Complex Numbers

Lead Me Not Into Temptation, For I Can Get There On My Own

Well, Christmas is over, which means New Year's Day is coming up fast. Which means, for many people, resolutions. Which means failing at them at a breakneck pace.

So today's blurgle is about self-control. Or, rather, lack thereof.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/3/13486940/self-control-psycholog...

The myth of self-control

Psychologists say using willpower to achieve goals is overhyped. Here’s what actually works.

Incidentally, I am so not looking forward to dealing with the gym after next Tuesday. It'll be stuffed full of amateurs taking up space on the machines, and I expect to spend as much time waiting for a damn weight machine as I do exercising. Maybe for the first two weeks of January, I'll go at like 2 am. It's a 24 hour gym and even the most hardcore resolutionists probably won't swarm the place until 5.

After those two weeks, it'll be less crowded. I figure by my birthday in mid-February, it'll be back to normal.

As the Bible tells it, the first crime committed was a lapse of self-control. Eve was forbidden from tasting the fruit on the tree of knowledge. But the temptation was too much. The fruit was just so “pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom,” Genesis reads. Who wouldn’t want that? Humanity was just days old, but already we were succumbing to a vice.

I've come to understand that particular story as a metaphor for prehistoric human awakening - that moment when some human looked at the stars, maybe, and instead of seeing stars, saw potential.

But that's not really relevant.

“Effortful restraint, where you are fighting yourself — the benefits of that are overhyped,” Kentaro Fujita, a psychologist who studies self-control at the Ohio State University, says.

Lately, I've envisioned temptation this way: you're underwater, about to drown. You can see light above you; it's the surface. Every move you make is, ostensibly, under your control: arms pushing at the water, legs kicking, even holding one's breath. But really, these motions aren't willful, even if under other circumstances, they are. You can, perhaps, direct them, but except in the most rare of circumstances, you can't force yourself to stop. You will claw your way to the surface, no matter what.

That feeling, that desperation, is hijacked when a wannabe ex-smoker sees a cigarette, or when someone like me sees a pizza.

Speaking of which:

A recent national survey from the University of Chicago finds that 75 percent of Americans say a lack of willpower is a barrier to weight loss. And yet the emerging scientific consensus is that the obesity crisis is the result of a number of factors, including genes and the food environment — and, crucially, not a lack of willpower.

Every day, on my way to the gym and back, I have to pass a Krispy Kreme. Twice. So far, I've talked myself out of visiting.

Many of us assume that if we want to make big changes in our lives, we have to sweat for it.

But if, for example, the change is to eat fewer sweets, and then you find yourself in front of a pile of cookies, researchers say the pile of cookies has already won.

Now that you've talked about it, it's already already won.

“Our prototypical model of self-control is angel on one side and devil on the other, and they battle it out,” Fujita says. “We tend to think of people with strong willpower as people who are able to fight this battle effectively. Actually, the people who are really good at self-control never have these battles in the first place.”

My own personal angel is battered from being flicked off of my shoulder whenever temptation strikes.

1) People who are better at self-control actually enjoy the activities some of us resist — like eating healthy, studying, or exercising.

I don't like eating healthy, but I've arranged things so that I either have to do it, or do work to not eat healthy, and I'm allergic to work. With exercise, it's a bit different for me; I despise exercise but I like how it makes me feel afterward, so I try to focus on that. It's the same sort of idea as beating one's head against the wall because it feels so good when one stops.

2) People who are good at self-control have learned better habits

I think daily exercise has become a habit for me, now. But I'm terrified that as easily as I learned the habit, I could fall out of it.

“People who are good at self-control … seem to be structuring their lives in a way to avoid having to make a self-control decision in the first place,” Galla tells me.

That tracks. One of the main reasons I get groceries delivered - apart from the aforementioned work allergy, and I consider driving to the store, pushing a cart down the aisle, standing in a checkout line, driving home, schlepping the bags inside, and putting everything away to be work - is because at the grocery store, I inevitably find myself drawn magnetically to the Oreos display, and the cookies have already won.

Yeah, delivery is more expensive, but I figure between the lack of Oreos and lower health care bills, I'm still ahead.

3) Some people just experience fewer temptations

People are different from each other. Who knew?

4) It’s easier to have self-control when you’re wealthy

Yeah... I'm going to need some more convincing here. Take the Oreos again for example (no, really - take the damn Oreos away from me). I'm not poor, so I don't even look at the prices on the Oreos display shelves; I just grab one or six packages. Someone for whom money is tight might look at the prices and then go deeper into debt to obtain them. Assuming they're not one of the lucky ones for whom Oreos aren't a temptation at all, as per #3 above.

Another intriguing idea is called “temptation bundling,” in which people make activities more enjoyable by adding a fun component to them. One paper showed that participants were more likely to work out when they could listen to an audio copy of The Hunger Games while at the gym.

What little I've read of that series is written in present tense. If I have to read more than a short story in present tense, I get angry and then I want a donut. I'm not saying it's a bad story - I saw the movie and enjoyed it well enough - but reading, or listening to it, would be counterproductive to me.

But then, I listen to boring science / math / philosophy lectures while working out, which is probably other peoples' idea of Hell, so whatever works.

“Because even if the angel loses most of the time, there’s a chance every now and again the angel will win,” Fujita says.

He's going to have to recover from his injuries, first.