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Don’t! The secret of self-control
- robertk 17y agoAnother worldview changing article. I'd love to be a psychologist, but I'm not clever enough. Honestly, these guys are mind hackers. Finding unit tests for the brain.
- tjic 17y agoYou're looking at some of the most interesting research from one of the most clever guys and then generalizing and saying "these guys are super bright". The best folks in any field are super bright. I'm not impressed by 95% of psychologists (but then again, I'm not impressed by 85% of coders...).
- sfk 17y agoIf I'm not mistaken, the comment you responded to was highly sarcastic.
- beza1e1 17y agoFor a scientific article two things were lacking: How do they define "successful"? How big is the variance/standard deviation?
- silentbicycle 17y agoIt's a summary of academic research for the New Yorker. If you want statistics on the results, you'll probably need to consult the research itself, not a popular summary.
- sketerpot 17y agoIt would be nice if they gave a link to the research itself. This goes in general for all popular science news.
- timr 17y agoThe research spans multiple decades and research groups. It's not like the results are published neatly in a single article. If you really want to read the primary literature, you've got the name of the researcher and his university. PubMed is your friend.
- teej 17y agoI couldn't find Mischel's 1990 published findings anywhere online for free, but I did dig up this article which describes some of the data. http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:1ZRYswNI6dIJ:www.courseweb.uottawa.ca/epi6181/images/Delay_gratification.pdf+Predicting+adolescent+cognitive+and+self-regulatory+competencies+from+preschool+delay+of+gratification:+Identifying+diagnostic+conditions&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:1ZRYswNI6dIJ:www.coursew... In the follow up they looked at several factors: Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, sensitivity to rejection, overall functioning, educational attainment, drug use, ratings of self-esteem, and more. It looks like they checked the correlation of each factor separately. Besides experiment sample issues (which the linked document touches on) it looks the the experimenters were pretty rigorous in attaining valid results.
- agbell 17y agoI wonder if any of the 'Brain Gym' genre of games train this delay gratification? lumosity.com has games targeting attention but they aren't the games mentioned in the article.
- Alex3917 17y agoExecutive function is determined largely by the amount of self-directed play before age five. That's why electronic toys and baby videos are generally thought to be harmful. edit: I don't know much about Brain Gym, but Pamela Paul has a whole chapter in Parenting Inc. comparing the different ECE programs, which might answer your question.
- swombat 17y agoCould you define "self-directed play" for those of us who aren't 100% clear on its meaning?
- ekanes 17y agoSelf-directed play is where the child isn't playing according to "rules". Where there's no "right" or "wrong" way to play, and the child is making up their own game/world/etc as they go. Think "Lego" :)
- 0x47 17y agoSelf-directed play is simply kids playing on their own terms, making up games with their own rules, making up their own characters etc. You know.. being a Kid and playing with your imagination.
- badger7 17y agoPlay directed by the child, ie, the child sees a book next to a soft toy and chooses to look at the book, rather than being directed by a video saying "let's read a story now".
- agbell 17y agoAnswering my own question: Cognitive control, also known as executive processing and Executive function are I believe what this article is talking about. This game claims to train this ability ( but I cannot vouch for its effectiveness) http://games.lumosity.com/brain_shift.html http://games.lumosity.com/brain_shift.html
- biohacker42 17y agoDoes anyone here, like me, really appreciate Feynman's just the fact's style of writing? Most people describe it as eerily cold, but I love it. Articles like the this one on the other hand, while excellent, bury their valuable information under a lot of fluff. And most people like that kind of writing, but I just find it annoying. Good article, I just wish it was more direct.
- electromagnetic 17y agoTook a lot of self-control just to read through the damn thing!
- zvikara 17y agoOn the other hand, I could use some more self-control to do actual work instead of reading through HN.
- jamesbritt 17y agoI kept skipping ahead to get to the marshmallows.
- silentbicycle 17y agoConsider the source, though. People who place a high priority on dense, "just the facts" writing are probably going to read the research directly. This is intended to introduce the research to an audience that would find it interesting, but are unlikely to already comb through academic journals of psychological research. I find Oliver Sacks, Douglas Hofstadter, Stephen Pinker, etc. fascinating, but when I want the direct data (rather than commentary), I still go to primary sources. That's what they're for.
- ilitirit 17y agoOne of favourite pieces by Feynman is a critique of fields like psychology. http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
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- ambulatorybird 17y agoI've never had much trouble holding back -- it's pushing myself forward that's the hard part. Any tips on metacogitating my way out of that?
- badger7 17y agoIt's the secret to avoiding procrastination too - if you can't stop mulling over all the other things floating around your head, then don't - just start. The other things will be replaced fairly quickly with what you're trying to do, and there you go - you've distracted yourself from your distractions and are now being productive :)
- audionerd 17y agoRadiolab summarized the study in a 15 minute segment, if you lack the self-control to read the entire article :) http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/03/09/mischel’s-marshmallows/ http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/03/09/mischel’s-marshmal...
- boredguy8 17y agoOf course students who 'sit still' and 'do as their told' do better in an educational system which prioritizes conformity. The kid who decides to open the drawer to find the toys: that's the guy I want on my team. I'm more than willing to farm out grunt work to the 'successful' high delayers.
- silentbicycle 17y agoYou're mischaracterizing their argument. They're saying that people who are poor at resisting impulsive behavior tend to be less successful because they're more likely to get caught up in problems associated with poor impulse control. Credit card and gambling debt, drug addiction, getting in fights, etc. It's about people who fail since they consistently choose to spend time getting wasted or playing WoW rather than studying, practicing, or other things that pay off in the long-term. This isn't about conformity, because it specifically includes people who have trouble meeting their own goals.
- anigbrowl 17y agoIt's interesting. But (regarding parenting): "Have they established rituals that force you to delay on a daily basis? Do they encourage you to wait? And do they make waiting worthwhile?" In life, delaying gratification often pays off - but only to the extent that the provider of said gratification is competent and trustworthy. There are also times when it is genuinely better to take the money and run. Your bank, for example, has little interest in giving you a fair deal, but instead offers financial instruments with superficially attractive terms while burying numerous modifying clauses in the fine print. An employment contract from a major corporation can be similarly unfair. My first cubicle job came with an employment contract that asserted ownership of any intellectual property I produced during my term of employment. One example that springs to mind is Shuji Nakamura, who has been a major innovator in the field of LED diodes (specifically, he's the engineer who made high-intensity blue light available on the cheap, so if you've got a Blu-ray player you should thank him). For this, his grateful employers bestowed upon a bonus of...$180. He sued and eventually ended up getting $7 million.
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- pseale 17y agoThis sounds vaguely like the test given to Paul Atreides in Dune, testing to see whether he was Human or an animal.
- radu_floricica 17y agoDune is a ridiculously good book. I never understood why it's relatively obscure. Other then perhaps the fact that I tend to grit my teeth when I hear people talking (or making movies) about it with only superficial understanding.
- c00p3r 17y agoThat was called the yoga almost 3k years ago. I mean self-control (control of the thoughts and emotions) through behavioral exercises.
- aaronblohowiak 17y agoYoga is also not merely the physical practice (Hatha Yoga.) There are other distinct branches as well that focus on right action (karma yoga), the cultivation of mental discipline / devotion (raja yoga,) and the cultivation of knowledge (jnana yoga.)
- silentbicycle 17y agoYeah. Similarly, a big part of Buddhism is trying to be live mindfully, to avoid doing impulsive things that just lead to greater suffering. It's historically tended to get entangled with contemporary religious ideas as it spread throughout the world (not all Buddhists believe in reincarnation, etc.), but none of those are essential.
- maheshsingh 17y agoIndian Yoga is teaching us about importance of self-control also people can improve their self control through Yoga. People are getting benefited through yoga for self control from thousand of years. Whole concept of yoga is based upon self-control. This research is simply re-inventing the wheel. People who want to improve self-control should try Yoga for at-least couple of months.
- TFrancis 17y agoAgreed. Additionally, I found meditation was useful for increasing my self-control. Many types of yoga are focused on meditative practices but not all. I think these are just mind tricks (hacks?) and this jives with the research the article presented.
- comatose_kid 17y agoReally interesting. I think that most diets don't work because you're forced into thinking about what you eat (and what you're not supposed to). Perhaps the best diet involves changing your lifestyle so that you're doing things that remove your mind from thinking about eating.
- defen 17y agoSee "A Farewell to Alms" for a really interesting discussion of the rise of low time-preference individuals in medieval England, and the role this played in fomenting the Industrial Revolution. Short interview with the author here: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/08/10-questions-for-greg-clark.php http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/08/10-questions-for-greg-clark...
- noahlt 17y agoMischel's team found that they could teach tricks to underperforming kids, who would subsequently perform just as well as the originally patient ones. Does anyone here have good hacker-relevant tips for self-control? (For instance: when tackling a large problem, approach it bottom-up by starting with utility functions.)
- rokhayakebe 17y agoWhere in the world is it May 18th?
- Tichy 17y agoWhy newspapers are dying: because they could not adapt to the shortened attention spans of modern times and learn to write shorter articles. It was a little bit interesting, but way, way too long...
- jamesbritt 17y ago"Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it." Ah, one of my favorite four-letter words: "Just". You just add a second database to the system. You just write the slow parts in C. You just learn how to control your attention and thoughts.