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The best way to exercise self-control is not to exercise it at all
- beamatronic 6y agoIf I’m understanding this correctly, you need to control your self-control.
- oliverobscure 6y agoI don't think it's "control" so much, just "be aware" of it.
- hprotagonist 6y agoall things in moderation, including moderation.
- war1025 6y agoThis seems in line with both my personal experience and the "systems vs goals" approach advocated by Scott Adams. Build systems into your life that lead to desired outcomes naturally. Don't put yourself into situations that are likely to lead to bad outcomes. The easiest way to get results is to live a life that gives you the desired results by default.
- mmastrac 6y ago> [...] Scott Adams [...] Don't put yourself into situations that are likely to lead to bad outcomes. This is an unfortunate statement. Ironic that Scott Adams has basically tanked his own reputation outside the alt-right through a set of poor choices recently. Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet accounts on Reddit and Metafilter to pump his own image.
- war1025 6y agoBut he also has F-you money coming out his ears, so he can do pretty well whatever he wants. And his following is bigger than you might expect.
- suzzer99 6y agoSo is qanon's - it doesn't mean Adams isn't nuts.
- rdiddly 6y agoCalling him nuts is one of those cognition-enders. No need for further analysis if someone is just plain nutz amirite?
- scarface74 6y agoAnyone who admits they had sock puppets to defend himself is kinda nuts.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoGetting caught defending yourself online with multiple account makes you look bad and is petty, but it's not nuts. Admitting to something when there's prevailing evidence against you isn't nuts either. Almost all HNers have no clue what it's like to have people coming together in great numbers to talk bad about you (to say nothing of whether you "deserve" it). The guy can't even get away with marrying a younger consenting adult woman without being burned at the stake.
- scarface74 6y agoReally? An adult can’t handle random people saying mean things about them on the internet?
- teddyh 6y agoWas kinda nuts. Nine years ago. About whether using sockpuppets was remotely acceptable. On that specific forum, on that specific topic. OK, sure. Sockpuppet accounts for trolling used to be common on several niche forums on the internet (which is how this practice got a name), especially this many years ago. I could certainly see how someone could be confused about how sockpuppeting was or was not acceptable behavior on a specific forum. He might have thought (but I’m speculating here) that he was engaging with (i.e. trolling) the forum within the (semi-)established norm of behavior for that forum. Is that all the rope with which you would have him hanged? That stump is so short that you couldn’t even tie a knot with it. If Adams only had kept his observations about Trump to himself, none of this would be an issue. But no, now everybody’s gotta find those crucial six lines somewhere in all the things he’s ever written, and whenever someone mentions anything he’s ever said, especially if it’s not about Trump or about politics in any way, it must be overwhelmed with random lists of accusations, all of which are false, misleading, or ancient and irrelevant, or all three. Merely to thoroughly discredit anyone even remotely associated with Trump.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoAnd how is the reputation of the world-famous “mmastrac” faring these days? I bet he has valuable insight on this topic, let’s listen to what he has to say.
- rdiddly 6y agoOK people have begun commenting below, so have the courtesy to label your addenda with "edit" or the like, OK? [outside the alt-right] [Remember that this is the guy] etc.
- treeman79 6y agoHe has had decades of brilliant insight into how people, companies, and government work. People really need to start considering alternative view points. Like perhaps maybe he is right on a number of topics.
- hilbertseries 6y agoIn 2016 he said Trump would win in a landslide and there would be rioting. Trump lost the popular vote and won the electoral college by a margin of less than 100k votes in three states. This year he tweeted that Republicans will be hunted, telling his followers that they will be dead in a year. We’re supposed to take him seriously?
- ggreer 6y agoWeren't everyone's predictions wrong in 2016? I remember news organizations like the New York Times saying that Clinton had a 91% chance of winning the election.[1] 538's Nate Silver said that Clinton had a 99% chance of winning.[2] Scott Adams has many faults, but his 2016 election prediction fared better than pretty much everyone else. Remember he predicted a "win against Clinton in a tight election" in August of 2015.[3] 1. http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/presidential-forecast-updates/newsletter.html http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/presidential-... 2. Silver also noted that such a probability was too high considering the margin for error in polls, calling into question his model: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/06/nate_silver_forecasts_showing_clinton_with_99_chance_of_winning_dont_pass_commonsense_test.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/06/nate_silv... 3. https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/13/clown-genius/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/13/clown-genius/
- heavenlyblue 6y agoWhat you said doesn’t refute that the guy isn’t brilliant indeed
- treeman79 6y ago
- pl0x 6y agoScott Adams has fueled many conspiracies on the alt-right, COVID conspiracies, and recently has show his true colors as a racist, claiming he got his show pulled because he was white. Naval Ravikant appears frequently on his show and also fueled COVID conspiracies.
- 127 6y agoYes, COVID conospiracies like: masks work.
- rdtwo 6y agoPeople can be brilliant in some areas and absolutely batshit in others. I think that is the norm not the exception actually. If you discount their brilliance because of occasional batshittery you’ll miss out on a lot of insightful stuff.
- oh_sigh 6y agoHe's racist because he thinks he was the victim of racism? I'm curious what you think about black BLM protesters?
- coldtea 6y ago>has show his true colors as a racist, claiming he got his show pulled because he was white You can claim/believe that without being a racist. It's enough that those calling the shots (which show to pull) are racist or too pre-occupied about race...
- tome 6y ago> Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet accounts on Reddit and Metafilter I don't remember that. Could you link some supporting evidence to remind me?
- teddyh 6y agohttps://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_scandal/ https://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_s... (Link courtesy of Pxtl¹) This was nine years ago, though. If he hasn’t done anything comparable since, I think he ought to get some slack by now. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667728
- tome 6y agoThanks!
- coldtea 6y ago>Ironic that Scott Adams has basically tanked his own reputation outside the alt-right through a set of poor choices recently. Or in other words, stated opinions that disagree with yours / polite Californian dinner talk.
- dtech 6y agoQuote from him on women > The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. [1] Yes, very California bubble to think that women are equal and not like children or mentally handicapped [1] https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/ https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/
- teddyh 6y agoThat’s yet another quote taken wildly out of context. Context explained here: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/03/27/im-a-what/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/03/27/im-a-what/
- wombatmobile 6y agoHe says: > But perhaps I can summarize my viewpoint so you can understand why I’m such a misogynist asshole douche bag. Here’s my view in brief: > You can’t expect to have a rational discussion on any topic that has an emotional charge. Emotion pushes out reason. That is true for all humans, including children, men, women, and people in every range of mental ability. The path of least resistance is to walk away from that sort of fight. Men generally prefer the path of least resistance. The exception is when men irrationally debate with other men. That’s a type of sport. No one expects opinions to be changed as a result.
- teddyh 6y agoI would not normally try to summarize a long complex explanation, but I would think that this section would also be crucial to include in any summary: > First, some background. A few weeks ago I asked readers of this blog to suggest a topic they would like to see me write about. The topic that got the most up votes, by a landslide, was something called Men’s Rights. Obviously the fix was in. Activists had mobilized their minions to trick me into giving their cause some free publicity. In retrospect, the Men’s Rights activists probably should have done some homework on me before hatching this scheme. > As you can see, I thought it would be funny to embrace the Men’s Rights viewpoint in the beginning of the piece and get those guys all lathered up before dismissing their entire membership as a “bunch of pussies.”
- teddyh 6y ago> a set of poor choices recently. Care to give a link? Last time someone actually came through with links to their allegations about Scott Adams, all of them were false, misleading, taken out of context, etc., except one: the old sockpuppet incident from nine years ago.
- astura 6y agoI mean this is pretty... Uh, unbelievable https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1277411944459153408 https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/12774119444...
- mmastrac 6y agoThe "Republicans will be hunted" tweets are even worse: https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1278316325044056064?lang=en https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127831632504405606... https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1278309835453284357?lang=en https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127830983545328435...
- arkis22 6y agoThey will however be shamed into being less than human for lacking empathy. Like the past XXXXX years...
- teddyh 6y agoBy hounding him in this way, you’re making his point for him.
- mmastrac 6y ago"Hounding him" by bringing up his history on an unrelated forum?
- teddyh 6y agoHounding him by, whenever his name is mentioned in any context, bringing forward example after supposed example of how he is somehow not competent enough to ever be allowed to have a receptive audience. Even though this very example you brought up is a prediction of just this kind of thing?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- saeranv 6y agoYes. For those that doubt this, consider: 1. He's one of those people that thinks Trump is playing 4D chess. 2. He 'successfully' predicted Trump would win the election, and has subsequently fooled himself into thinking he has some special insight into social dynamics and interpreting Trump's 4D chess that allows him to continue making accurate predictions. I'm sure the more predictions he makes, the closer he'll get to a 50% success rate (binomial theorem) - as do most 'expert' political prognosticators who aren't using statistical models but going off their intuition. I wonder if he'll figure out what's happening. When I read his writings, I just see an incredibly naive approach to prediction, ignorant of probability, that is primarily informed by the fact that he's a Republican who therefore is biased towards favorably interpreting Republican odds.
- war1025 6y agoTo be fair, he's been predicting for two years now that Kamala Harris would be on the Democratic ticket. That is maybe nothing special, but I never heard of her, and she was a garbage fire when she campaigned here in Iowa. So I thought that was noteworthy.
- arkis22 6y agoI urge you to distinguish good advice from the people that say it. It might benefit you.
- BeetleB 6y agoI don't think this comment adds anything of value to this conversation. Lots of horrible people have said wise things, and lots of great people have said horrible things. Their reputation and the merit of a given thing that was said is uncorrelated. I mean, there's a long list of people who said things people find offensive: Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman, Barack Obama, William Shockley, Freeman Dyson, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. It takes fairly little maturity to not let that take away from the insightful comments they have made.
- watwut 6y agoThe "horrible" or dumb things you said are absolutely relevant toward whether it is reasonable to assume you know what you talk about. In particular, the offensive things Stallman said or did are absolutely relevant when he would spew quotes about relationships or people. It is different when he talks about philosophy of open source. But on those particular topics, he is not being insightful as he is dumb as brick o that topic.
- dreeves 6y agoBack in 2015 we (Beeminder) wrote a blog post praising Scott Adam's "systems vs goals" insight which I still stand by: https://blog.beeminder.com/systems/ https://blog.beeminder.com/systems/ Excerpt (quoting Adams): If you do something every day, it's a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. […] Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. Also related: SMART goals.
- teddyh 6y agoIf you want it from Adams himself, here’s a link to a blog post: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/ Alternatively, as a ~5-minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw
- agumonkey 6y agoI guess there's a bit of abstract economy behind this. A good context is worth a lot of efforts. Just like a clean space, a nicely organized workshop, a well tuned chair desk keyboard.. Thing is it's hard to create that context. Maybe copying good ideas or joining forces..
- dboreham 6y agoThe Big Lebowski doctrine.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- minikites 6y agoI used to be significantly overweight and the advice in the first box of the flow chart was the most helpful for me. I avoid buying tempting food items in the store to begin with and I have often eaten one or two cookies that have been sent to me as gifts and thrown the rest away so I wouldn't eat them.
- suzzer99 6y agoSame here. When I was looking for jobs, companies would always tout their snack room. To me that was a huge impediment that I'd have to fight against every day.
- verroq 6y agoMaybe the incentive should be extra pay for not using the snack room.
- sukilot 6y agoThe critical point -- which applies to packrats at well, is that some things have negative value and are better destroyed than used. We know this for obvious toxins like smoke, but less often know this for sugar and junk gear.
- Tarsul 6y agoI use a box that I can lock with a timer (called kitchensafe), which means I have no chance (except breaking the whole thing) to get to my cookies (in my case all kinds of sweets) after i set the timer (which i usually set after taking a few things). Really helps with exactly this type of problem. Although I had to buy another one for the office a few weeks ago... (I gained pounds during covid anyway, so it's not the be all end all.. but it helps me)
- skinnymuch 6y agoHow did the old children marshmallow test get through to the final draft. It comes right before the author relates a specific thing to his own study. The marshmallow test original results and thoughts have largely been seen as incorrect. Wealth was the main factor. It can relate to the title, but still the incorrect info shouldn’t be there.
- suzzer99 6y agoThe marshmallow test makes no sense to me. You're telling me I get one marshmallow now, or I get one more if I wait 30 minutes and have to sit here bored looking at the one marshmallow I could have already eaten? The reward just isn't there. It seems like it measures kids who want to please the researcher.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe kids do have to sit in the room whether or not they eat the first marshmallow, but I agree that there are quite a few explanations for what it's measuring beyond self-control.
- Apocryphon 6y agoSo the incentive isn't even something like two marshmallows?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> It seems like it measures kids who want to please the researcher There are the kids who immediately eat the marshmallow. And then there are those who try not to eat it and fail. The latter is relevant. The former is not.
- praxulus 6y agoI don't think the claimed findings of the marshmallow test were relevant here, just the fact that some kids managed to avoid eating the marshmallow while others did not.
- detaro 6y ago
- ryanmarsh 6y agotl;dr David Goggins is right.
- rdiddly 6y ago"perhaps you’ll upset your kids if you throw away the cookies" is given as an example of the situation being outside your control. (Thankfully this author is apparently still slaving away in grad school and probably doesn't yet have time for this ruinous approach to raising kids.) Applying the same strategy to that situation is simple: Just don't let the kids know there are cookies in the house! Or better yet, don't buy cookies (i.e. the same answer as for your earlier 20-something solo non-kid-having Netflixing self).
- coldtea 6y agoEven better, learn its ok to sometimes say "no" to your kids whims.
- NeutronStar 6y agoConsistency is key. If the kid ask you something and you say no, don't change your mind later. If it was no, it should still be no. Same thing for yes. If you say yes then change your mind, your kid will probably complain.
- travisp 6y agoNothing in the article suggests that you should not say no to your kids -- it just says that your kids will be upset about you saying no, which is probably beyond your control and therefore is a factor that will weigh in your decision. Your response seems to me like criticizing the whole article by saying "Even better, learn to have the willpower to just not eat the damn cookies".
- rdiddly 6y agoYeah that's intervening at the last step in the chain, analogous to the example where you were choosing between your eating them or not. Hey that's weird, the same rules work for kids as for adults!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dreeves 6y agoRelated: https://blog.beeminder.com/willpower/ https://blog.beeminder.com/willpower/ Excerpt: Here’s what I mean when I say there’s no such thing as willpower, despite having just defined it. Paraphrasing Laplace, I can explain all behavior simply in terms of responding to incentives. You want this whole pie in your body right now, and also you want to be two sizes smaller by next summer. Conflicting preferences are normally no big deal. You just, y’know, weigh them, make your tradeoffs, and reach a decision. But when the preferences apply at different timescales (pie now, thinner later) humans suffer from a massive irrationality which philosophers call akrasia and economists call dynamic inconsistency and normal people call … being stupidly short-sighted, or in the case of time management: procrastination. Commitment devices are a way to change your own incentives so that willpower is a non-issue. They make your short-term and long-term incentives line up. There are many less drastic things you can do as well. PS: Also the whole "willpower is like a muscle" theory, known as Ego Depletion, failed to replicate.
- sukilot 6y agoThe beeminder theory is undermining by the very concept of money, especially credit cards, which removes the short term cost of losing money. A simpler way to get the same result is to make the future present by surrounding yourself with pictures of your goals.
- dreeves 6y agoAh, I don't agree but that's an interesting point that I could see being true for some people. I think mostly there's plenty of short-term cost to derailing a Beeminder goal and getting the alert "we are now charging you $X". Not as good as handing over cash but still pretty good! I definitely disagree that surrounding yourself with pictures of your goals is comparable. I mean, it can't hurt and maybe for some people it's enough, but for me personally, for example, things like that just fade into the background for me and lose their effectiveness. A commitment device (monetary or otherwise) doesn't let that happen!
- TACIXAT 6y agoJust looked beeminder up. If anyone else doesn't know it's goal tracking and contracts where you pay them if you fail. I'd feel a lot better about that if they were doing something positive with the money, like donating.
- viburnum 6y agoI thought all these self-control and willpower studies have been recently debunked.
- emadabdulrahim 6y agoI thought so too. This article provides nothing new IMO.
- jldugger 6y agoThey have. Or at least, replication studies have called the publication into question. And the marshmallow study the article cites is questionable. Frankly, the whole edifice of psych research is built on top of a statistical lie that only 1 in 20 experiments will fail to replicate, when it's more like 1 in 3: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/08/27/this-is-what-happened-when-psychologists-tried-to-replicate-100-previously-published-findings/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/08/27/this-is-what-happened-w...
- agumonkey 6y agoWho uses the trick to divert impulses into other ones ? your brain seems to seek stimuli.. hunger is just one source, you can clean, jog, challenge yourself somewhere else. Few times I did that I was surprisingly effective (and the original impulse disappeared in an instant)
- sukilot 6y agoThe title is misleading as usual. The article is about removing temptation being a better strategy than exercising self-control in the face of temptation (This is then "cultural/religious conservative morality" theory for protecting against immoral behavior). Judaism calls it "building a fence around the boundary of the law".
- hinkley 6y agoI don’t think we’ve begun to appreciate the bottleneck that our short term memory places on our ability not just to accomplish things but to Reason. Being preoccupied with one distraction is like having a bucket in your foot. Every additional handicap - being tired, irritable, distracted by the environment, piles on top with a multiplier. It makes us rash, or stupid, or both, I suspect we know this subconsciously, and it’s cheaper to just entertain the preoccupation and get it out of your head. Building up patterns, habits that keep such things off of your radar is costly in the short term but cheaper in the long term. That problem rarely ends up hanging out in working memory.
- adrianmonk 6y agoI think one barrier to applying this advice is we tend to look down upon the idea of avoiding temptation, but we praise the idea of resisting it. Resisting temptation requires strength. So it is viewed as a virtue in and of itself. There is a heroic struggle. Avoiding temptation is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness. The implication is you're only avoiding it because you can't resist it. Almost like running away from a fight instead of facing your enemy. Ultimately, I think it's more constructive to employ both strategies. You need to develop the ability to resist temptation because there are times when you cannot avoid it. But there is no sense in sabotaging your success by dealing with temptation when you don't need to.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoIt makes for a boring story when the married man decides to go home instead of hang out with the cute office girl after work, but it sure is the most effective way to resist temptation. But yes, we must also be able to resist when we find ourselves in a situation that we cannot avoid.
- afterburner 6y ago.... you assuming the cute girl's interested?
- SubiculumCode 6y agoIm assuming nothing. You do that behavior enough times, eventually something will happen.
- tryauuum 6y agoReminds me of how people praise a person who quit smoking, but do not do the same for a person who never tried smoking. I wonder if it will ever change.
- searchableguy 6y agoPeople absolutely praise others who never tried smoking but mostly when they have a person smoking in the family, read something about bad effect of smoking or other similar context.
- jameslk 6y ago> In 2007, the American psychologist Roy Baumeister put forward what has become the most influential psychological model of self-control. His strength model likens willpower to a muscle. Ego depletion, the premise this article is based upon, has had a lot of issues with reproducibility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_controversy_and_conflicting_meta_analyses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_...
- yamrzou 6y agoThe article is not based on that premise, it is proposing an alternative model instead: "the process model of self-control".
- aaronchall 6y ago> Look on the bright side, at least it was fat-free milk. This seems like a bad presumption. I suspect skim milk may have lead our hypothetical binger to drink more of it and eat more cookies. Whole milk is known to be more filling. [1] And I believe it's the healthier option: > In the past, whole milk was considered to be unhealthy because of its saturated fat content, but recent research does not support this recommendation. [2] [1] https://www.eatthis.com/skim-milk-vs-whole-milk/ https://www.eatthis.com/skim-milk-vs-whole-milk/ [2] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/whole-vs-skim-milk#section2 https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/whole-vs-skim-milk#sect...
- scarface74 6y agoSpeaking of a commitment device -> HN’s own noprocast feature. I’ll turn it on when I know I need to be doing something useful for an extended period of time or I just need to take a break. I can still read stories on my RSS feed and if I really want to see the comments I can open a private browsing window. But, I can’t respond.
- emadabdulrahim 6y agoPerhaps I'm the only one who thought the article was going to suggest eating the entire dozen cookies in one go until I'm disgusted with myself, then I'll stop.
- jgilias 6y agoI've found two approaches that seem to work quite well, especially when both are exercised. 1. Brainwash yourself. Taking the cookie example this would mean brainwashing yourself about the evils of sugar to the point that you really don't want the cookies anymore. This has to be consistent though, we're very good at forgetting uncomfortable things. 2. Building beneficial habits. If there's something that takes willpower to do, try building a habit of doing it. Takes around 40 days to achieve, and there are plenty of apps that can help. Once a habit is set though, the activity takes no willpower whatsoever. It's just something you do.
- mettamage 6y agoI agree with 1. that works for me as well. With regards to 2. that has never worked for me by itself, unfortunately. What I do instead is to find a way to be intrinsically motivated. For example, with exercise I notice that the gain in alertness feels like drinking coffee. So I now tell myself to drink coffee (and by that I mean exercise), that really works well in my particular case and makes me intrinsically motivated to exercise as the alertness gained by exercise is its own reward. Though, I do need the right setup for this, I'm currently house sitting and I'm not exercising because I don't have my weights. So how habit formation for me does help is that the more I practice a routine, the easier it is to execute. Which is why I'm not exercizing right now as I'd need to do body weight exercises and I'm used to weight exercises.
- agumonkey 6y agoAnd related, a sense of benefit. You have to listen to the right parts of your mind.
- tlb 6y agoHow do you avoid side-effects of brainwashing yourself? Like being more vulnerable to believing other things that aren’t true? Or increased tendency to see issues as black and white?
- elwell 6y agoMisread the title as a suggestion to not exercise!
- ribs 6y agoAvoid staring at a big plate of cookies if I want to avoid eating them. This is not news.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoThose who are married (and want to stay that way) follow this advice. If you don't want to cheat, don't put yourself in a situation where you will encounter temptation. Temptation is best beaten by not giving it a chance to tempt you.
- mlazos 6y agoThis kind of approach has generally worked for me but I take it a little further. I’ve gone by this adage that “a little bit each day” is better than doing a lot in a single day with a few days off. For instance with exercise (Running) instead of saying no to doing it I say ok maybe half the distance. And as a result it turns into a habit which I think is the single most important tool we have to improve ourselves. It’s kind of taking this situational approach and applying it every day. Another example from my life is soda. I read a lot about the negative effects sugar has on my body and as a result I feel guilty when I buy it, this is another way to motivate myself into a habit of “not buying soda” I started to buy less and now when it isn’t even available my laziness prevents me from leaving the house to go get it :) this is really similar to another comment that said “create systems” where the inevitable outcome is your goal, and I find parallels between this “system” idea and culture in general. Culture is what can drive large groups of people to desirable outcomes. This is as if we apply having a good “culture” within ourselves.
- rocqua 6y agoA thing I read a long time ago that really encapsulates this recently came up in my mind again. If you want to get better, work on your B-game, not your A-game. The goal is not to excel even harder on days that are good. The goal is to move up the baseline performance. This will probably lift up your A-game as well. But more importantly it gives you a base to build on. It stops me from over-reaching. It stops me from being disappointment most of the time because I don't reach my lofty goal. Instead, it gives meaningful improvement, and many small successes.
- austincheney 6y agoIf you narrowly define willpower as impulse control the article and many comments here are spot on, but that’s not what willpower is. Willpower is better defined as presence. More specifically it is a knowledge of self in the present. For example high willpower in the cerebellum allows awareness without a separate cognitive effort of where are your hands and feet are right now and what they are doing. Impulse control in the cognitive sense of desire regulation suggested by the article is a limited example of cognitive self-awareness and possibly thought of as deliberation. In that sense impulse control is just one of many benefits of increased willpower. Increased willpower has many benefits from increased motor-coordination, increased effectiveness of interpersonal engagement, career management, and even data/trend analysis. Willpower is perhaps the defining characteristic of perceived intelligence bias in the absence of a formal intelligence measure. See volition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volition_(psychology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volition_(psychology)
- asimovfan 6y agoWhat is mindfulness (smrti)? It is non-forgetting by the mind (cetas) with regard to the object experienced. Its function is non-distraction. - Asanga, from Abhidharmasamuccaya
- djur 6y agoHow is "high willpower in the cerebellum" measured?
- austincheney 6y agoProbably similarly to any other motor coordination based cognitive activity, but starting from a resting position.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago>Research in my own lab and others suggests that, if you want to improve your self-control, what you should do instead is focus on proactively reducing, rather than reactively overpowering temptation. Fortunately, there are several ways and opportunities to do this. Am I the only one who has, many times, encountered people who say "I don't buy junk food because if I do I'll end up eating it?" This is one of my gripes with psychology articles/self help books. So so many topics are simple 'revelations' that many of us have figured out by the time we are 20. Can't eat a cookie if you don't have any cookies. I've read some good psychology books ("Thinking fast and slow" was great), but most of the others I've read I could have have read the one page summary and realized I don't need to read it.
- PaulStatezny 6y agoThis is definitely true of the "self help" genre. A concept that has a real kernel of wisdom and can be expressed in a few pages often gets blown out of proportion into an entire "framework".
- labster 6y ago> This is one of my gripes with psychology articles/self help books. So so many topics are simple 'revelations' that many of us have figured out by the time we are 20. Can't eat a cookie if you don't have any cookies. I recall Scott Alexander talking about this on one of the SSC posts -- can't remember which -- about the fact that people miss developmental milestones for reasons. And you can ask the question: What developmental milestones am I missing? Or: which cognitive tools do I need for my toolbox? It's good to teach things that "you should already know", because maybe you're one of today's lucky 10000.
- dreeves 6y agoVoila: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-milestones-are-you-missing/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-mil... https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
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- Al-Khwarizmi 6y agoFunny how this coincides almost point to point with what religions have been doing for centuries or millennia. Situational strategies: temptation with the opposite sex? Segregate education by sex, make women wear burkas, forbid shorts, etc. Distraction: "if you feel tempted, pray/read the Bible/think about God" is a very common religious tip. Reappraisal: reminding yourself of the consequences of sin, confession, atonement. Not defending any of that (I'm not even religious), but I just find the coincidences interesting. Are psychologies reinventing things that religions have known for centuries?
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago> Not defending any of that (I'm not even religious), but I just find the coincidences interesting. Are psychologies reinventing things that religions have known for centuries? Take it a step further. Most of this is common sense. There's a reason a lot of religious from different areas have similar ideals - it comes from man.
- arkanciscan 6y agothe eighteenth-century essayist Samuel Johnson. When a friend urged him “ to take a little wine,” Dr. Johnson explained, “I can’t drink a little , child; therefore I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.”
- rmoriz 6y agoA personal anecdote: I'm seriously obese and all diets and habitual changes to cut calorie intake failed except doing strict OMAD (one meal a day, 23:1). For me dealing with food in just one (1) meal/sitting a day is way easier than cutting meal sizes and incredients 5+ times a day. I also "know" that I will be sated 1 time per day, so no prolonged hunger phase anxiety. "Opportunity makes the thief" so just limit the opportunities. So to speak "marshmallows are secured" in any case, except that over time I learned that high carb foods/sweets will make me hungry much earlier again. I'm sticking to this for 374 days as of today and lost ~44kgs/97lbs with regular medical support of my GP (recent blood work was really great).
- arkitaip 6y agoThat's great to hear. Really wishing you the best on this.
- medymed 6y agoAlso strongly agree with this. Never used to skip a meal, rarely used to exercise. Now most days I only eat dinner and often exercise beforehand. Would not have thought such a metabolic schedule would be realistic. On days when I have to eat breakfast/brunch/lunch for social reason I notice a 'food is around, I better eat it' urge afterward all day long.
- smabie 6y agoAlso maybe I'm weird, but eating one meal a day makes me feel really great. I feel like being slightly hungry (or at least not full) throughout the day makes me more productive and mentally sharper. Only after I've finished my work for the day at around 7-9pm do I then eat a big meal. It feels like I just lost 15 IQ points right after a meal. I also get kind of sleepy and unmotivated after. The meal is also a great way of demarcating work. Before I eat, I'm working. After, I'm chilling. Simple as that.
- Swizec 6y ago> It feels like I just lost 15 IQ points right after a meal. I also get kind of sleepy and unmotivated after. That’s the large meal effect. Small meals work better for me and I get sluggish and mentally slow when I’m hungry. As soon as I eat, I perk up and have lots of energy. But I’m also at 11% or so of bodyfat so maybe my body is just less willing to dip into reserve energy stores.
- ineedasername 6y agoThis was based (in part) on Angela Duckworth's work-- approach with great skepticism. She over simplified. Her Grit model is a good example. Grit is an awful metric that tries to boil down complex and independent behaviors to a single number. And the measurement tools are short 8 or 12 question assessments. In my experience the results are meaningless. (Source: I conducted a study of a population & their success at a task that takes 2 years. The result? Grit had no predictive value. Others have been equally unable to obtain results.) In this article, her model of self-control is both too complex and over simplified at the same time. The last 3 stages-- attentional, appraisal, response-- are presented as 3 discrete phases. In reality, these often blur together into a single split-second decision. The proposed solutions to each stage are laughable: Instead of sitting staring at cookies, read book! Instead of thinking about how good they taste, tell yourself they look old! (you just bought them) Instead of eating the cookies, don't eat the cookies! Ridiculous.
- stekern 6y agoShe may be oversimplifying certain aspects, and the examples may not be that practical, but my main take away from the article was that it can be advantageous to shift focus from taking control (by sheer force of will) in a situation where you've already succumbed to some kind of temptation, to avoid ending up in those kinds of situations by taking comparatively easier preventive measures earlier in the cycle.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoOne approach that has helped me with weight is greatly reducing the calories in beverages. When in my 20s, I drank whole milk, full sugar soft drinks, coffee with sugar & cream, sweetened iced tea. Over time, I graduated from whole milk to 2%, then 1% then non-fat. That took about a year. I went from full sugar to diet sodas then found that fresh lime juice and carbonated mineral water was immensely satisfying. I dropped the sweetener from iced tea and added more lemon. Dropped the sugar in coffee and made a go a the cream, but so far, I still prefer it with cream. It'd be a bit of work to figure out how much I might weigh if I hadn't reduced it that much, but likely 20 pounds or so?
- tracer4201 6y agoI’ll share my story... Just a couple years ago, I weighed 25lbs less. I could bench press 200lbs, although I only weighed ~170lbs. I could do 10 pull ups with a super wide grip with a belt on my waste and two 45lb plates hanging off that belt. As I’ve progressed further in my career, my priorities have shifted to the detriment of my health. With COVID, I stopped working out completely and began eating garbage. I went back to the gym two weeks ago and could hardly bench press 135lbs. After getting married, my spouse purchases foods that I previously never ate before. Genetically, she’s inclined to be more naturally fit. On the other hand, I have to massively cut carbs and do cardio to avoid forming love handles. So with all that extra stuff in our pantry and the stress I now have from work, I naturally grab potato chips and whatever else to call my nerves (not that it really helps buts it’s immediate comfort)
- kubanczyk 6y agoNo worries. Firstly, you are being honest with yourself. Secondly, you've got some of the causes identified already. Thirdly: > Just a couple years ago... ... that's a well-known phenomenon called: getting old. Fourthly: > I went back to the gym two weeks ago ... aaaand you're all set - just keep it up now. It doesn't matter if you bench 135lbs or 90lbs. Frankly, after a certain age it's one step forward two steps back, all the way. Just know: you'll be on a bit of a slope from now on. Observe that the work you put into it is still paying off anyhow. It's encouraging, ain't it? Best of luck to you.
- BeetleB 6y agoYou can get chin up bars to install at your home - without needing screws. I heartily recommend them. I bought them late last year and now that I work from home, they're awesome. I can take small breaks during my work day and just use them. Time that would simply have been wasted had I been in the office.
- Enginerrrd 6y agoOne thing I've found helpful when there's junk food around: mentally remove it from the list of items you consider to be edible food. Abstain completely, don't try and regulate. This really changes my foraging behavior and I start trying to get creative with vegetables and stuff.
- sukilot 6y agoThe author of this article appears to be a philosopher specializing in philisophy and ethics of University culutre. It's easy to see why a Provost might want him gone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frodeman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frodeman
- anoniuyiu33412 6y agoThis is a so millenial take on self-control that I cannot help to comment about it. Old school resilience and persistance is what you will miss all the way into "I will do as I please to do things". Not good. Many, many things require years to be built. For example, if you want to study medicine, you're up for maybe 10-15 years of hard training, long hours of dedication, most certainly you won't see any "light at the end of the tunnel" before a decade into the challenge. But also most certainly you will have the impulse to just throw away all your efforts, not one, but dozens of times, but, if you remain commited to your own path and true to what you would really want to do in life, you will get to the end. How far in similar challenges would you think a person with a "lets go to whatever direction I want to go "right now" " approach?, will get? Most certainly not the astronaut, highly trained all kind of professionals (scientists, military specialists, even politicians), type.
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- theonemind 6y agoSome people have iron self discipline--they simply make a decision, or will themselves to something, and if it lies within their power in any way, it gets done, end of story. I sort of did myself in my mid 20s for a few years, but I can't really explain it. I'd sort of like to see the psychology of that. Even having experienced it, I still can't entirely explain it. (I used to meditate for 2 hours a day in that time period, but ...cause or effect? I don't know.)
- tus88 6y agoPsychology is not science, just an excuse to sell books with culturally provocative titles.
- yesenadam 6y agoI can resist everything except temptation. – Lord Darlington, in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. Some other great lines from the same play: Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it. My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. [What it a cynic?] A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
- waihtis 6y agoThis is why I do keto. There are no cravings, no hunger spikes; After about the 3rd week, I haven't had a physical itch for anything sugary (it went away after the 3rd day, but kept mildly lingering for the first three weeks.) It's extremely effortless to keep kcal intake between 1500-2000. It becomes such a natural flow that no discipline is needed to keep it up. And if you're wondering, before this I used to be what can be accurately described as a "food extremist."
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoFood extremist in what sense?
- waihtis 6y agoMajor junk food and sugar addictions.
- renewiltord 6y agoInteresting. Isn't this the ego depletion thesis? I recall that later evidence has meant we should reduce priors on the existence of this effect to very low. Unrelatedly, if you want to maximize weight loss, use appropriate pharmaceuticals.
- waihtis 6y ago> Unrelatedly, if you want to maximize weight loss, use appropriate pharmaceuticals. ...But do a cost-benefit analysis first.
- ubertoop 6y agoThis becomes much more difficult if you want to cut down on a habit, but not cut it out completely. Take video games. Sure, you could throw out your Playstation and the temptation is no longer there. But what if you want to play just 1 hour a day, instead of 5? How doe you remove the temptation for most of the day, but allow it to be there for part of it? Gotta get more creative I guess. Work somewhere else. Or something...
- b3kart 6y agoDisconnect the console and put it away on some remote shelf. Make it more difficult to act on impulse, while still being able to play if you _really_ want to. Sticking to 1hr at a time is more tricky...
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI have a problem with over-eating of calorie-dense foods such as bread and sugar-containing food-like products. If they are in front of me or accessible, I can rarely resist, because my body (designed for food scarcity and occasional abundance) wants to eat it all. The easiest solution I have found to this is just not to bring anything like that into my living area, so that I am not tempted. If I come across it in my day, I may be tempted and succumb, but I make sure that I don't carry it with me.
- 082349872349872 6y agoSimilar results, without any psychological approach, are in a meat processing industry safety guide: https://www.ekas.ch/download.php?id=7869 https://www.ekas.ch/download.php?id=7869 The cover page says "accidents are not happenstance". ("Unfall – kein Zufall!") p.8 shows the strong correlation between workplace safety scores and accident rate. p.19 ranks various safety measures from most effective to least, with a mnemonic "STOP" that works also in english. S - (most effective) Substitution. Use completely different processes or materials so the safety issue can't occur. T - Technical measures. Make the workplace safe for the worker (via "idiotproofing") O - Organisational measures (education, safety rules and checks) P - (least effective) Personal protective measures. Rely on the worker to make the workplace safe. (via their own efforts and equipment) With that in mind, I'd say TFA wants to observe that T is more effective than P, adding a pyschological interpretation.
- Bellamy 6y agoBest advice I ever had was to install the Habinator app and start executing my plan.
- lasky 6y agoI was motivated to quit smoking cigarettes because the girl I started seeing said they were gross. The way I quit was by purchasing a brand new pack, unwrapping it, and placing them in the glove-box of the truck I worked out of all day, doing construction. I believed as long as they were always in close reach and I could still resist, then I could likely resist all other times. It worked.
- stephen_cagle 6y ago“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.” ― St. Augustine
- amoitnga 6y agoI wish these kinds of articles had tldr. does it really need that much text to communicate the point.