Maximum Willpower: How to Master the New Science of Self-Control

by Kelly McGonigal

It also demonstrates an important willpower rule: If you never seem to have the time and energy for your “I will” challenge, schedule it for when you have the most strength.

Amazingly, boosting blood sugar restored willpower.

Gailliot, now a professor at Zirve University in Turkey, has found that people with low blood sugar are also more likely to rely on stereotypes and less likely to donate money to charity or help a stranger.

Special glucose-detecting brain cells are constantly monitoring the availability of energy.

The participants who drank the regular drink showed a sharp increase in blood sugar. They also became more likely to delay gratification for the bigger

Importantly, it wasn’t the absolute level of blood sugar that predicted a participant’s choices – it was the direction of change. The brain asked, “Is available energy increasing or decreasing?” It then made a strategic choice about whether to spend or save that energy.

A brain that could bias your decisions toward immediate gratification when resources are scarce, but toward long-term investment when resources are plenty, would be a real asset in a world with an unpredictable food supply.

For example, one willpower-training programme asked participants to create and meet self-imposed deadlines. You could do this for any task you’ve been putting off, such as cleaning out your wardrobe. The deadlines might be: Week 1, open the door and stare at the mess; Week 2, tackle anything that’s on a hanger. Week 3, throw out anything that predates the Thatcher government. Week 4, find out if Oxfam accepts skeletons; Week 5 – well, you get the picture. When the willpower trainees set this kind of schedule for themselves for two months, not only did wardrobes get cleared and projects completed, but they also improved their diets, exercised more, and cut back on cigarettes, alcohol and caffeine.

The important “muscle” action being trained in all these studies isn’t the specific willpower challenge of meeting deadlines, using your left hand to open doors, or keeping the F-word to yourself. It’s the habit of noticing what you are about to do, and choosing to do the more difficult thing instead of the easiest.

Behavioural economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein have argued persuasively for “choice architecture”, systems that make it easier for people to make good decisions consistent with their values and goals. For example, asking people to become organ donors when they renew a driving licence or register to vote. Or having GP practices automatically schedule annual check-ups for patients over the age of fifty. These are things most people mean to do, but put off because they are distracted by so many other more pressing demands.

When it comes to right and wrong, most of us are not striving for moral perfection. We just want to feel good enough – which then gives us permission to do whatever we want.

And so when you tell yourself that exercising, saving money or giving up smoking is the right thing to do – not something that will help you meet your goals – you’re less likely to do it consistently.

the moral licensing trap,

By thinking about exercise as earning food, Cheryl was undermining her goal to lose weight. To get out of this licensing trap, she needed to see exercise as a necessary step to achieving her goal, and healthier eating as a second, independent step she also had to take.

In one study, they reminded successful dieters of how much progress they had made towards their ideal weight. They then offered the dieters a thank-you gift of either an apple or a chocolate bar. Eighty-five per cent of the self-congratulating dieters chose the chocolate bar over the apple, compared with only 58 per cent of dieters who were not reminded of their progress.

Progress can cause us to abandon the goal we’ve worked so hard on because it shifts the balance of power between our two competing selves. Remember that by definition, a willpower challenge involves two conflicting goals. Part of you is thinking about your long-term interests (e.g., weight loss); the other part wants immediate gratification (chocolate!).

The next time you find yourself using past good behaviour to justify indulging, pause and remember the why.

How can this be? Sometimes the mind gets so excited about the opportunity to act on a goal, it mistakes that opportunity with the satisfaction of having actually accomplished the goal.

Maybe you think you wouldn’t be susceptible to this effect – surely you have more self-control than the gullible people in these studies! If so, then you’re really in trouble. The participants who rated themselves as having the best self-control, especially around food, were the most likely to end up ordering the least healthy item when a healthy choice was available.

This illustrates a fundamental mistake we make when thinking about our future choices. We wrongly but persistently expect to make different decisions tomorrow than we do today.

When you want to change a behaviour, aim to reduce the variability in your behaviour, not the behaviour itself.

Apply Rachlin’s advice to your own willpower challenge this week: aim to reduce the variability of your behaviour day to day. View every choice you make as a commitment to all future choices. So instead of asking, “Do I want to eat these sweets now?” ask yourself, “Do I want the consequences of eating these sweets every afternoon for the next year?” Or if you’ve been putting something off that you know you should do, instead of asking “Would I rather do this today or tomorrow?” ask yourself, “Do I really want the consequences of always putting this off?

The problem here is that when we think of food or products in terms of “good” and “bad”, we let a good feeling take the place of common

University of Melbourne economists have found that a licensing effect is most likely when people pay a “penance” for bad behaviour – for example, paying an extra £2.50 to plant a tree to make up for the carbon costs of your home electricity use. The consumer’s general eco-guilt is relieved, increasing the chance that they will feel licensed to consume more energy.

What if Olds and Milner’s rats weren’t self-stimulating to exhaustion because it felt so good that they didn’t want to stop? What if the area of the brain they were stimulating wasn’t rewarding them with the experience of profound pleasure, but simply promising them the experience of pleasure? Is it possible the rats were self-stimulating because their brains were telling them that if they just pressed that lever one more time, something wonderful was going to happen?

A dopamine rush doesn’t create happiness itself – the feeling is more like arousal.

As soon as the symbol appeared, the brain’s dopamine-releasing reward centre lit up, and the participants pressed the button to get their reward. When the participants actually won money, however, this area of the brain quieted down. The joy of winning was registered in different areas of the brain. Knutson had proved that dopamine is for action, not happiness.

When dopamine hijacks your attention, the mind becomes fixated on obtaining or repeating whatever triggered it. This is nature’s trick to make sure you don’t starve because you can’t be bothered to pick a berry, and that you don’t hasten human extinction because seducing a potential mate seems like too much of a hassle.

For example, erotic images make men more likely to take financial risks, and fantasizing about winning the lottery leads people to overeat – two ways daydreaming about unattainable rewards can get you into trouble.

And even if you resist the temptation of the sample, your brain – fired up on dopamine – will be looking for something to satisfy the promise of reward.

Your dopamine neurons eventually become less responsive to familiar rewards, even ones you really enjoy, whether it’s a daily mocha latte or the same old lunch special. It’s not a coincidence that places like Starbucks and Prêt a Manger are constantly introducing new variations of the standard fare, and clothing retailers roll out new colour choices for their wardrobe basics.

A little promise of reward can be a powerful antidote to anxiety, and help people approach things they would rather avoid. Other industries and service providers might benefit from a similar strategy – perhaps dentists could infuse their offices with the scent of candy floss, and tax advisers might choose gin and tonic.

Some economists have even proposed dopaminizing “boring” things like saving for retirement and submitting your tax return on time. For example, imagine a savings account where your money is protected, and you can take it out whenever you want – but instead of getting a guaranteed low interest rate, you are entered in lotteries for large cash

This highlights the power of an unpredictable reward.

That’s because dopamine’s primary function is to make us pursue happiness, not to make us happy. It doesn’t mind putting a little pressure on us – even if that means making us unhappy in the process.

When these areas are bathed in dopamine, the result is desire – the carrot that makes the horse run forward. But the reward system has a second weapon that functions more like the proverbial stick. When your reward centre releases dopamine, it also sends a message to the brain’s stress centre. In this area of the brain, dopamine triggers the release of stress hormones.

But Yvonne settled on a different strategy: window-shopping for maximum happiness. The feeling of being in the shopping centre produced the feeling that she liked best; spending was stressful. Surprisingly, when she went intent on not buying, and left her credit cards at home so she couldn’t overspend, she went home happier than if she had spent a lot of money.

We humans find it nearly impossible to distinguish the promise of reward from whatever pleasure or payoff we are seeking.

There is growing evidence that when people pay close attention to the experience of their false rewards, the magic spell wears off.

When our reward system is quiet, the result isn’t so much total contentment as it is apathy.

In fact, neuroscientists now suspect that an underactive reward system contributes to the biological basis of depression.

And why not? Dopamine promises us that we’re going to feel good. It’s only natural that we turn to the biggest dopamine releasers when we want to feel better. Call it the promise of relief.

The brain, it turns out, is especially susceptible to temptation when we’re feeling bad. Scientists have come up with clever ways to make laboratory subjects stressed, and the results are always the same. When smokers imagine a trip to the dentist, they experience off-the-chart cravings for a cigarette. When binge-eaters are told they will have to give a speech in public, they crave high-fat, sugary foods. Stressing out lab rats with unpredictable electric shocks (to the body, not the brain’s reward centre!) will make them run for sugar, alcohol, heroin, or whatever reward researchers have made available in their cage.

The stress hormones released during a fight-or-flight response also increase the excitability of your dopamine neurons. That means that when you’re under stress, any temptations you run into will be even more tempting.

That’s the power of the one-two punch of stress and dopamine: we are drawn back again and again to coping strategies that don’t work, but that our primitive brains persistently believe are the gateway to bliss.

While many of the most popular stress-relief strategies fail to make us feel better, some strategies really work. According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time on a creative hobby.

The main difference between the strategies that work and the strategies that don’t? Rather than releasing dopamine and relying on the promise of reward, the real stress relievers boost mood-enhancing brain chemicals like serotonin and GABA, as well as the feel-good hormone oxytocin. They also help shut down the brain’s stress response, reduce stress hormones in the body, and induce the healing relaxation response.

Is there a way to remind your stressed self what actually makes you feel better? What encouragement can you create for yourself before you are stressed?

For example, a study of shoppers found that when people are asked to think about their own death, they make longer shopping lists, are willing to spend more on comfort food, and eat more chocolate and biscuits. (I can see the retail strategy now: supermarkets invite local funeral homes to hand out brochures by the shopping trolleys.)

This week, pay attention to what might be triggering terror management in your own mind.