Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength

by Roy F. Baumeister

higher dreams for their children, and (2) higher regard for their children in the sense of knowing how much they can take.”

Forget about self-esteem. Work on self-control.

taking the time to watch your child’s behavior and impose appropriate rewards or punishments.

three basic facets of punishment: severity, speed, and consistency.

severity seems to matter remarkably little and can even be counterproductive:

The speed of the punishment is much more important,

By far the most important facet of punishment—and the most difficult one for parents—is consistency.

children react well when reprimands are delivered briefly, calmly, and consistently,

Nearly all experts agree that children need and want clear rules, and that being held accountable for obeying the rules is a vital feature of healthy development. But rules are helpful only if children know them and understand them, so the brighter the line, the better.

overjustification effect: Rewards turn play into work. More precisely, studies have shown that when people are paid to do things that they like to do, they start to regard the task as paid drudgery.

performing well for money is a fact of adult life, so getting money for grades is a reasonable preparation for it.

Money symbolizes value, and using it to pay for grades conveys to children the high value that society, and the family, places on school, particularly if the money is reserved for outstanding achievement.

If teenagers can help draw up the rules, they begin to see these as personal commitments instead of parental whims.

genes favoring impulsive behavior and undermining self-control, and his children might have inherited those same genes.

The evidence suggested that, as usual, children are shaped by a mixture of genetics and the environment.

there’s an obvious environmental factor affecting children in single-parent homes: They’re being watched by fewer eyes. Monitoring is a crucial aspect of self-control, and two parents can generally do a better job of monitoring.

A lack of adult supervision during the teenage years turned out to be one of the strongest predictors of criminal behavior.

The more that children are being monitored, the more opportunities they have to build their self-control.

Anything that forces children to exercise their self-control muscle can be helpful: taking music lessons, memorizing poems, saying prayers, minding their table manners, avoiding the use of profanity, writing thank-you notes.

The supposed ideal of a 36-24-36 figure translates to someone with size 4 hips, a size 2 waist, and a size 10 bust—someone, that is, with ample breasts but little body fat, who must be either a genetic anomaly or the product of plastic surgery.

When you detest what you see in the mirror, you need self-control not to start a crash diet.

counterregulatory eating,

nutritional catch-22: In order not to eat, a dieter needs willpower. In order to have willpower, a dieter needs to eat.

Desires and cravings are exceptionally intense to the depleted person.

“implementation intention,” which is a way to reduce the amount of time and effort you spend controlling your thoughts.

An implementation intention takes the form of if-then: If x happens, I will do y. The more you use this technique to transfer the control of your behavior to automatic processes, the less effort you will expend.

This specific if-then plan made their task more automatic, requiring less conscious mental effort, and therefore doable even when their willpower was already weakened.

at home you can reduce your portions by using small plates and thin glasses.

the central problem of self-control: Why is self-denial so difficult?

the difference between pleasure denied and pleasure postponed.

telling yourself I can have this later operates in the mind a bit like having it now. It satisfies the craving to some degree—and can be even more effective at suppressing the appetite than actually eating the treat.

Later rather than Never.

time to enjoy the anticipation.

setting up your life so that you have a realistic chance to succeed.

Don’t keep putting it off. Procrastination is an almost universal vice.

researchers have repeatedly failed to find a reliable link between procrastination and perfectionism.

impulsiveness, which shows up over and over in studies of procrastinators.

The procrastinators—as measured both on the questionnaire and by how late they turned in their papers—did worse by every academic measure: lower grades on their papers, lower scores on their midterm and final exams.

Exercising self-control ahead of the deadline seemed to take some sort of toll, perhaps by diverting glucose from the immune system.

Your supply of willpower is limited, and you use the same resource for many different things. Each day may start off with your stock of willpower fresh and renewed, at least if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast.

what matters is the exertion, not the outcome. If you struggle with temptation and then give in, you’re still depleted because you struggled. Giving in does not replenish the willpower you have already expended. All it does is save you from expending any more.

Do things seem to bother you more than they should?

try to conserve what’s left while anticipating the effects on your behavior. While you’re depleted, frustrations will bother you more than usual.

Your capacity for fairness and balanced judgment will suffer.

Lab researchers replenish this basic fuel by giving sugar-filled drinks because they work quickly, but it’s better to use protein.

Get some healthy food into your body, wait half an hour, and then the decision won’t seem so overwhelming.

One way to avoid the planning fallacy is to force yourself to think about your past.

All of us, whether or not we’re serious procrastinators, tend to have an optimistic bias toward our own work, so it makes sense to ask others to review our plans.

As you start working toward your goal, your brain will automatically economize on willpower expenditures in other ways.

Self-control will be most effective if you take good basic care of your body, starting with diet and sleep.