Most of our self-control problems aren’t as dramatic and clear-cut as classic addictions like nicotine and cocaine. Some of them are so subtly interwoven into our lives that we don’t think of them as self-control problems at all. For example, when I was a child, I had a short attention span. Actually, I still have it—it’s just that now they don’t call it a short attention span. They call it attention-deficit disorder. What these two terms have in common is a particular way of characterizing the problem. They make it sound like there’s a faculty people have—the faculty we call attention—and
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