolding" as such. Make it as easy as possible for yourself. Make it so that you can't possibly not do what you set out to do.

Again, going back to the Sadaqah example, I went to the bank one day and got £10 worth of 10p coins. I left these by the door. Then I placed the Sadaqah and Imam Zamin (as) tins by the door. That was all I needed to do. I was able to take out Sadaqah on a regular basis for myself and those that I loved as I left the house. When the tins filled I took them to the mosque and let the mosque distribute the funds as it wished. I was also surprised at how much accrued. Best of all, what I didn't anticipate; my own family members started doing the same as well. What a bonus.

Moral: if you're struggling to implement a new habit/change into your life, stack the odds of success in your favour by doing a little preparatory, tactical work.. you can't lose.

[...]

Well, you can lose still, but the probability is less, and if you do lose, you won't lose by as big a margin as you would have if you hadn't put the extra effort in.