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November 29, 2017 - January 23, 2018
doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby.
we forget about these strategies not because they don’t work, but because when we’re stressed, our brains persistently mis-predict what will make us happy.
she made a voice memo on her phone after class one evening, describing how good she felt after doing yoga.
We all have the tendency to believe self-doubt and self-criticism, but listening to this voice never gets us closer to our goals. Instead, try on the point of view of a mentor or good friend who believes in you, wants the best for you, and will encourag e you when you feel discouraged.
tempted to break your vow, and imagine a specific plan of action for not giving in.
We will be perfectly rational when everything is in theory, but when the temptation is real, the brain shifts into reward-seeking mode to make sure we don’t miss out.
This leads to bounded willpower—we have self-control until we need it.
The immediate reward triggers the older, more primitive reward system and its dopamine-induced desire. Future rewards don’t interest this reward system so much.
As soon as there is any distance between you and the temptation, the power of balance shifts back to the brain’s system of self-control.
In another version of the study, experimenters asked the students to make the choice without putting the rewards on the table.
Not being able to see the immediate reward made it more abstract and less exciting to the reward system.
It’s the “immediate” in immediate gratification that hijacks your brain and reverses your preferences.
Flip the rule to “Do ten minutes, then you can quit.”
“yes, but in ten minutes” reduced some of the panic and stress that kicked in when he said a flat-out “no” to his urge. This made it easier to wait, and a few times he even got distracted and forgot the impulse.
Most of the four-year-olds took what you and I would now recognize as the least effective strategy for delaying gratification: staring at the reward and imagining how it would taste.
How long a four-year-old waited in the marshmallow test predicted that child’s academic and social success ten years later.
The reward you start with is the one you want to keep.
when you start with the immediate reward (the $50 check in your hand) and consider the benefits of delaying gratification for a larger reward, it also feels like a loss.
Future-reward discounting drops dramatically when people think about the future reward first.
the best strategy for self-control is, essentially, to burn your ships.
Schelling believed that to reach our goals, we must limit our options. He called this precommitment.
the tempted self is an unpredictable and unreliable enemy.
“take steps to predict and constrain that self as if it were another person.”
This requires cunning, courage, an...
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We must study our tempted selves, see their weaknesses, and find a way to bind them to...
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For example, a program called “Freedom” (macfreedom. com) allows you to turn your computer’s Internet access off for a predetermined period of time, while “Anti-Social” (anti-social.cc) will selectively keep you off social networks and e-mail. I myself prefer “ProcrasDonate” (procrasdonate.com), which bills you for every hour you spend on time-wasting websites and donates the money to charity.
For example, if you want to coerce yourself to exercise, you could precommit by buying an expensive annual gym membership.
One reason this intervention works is that the participants are held accountable by someone who supports their goals. Is there someone you can share your goals with and call on for support when you’re feeling tempted?
In fact, a 2010 survey found that 34 percent of Americans had absolutely zero retirement savings,
When a friend became obese, a person’s own future risk of becoming obese increased by 171 percent.
The best way to strengthen your immune response to other people’s goals is to spend a few minutes at the beginning of your day thinking about your own goals, and how you could be tempted to ignore them.
The contagious goal was bigger than the goal to break a specific rule. They caught the goal to do whatever they wanted, rather than what they were supposed to do.
When we observe evidence of other people ignoring rules and following their impulses, we are more likely to give in to any of our own impulses.
Hearing about someone cheating on their taxes might make you feel freer to cheat on your diet.
Research shows that thinking about someone with good self-control can increase your own willpower.
The social epidemics spread through networks of mutual respect and liking, not the orderly network of a street grid.
It turns out that when we think about people we love, respect, and feel similar to, our brains treat them more like us than like not us.
The brain regions activated by self and mom are almost identical, showing that who we think we are includes the people we care about.
Because we include other people in our sense of self, their choices influence our choices.
People thought they acted for noble reasons, but the only belief that mattered was a far less altruistic “Everyone else is doing it.”
This is an example of what psychologists call social proof. When the rest of our tribe does something, we tend to think it’s a smart thing to do.
Believing that losing weight and exercising is what good Christians do is powerful social proof—far more motivating than getting a stern warning from a doctor after getting bad results on a cholesterol test.
“One night of heavy drinking can impair your ability to think abstractly for thirty days.”
this study suggests a new strategy for discouraging unhealthy behavior: Just convince people it’s the habit of a group they would never want to be a member of.
If we want people to have more willpower, we need to make them believe that self-control is the norm.
engage in vigorous exercise five times a week (the standard recommendation for health and weight loss).
“What a relief, I’m just like everyone else.”
In one study, homeowners who were told on their energy bill that they consumed less energy than the average home started to leave on the lights and turn up the thermostat.
When it comes to social proof, what we think other people do matters even more than what they actually do.
The best predictor of whether a student cheats is whether he believes other students cheat, not the severity of penalties or whether he thinks he will be caught.
