In my own research, we have shown that

if we can get people to think about

their whys, the purposes behind their

decisions, the broader purposes behind

their what they're doing, they're much

more likely to be able to overcome the

temptation. So, if there's a piece of

chocolate cake in front of me and I'm

trying not to eat it, if you said, "Oh,

I'm I'm not supposed to eat that because

I'm on a diet." That doesn't have much

magic to it. But, if instead I'm saying

things like, "I need to do this for my

family. I want to look good for my

children's wedding photos." Or, you

know, "My children are looking at me. I

want to be a good example." Or all these

other kinds of reasons that you might

these higher order reasons that you

might have for getting healthier, being

fitter, or whatever, not eating the

cake, we show that that increases the

odds that people will avoid the cake.

And we think it's cuz it's giving people

meaning. If these are higher order

things that I care about, and these are

what's going to motivate me to hold out.

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

where we discuss science and

science-based tools [music] for everyday

life.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and ophthalmology at

Stanford School of Medicine. My guest

today is Dr. Kentaro Fujita, professor

of psychology at Ohio State University,

and an expert in the science of

self-control and motivation. If you're

somebody who has ever struggled with

procrastination, sticking to a goal, or

coming up with the goals for your life,

today's episode is for you. We start off

today's discussion talking about the

famous two marshmallow experiment, the

one where they placed kids in a room

with a marshmallow and told them that if

they delayed gratification for that

marshmallow, meaning they didn't eat it,

they would then get two marshmallows.

Those experiments received a lot of

attention in that they were supposed to

predict whether people would be

successful later in life. We talk about

the criticism of those experiments, but

also how some of those conclusions were

valid, and more importantly, how people

of any age, including you, can build

mental resilience and your ability to

experience deferred gratification toward

your goals. We also talk about intrinsic

versus extrinsic motivation. These are

topics that are very misunderstood out

there, but Dr. Fujita clarifies that

when we receive rewards for something we

are naturally inclined to do, meaning

that we love, it does not reduce our

motivation to do that thing. And this is

an important point and we go into it in

terms of the practical steps for

building and maintaining your progress

on goals. We also talk about what the

data say about the specific steps that

are most effective to both initiate and

reach short and long-term goals. We also

talk about how to get out of impulsive

states and states of procrastination.

What the data say about how to do that.

Today's episode is really focused on

science and more importantly practical

takeaways, several of which I plan to

incorporate into my own life. I only

wish I had this knowledge when I was

younger, but now thanks to Dr. Fujita

coming on the podcast, people of all

ages can make great use of the

information and data from his studies.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

that this podcast is separate from my

teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and

effort to bring zero cost to consumer

information about science and

science-related tools to the general

public. In keeping with that theme,

today's episode does include sponsors.

And now for my discussion with Dr.

Kentaro Fujita. Dr. Kentaro Fujita,

welcome. Thank you. Really excited to be

here today.

I'm super excited to talk to you. We

hear so much about motivation,

discipline, willpower, tenacity, but we

really haven't had a modern update on

the psychology of these in a long while.

Not just on the podcast, but I think

most people have heard of the so-called

marshmallow experiment, which hopefully

you could explain to us. Tell us what it

revealed, some of the criticisms, maybe

even some criticisms of the criticism,

because I think the marshmallow

experiment, which everyone will learn

about momentarily if they don't already

know what that is, sort of stands as

this,

you know, symbol of whether willpower is

somehow innate or whether it's something

that can really be cultivated. So, if

you would, uh what is the marshmallow

experiment?

>> So, the marshmallow test was actually a

series of experiments that was conducted

by Walter Mischel

uh in the '60s to '70s to '80s at

Stanford. And what happens in the

classic paradigm is a child comes in and

is seated in front of a plate with some

kind of thing that they really want.

Generally speaking, it was a single

marshmallow. And the children were told

that the experimenter was going to leave

for a while,

but if they could avoid eating the one

or or basically hold out and not eat

[snorts] the one,

and it was still there when the

experimenter came back, they could get

two marshmallows. So, this is

essentially [snorts] a self-control

problem because you have a smaller,

sooner reward, and you're sort of

trading that off with a larger, later

reward. And the key dependent variable

here was how long the child could wait.

Now, the dirty little secret about the

marshmallow experiments is that no child

waited the full 15 minutes that the

experimenter was gone,

but what you could do is you could

basically, as soon as the door closed,

you would start the timer, and then the

the amount and and you were just

basically looking to see how long the

children would wait. That was

interpreted as the child's delay of

gratification ability or the otherwise

self-control.

Now, there were a series of experiments

that we can talk about. Um they used

these experiments to learn a lot about

the different tactics and skill uh

tricks and tools that kids could learn

to use to improve their delay of

gratification, but that's not what

everybody knows. What everybody knows

about these experiments is that

many years later, they analyzed data in

which they looked at children's delay

times. So, again, how long did they wait

before they indulged in the one

uh one marshmallow,

and then they they they saw to what

extent it was correlated with important

life outcomes like academic achievement,

career success, income, uh even things

like incarceration, social

relationships, and what they found was

shocking. The longer children could wait

before eating the single marshmallow,

the more likely

uh they were to have to to do well in

school, more likely make more money,

have more friends, have better physical

and mental health, uh and also have

lower incarceration uh and problematic

behave social behavior reports.

Uh and so this got people really excited

about self-control because it was like

it it suggested it was a key skill for

important life outcomes. And this is

what generated a lot of that excitement.

Did any of the kids actually get two

marshmallows as a reward? It depends on

the data set. So,

research has now shown that the

marshmallow test waiting times depend on

a lot of things. Um so, in the original

experiments, there were something like

15 minutes. Others experimenters have

shortened that time to 10 minutes, and

that's a little easier for children to

do. Another really important thing about

the marshmallow test is that the child

has to trust the experimenter. If you

don't trust the experimenter, why should

you bother waiting, right? It's

perfectly rational just to go ahead and

grab the one if you don't trust the

experimenter's actually going to bring

you two. Um so, there have been

experiments in which the experimenter

looks reliable or unreliable in front of

the child, so they forget something or

they remember to do something. And when

experimenters are unreliable, children

do not wait. They just go and grab the

marshmallow. And it's been argued that

that's actually a sensible rational

behavior. So, the setup here, it sounds

really simple, but there's a lot of

uh art behind this to make this

experiment work the way that's supposed

to.

Is it a leap to assume that the adage

that children who observe their parents

doing the thing that the kids are told

not to do are less likely to follow

instructions? For instance, if parents

say, "Listen, no electronic devices

until after dinner and you've done your

homework." and then the kids see their

parent look at their phone, uh

does that reduce trust in the parents'

advice?

I don't know if it reduces the trust in

the parents' advice, but there is a lot

of research on what's known as social

modeling. Uh the most famous experiment

of this, they brought in a blow-up doll,

which they it was a clown, uh and it was

referred to as Bobo.

Uh and kids either watched the video of

an adult punching Bobo or being nice to

Bobo, and then we're allowed [snorts] to

play with Bobo themselves. And those

that watched the the adult punch Bobo

were more likely to punch Bobo

themselves. So, this suggests that

children are very observant for own

behavior. And so, if you are acting in a

certain way, children are learning that

that's the appropriate way to learn. So,

I don't know that it's been done

specific on self-control. It may have.

Um but certainly in many, many other

behaviors, children are remarkably

observant of what adults do.

I won't hold you responsible for

defending or holding up the marshmallow

experiments, but they've received a lot

of criticism over the years. As have

many paradigm-shifting

areas of psychology, right? I I mean, I

or or neuroscience. You know, I think

it's uh important for everyone to know

that the moment that there's sort of a a

theory put forth, like growth mindset or

for the developmental neurobiologist,

the idea that all neurons in the cortex

migrate radially, like

two, five years later,

someone's going to find an exception to

that, and then the whole thing seems to

crumble, but then it sort of comes back

where the answer is both.

In terms of the the marshmallow

experiment, I've heard a lot of

criticism. It wasn't as predictive as we

thought. Maybe the experimenters were um

sort of bi- biasing the data collection.

What are the valid criticisms in your

view? And what are the criticisms of the

criticisms in your view?

So, as I mentioned, the marshmallow

experiments or marshmallow tests, they

have to be set up right. And like a lot

of other psychology experiments, I think

the psychologists

kind of intuitively understood what it

took to get it right, but we're not very

good at articulating those for others to

follow in kind of a recipe book. The

most famous criticism or the one that

got the most press recently is that

there was a very large data set of

children outcomes in which they

completed the marshmallow test at 4

years old

and then a bunch of different life

outcomes at adolescence. And so they

basically wanted to see whether they

could replicate the marshmallow test.

And they In principle, they should have.

And they did and they did not. So, if

you looked at the simple correlation

between did delay time predict outcomes

like academic achievement and

problematic behavior, the answer was

yes. It seemed to replicate.

But then the the the researchers

controlled for things like social

economic status, which is one of the

criticisms of the original Stanford

studies because Stanford children, or at

least the children that were going to

the Stanford University daycare where

these experiments were being conducted,

were not your average American family.

Mostly well-to-do. And this matters. And

so when the researchers they had like 30

or 40 other covariables that they were

controlling for. When they controlled

for all these other variables,

children's delay of gratification was no

longer predicting these outcomes that

was supposed to. And so this paper got a

lot of attention

for basically saying, "Look, there's

this The marshmallow tests are bunk."

Now, this has been controversial because

the question is was that statistical

adjustment appropriate and are we

interpreting that statistical adjustment

correctly? Um there have been other

experimenters other researchers who have

come along. One of them is named Yuuko

Muna- Kata and her team. They took the

same data set and they reanalyzed it

with a different set of assumptions, a

lot more conservative. So, rather than

30 throwing in 30 covariates, they put

in theory-driven covariates, ones that

made sense from what we know already

about research as opposed to like

throwing in the kitchen sink.

Um and when they did that, they still

found that delay of gratification

predicted reports of problematic

behavior, which suggests a very clean

replication of the original marshmallow

test. So,

you know, some people have suggested

that that that failure to replicate the

original marshmallow test, it got a lot

of attention, but it may not have been

the final answer because these

experimenters, again, came along, looked

exactly the same data set, and came to

the opposite conclusion. So, there's

still a bit of a debate out there, but I

think the main point to take away here,

again, is that the way that you set up

the marshmallow test is really

important. You have to have trust, you

know, and the argument about social

economic status is that kids who grow up

in high SES environments, they're very

stable, they're very predictable. So,

when you wait, you are more likely to

get the larger later reward. But, if you

come from a lower SES family, where

rewards come and go, and people and, you

know, just because you save now doesn't

mean it's going to pay off later,

they're not going to wait, and so it's

not as indi- indicative for them. So,

all of these things have to be carefully

controlled for, and they were part of

the original experiments. Again, not

really well articulated. To the extent

that you can create a situation where

people do trust that they will get the

larger later reward,

there does seem to be some predictive

ability of this test. Now, let me just

say as a self-control researcher my-

myself, I think people are missing the

boat. What is most interesting about the

marshmallow test is not whether or not

they can predict outcomes later. And

that that's very nice

to convince people that self-control is

important. If I'm applying for federal

grant money, for example, that's

probably the first sentence that I

write, that, you know, that's that

self-control predicts life life

outcomes. There've been many, many other

ways of testing this hypothesis, so I

don't think we need to rely on the

marshmallow test to make that point

anymore.

The most important thing about the

marshmallow test that gets completely

overlooked, refer- goes back to

something you said earlier, Andrew. Is

it an innate talent, or is it something

that we learn?

The most important experiments, Walter

Mischel and his team were teaching

children the strategies of self-control.

And when children learn them, their

delay ability got better. That is a

really, really important lesson because

it suggests that self-control isn't

something innate. Instead, it's

something that we learn over time. Let

me just give you an example. So, one of

the things that he taught children was

is it better to stare at the one

marshmallow or close your eyes? Cover it

up or close your eyes? Three-year-old

children believe that it's better to

stare at it cuz they think that's how

I'm going to motivate myself. Like if I

can see what I want, I'm going to be

able to wait. Right? I can see the one,

I can imagine the second, I can wait

longer.

Five-year-olds learn that that's not

going to work and they learn to cover it

up or close their eyes.

Interestingly,

this basically you can create a written

test where you can ask or a verbal test

where you can ask children what do you

think you should do in order to to wait

longer,

and research shows that children who

Well, let me let me let me be more

careful. Research shows that there are

age-related differences. So, at 3 year

old they don't know anything, but at 5

year old they've learned. And then later

on at 13 years old, those children who

correctly understand the quote-unquote

rules of self-control have less

problematic behavior. So, Walter Mischel

and his team went to a summer camp for

children with behavioral problems, and

those that understood the rules that the

the tricks that work and the tricks that

don't work were less likely to have

behavioral problems uh at that camp than

those who did not. So,

knowledge matters. Self-control can be

learned. It can be taught. You can learn

by trial and error. And I think that's

really important because it suggests

that rather than being something that

we're born with,

we can get better. We can grow. We can

we can improve over time. And I think

this is a really important lesson that

often gets overlooked with these

studies.

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I'm smiling as you describe the

strategies these children take because

I've seen some of the videos and we'll

provide a link to those in the show note

captions. They're adorable and in many

ways they reflect the behavior of adults

but in a much purer form. Uh I recall

one where I think it was a young boy

where he's like leaning into the

marshmallow and he's and he's kind of

doing like a yum yum yum yum yum like a

like acting as if it but he's not

letting himself do it and then he looks

away and it seems to be that he's aware

he wants to move. He's letting himself

move but then he's pulling back. And as

somebody who's uh currently training a

puppy, I can tell you that the weight

with placing food or a treat in front of

the puppy and getting that what

neuroscientists call top-down

inhibition, the the suppression of

impulse, um getting that trained up is

so interesting because talking about a

dog now but um my new

uh you know bulldog mastiff puppy, he

will intentionally look away from the

food as a way to he's so tempted to eat

it. So, I'll say look at me, that

actually makes it easier for him. So, it

makes it seem like he's more disciplined

but I think all mammals, probably all

creatures that

have this top-down inhibition come up

with these strategies and I have to

assume that they're pretty unique not

just by age but to the individual.

Agreed. And I remember one kid spinning

around in his chair.

>> Agreed. And it does seem to be that the

impulse to do something is obviously

involves movement. And it seems and I'm

curious if there's any research looking

at if people have an opportunity to

actually move their body as opposed to

sit rigidly and prevent movement whether

or not they're more effective in

suppressing impulsive behavior. I mean,

in cultures um many cultures you have

things like worry beads to to sort of

dispel anxiety. Some people when they

get stressed will go for a walk or a run

and it does seem to work. It's almost

like that there's a revving of the of

the engine that drives movement. We

could talk neural circuits but it

doesn't really matter what those are.

And when we're trying to suppress any

kind of behavior, being able to channel

that movement elsewhere seems useful. Or

what as I was taught as a camp counselor

for young kids, be a channel not a dam

because trying to get a bunch of young

young kids to sit still is pretty tough.

What you're saying is really

interesting. So let me copy out

everything I'm about to say with by

saying this is all speculation. I

personally don't know of research

studies that look specifically at

movement but everything that you're

saying makes total sense to me because

the root the Latin root for the word

motivation is to move. Right? So the I

motivation is supposed to be the energy

force behind all of our movements. It

impels action. So to me it makes sense

that if I'm trying to motivate a

particular behavior,

being able to to act would be

I mean it is a actually channeling my

energy towards doing something. I mean

there are experiments that I can tell

you a little bit about Andrew where, you

know, to try to train self-control, they

will have people um

uh quote unquote approach or avoid an

object with a joystick. Right? So if you

see something that you're supposed to

avoid, you pull the joystick back so you

creating psychological distance from the

temptation versus on the things that

you're supposed to approach like the

broccoli you're supposed to eat, you're

supposed to move the joystick forward.

And there's some research suggests that

this kind of automatic, you're not

actually moving but you know, you're

taking action that's often associated

with movement, that that can actually

help improve people's self-control over

time, help develop evaluations such that

okay, the for dieters for example, the

chocolate cake is bad but the broccoli

is good. Having these movements towards

the good stuff and away from the bad

stuff um

does seem to improve self-control

afterwards.

Again, the question is I I um

you know, it's not quite what you're

talking about in terms of actual

movement. Um I think there's also some

research. Again, this is I'm not I'm not

exactly sure, but there's some research

suggest that like if you fidget, you you

might learn better um than when you

don't fidget. There's also some research

where if you are taking notes with pen

and paper as opposed to a computer, you

can learn better. And again, I'm not

saying these be just because I think

they're so important, but rather I just

think they're nice illustrations of

exactly what you're suggesting, which is

there's something some really

interesting connection between

movement and motivation, which I think

I I mean, I think that's a truism, but I

think these are really interesting

examples of that.

One thing I've been just grappling with

for a number of years now is this

concept that

doing hard things makes it easier to do

other hard things. And on the one hand,

that seems obvious, right? Um because

it's a process. The learning to

recognize that the what I call limbic

friction, that's obviously not a real

scientific term, but that, you know,

limbic system or more autonomically

activated, we feel like, "Ah, we don't

want to do it." Or we

we or we're afraid to do something and

and we have to push ourselves to do it.

That's a process that translates across

things. Um sure, I I fully accept that,

but

as much as I believe that getting up in

the morning, getting outside, getting

sunlight, maybe taking a cold shower,

getting a workout in

can

deliver people to a state of mind where

they say, "Hey, you know what? By 8:00

a.m., I did a lot of hard things.

Anything else that I confront during the

day is going to be much easier." While I

acknowledge that can be true, I also

acknowledge from my own experience that

doing a bunch of hard things seems to

exhaust some sort of mental and or

physical resource that actually makes it

harder to both avoid certain things and

to push through hard things later. And

so, obviously, this depends on how hard

you exercise, are you eating enough, are

you sleeping enough, but assuming all

things being equal, I'm just curious, is

there a self-control resource center?

It could be distributed across neural

circuits, it could be psychological,

too, of course, but does something like

that exist and is there any evidence for

that in your work or the work of others?

There's two thoughts that immediately

come to mind with what you just said.

The idea that, you know, you can learn

by doing hard lots of hard things, you

learn that you can do hard things and do

other hard things.

I mean, I think that's really

interesting from a motivation

perspective cuz

you could argue that, you know, what's

going on here is that there's some kind

of self-efficacy component that when

I've done hard things, my my self-esteem

goes up and my estimation and confidence

to be able to do harder things

increases. And so, and we do know that

as self-efficacy goes up, your your your

ability to do things, your motivation

goes up and your ability to perform also

goes up. So, we definitely know that

self-efficacy is a really important

thing.

The other thing that you mentioned is

the possibility of exhaustion. And I

find this really interesting because

it's a highly controversial topic in

social psychology.

>> [snorts]

>> There was a big

um boom of experiments um in the 2000s

uh that suggested just what you're

saying, that self-control is kind of

like a muscle. And if I use it for one

type of task, I exhaust it for all

others. I have to wait in order for it

to recharge before I can use it again,

much like any other muscle.

Also, like any other muscle, if I keep

using it over time, it should get

stronger. And there were some evidence

for both of those.

Unfortunately, those experiments have um

much like the Walter Mischel study, have

come under come under attack for whether

or not they can replicate. And the

conclusions are a bit mixed. There's

some analyses, they're called multi-lab

experiments where a whole bunch of labs

get together and they try to see if they

can replicate something. And that way

you get rid of experimenter bias.

There's some multi-lab replications that

have tried to replicate this effect. So,

what you do in the lab is you do one

hard task that would requires

self-control, and then you do a second

one, and the prediction would be if

you've done a hard thing first, then you

should be worse at the second one.

So, one multi-lab experiment did not

show that it was that it worked, and

another one showed it did.

The one that showed it didn't work was

led by people who conducted this

research in the first place, so it was

seen as very damning. Like, if they

can't get this experiment to work, then

it doesn't exist. And so, I think the

consensus in the field is that it

doesn't actually happen, or at least we

can't get it to work in lab. Could you

just for clarity's sake, when you say it

doesn't happen, what specifically are

you referring to? Let's say we have you

do a task where you have to write

something down with your left hand.

Okay, so this requires a lot of effort,

requires a lot of self-control to

Left-handers out there are like,

>> That's right. No, no, no, no, no, no,

no, opposite hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,

I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing.

Then then we ask you to

you know, do some other really difficult

task, like some task that requires

inhibition. So, the one example is the

Stroop task, right? So, you see words in

different color fonts, you're supposed

to identify the font color, but if you

see the word blue in red ink,

although the right response is that it's

red, because it's written in red ink,

you automatically read the word blue, so

you want to say blue.

This requires inhibition, requires you

to stop your behavior, and research

suggests that if you did the

non-dominant handwriting first, and then

you did the Stroop task, that

>> [snorts]

>> your Stroop task should become worse. In

other words, you should have a harder

time stopping yourself from just reading

the word.

Again, so if you've done the left-handed

writing, then you make more mistakes,

and you are slower in your responses at

the Stroop task. That's what's known as

the depletion effect, right? Cuz I got

tired, and so therefore my self-control

is worse until it recharges.

So, one of these multi-lab experiments,

they tried something like this using

different tasks, but you have given you

a sort of an example of what kinds of

experiments they run, and they could not

replicate the depletion effect. Another

multi-lab experiment though, smaller in

scale and not by the original authors,

they were able to get the depletion

effect. So, there's a little bit of just

mixed evidence and it's not clear

whether depletion really is a thing.

Now, let me say as a researcher myself,

I'm in this really uncomfortable

position where I actually think

depletion is a real phenomenon cuz I

experience it all the time in my own

life.

Yet, I think the way that we have

studied it in the lab hasn't been very

good because much like the Walter

Mischel studies, I don't think the

original authors were very good at

trying to explain what exactly you need.

What are the implicit decisions that

they're making to set up this experiment

that makes it work.

There have been some accusations of like

cheating and monkeying with the data. I

I I don't know about that, but my own

take on this is I think depletion is

real. I just don't think we figured out

how to bottle it up in the lab.

We do know that people believe that

self-control is depletable or at least

willpower is depletable and the more you

believe it, the more you show these

patterns. So, there's amazing work by

Veronica Job. She has this little

questionnaire that she asks, you know,

if you engage in a strenuous task, do

you feel recharged or do you feel more

tired?

And those people who say they feel

recharged,

act recharged after doing a really hard

task. So, it's hard people doing hard

things.

But, for people who say that no, you

know, I think it's exhausting,

then when they're asked to do the

experiment, they actually show the

depletion effect. So, there's some

evidence that people's lay beliefs about

willpower might really play a key role

in whether doing hard things makes you

tired or whether doing hard things

recharges you. Well, I'm going to stamp

the belief into my mind that doing hard

things makes other hard things easier

because I do believe in the belief

effects

that you describe and that my colleague

Ali Crum at Stanford has described for a

number of different categories of of

thinking and behavior. I also happen to

like exercise and I happen to like the

sorts of things that are supposedly

building up willpower. So, I'm going to

tell myself this, but your point is is

taken, which is that

our narratives about willpower matter a

lot for whether doing hard things makes

subsequent hard things harder or easier.

I'm curious about the specificity of

these kinds of effects.

For instance, if people

do any number of hard things, uh

but they're told to pay attention to

their internal process. Like, um can

they feel their stress go up and then go

down? Um maybe they learn to do some

long exhale breathing to lower their

autonomic tone, which we know, you know,

slows heart rate, etc. Can people learn

a process that then they can apply

across different scenarios? Because I

think one of the fascinating things to

me about

school,

about exams, about sports, or at the

extreme about, you know, screening for

special operations. You know, we've had

many people from the SEAL Team

communities and other special operation

communities on this podcast is this

notion that maybe it doesn't matter so

much whether it's cold water or it's

exercise or it's um

matrix math. It The point is that you

have to get into that place of friction

and then recognize something about where

and how your mind and body go and start

to work with that. And I think that cuz

that's getting to a deeper layer of

willpower and tenacity that

you know, no one thing um can can really

we can say is like the best tool. Like,

for instance, you're a you're a

well-trained musician. Um having been a

failed musician, I suppose I'm still a

failed musician. I too am a failed

musician.

>> you that not hearing the um

the the notes come out of the instrument

that one would want to hear and that

that you're told should come out of the

instrument is incredibly frustrating.

I think it's every bit, if not more

frustrating, than the inability to,

uh you know, do something physical. So,

it's not really about what we're doing,

is it? It's really about being able to

tolerate that friction, that

frustration. Can people learn to

recognize that state and push through

that state and therefore translate it

across everything from sport to

instruments to school to parenting to

whatever.

I think what you're saying is really

interesting and I have a whole bunch of

thoughts which I'm going to try to

get out in a systematic and organized

way. So, first, again, I'm not an expert

in this area, but we do know that people

have differential distress tolerance,

how much

unpleasantness they're willing to put

themselves through and there are

individual differences.

As far as I know, it there there

it probably can be trained

and usually through exposure, but again,

I'm not an expert in this area.

What I can speak to with respect

specifically to willpower is that

willpower training paradigms have shown

to shown very limited success. So, for

example, if again, imagine you're doing

the Stroop task and you're doing

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if

not thousands of these trials. Another

training exercise is you literally go

home and you practice doing everything

with your non-dominant hand as opposed

to using your dominant hand. So, these

willpower exercises, you do them for a

week and you come back.

Some experiments have suggested that

they do in fact improve self-control,

others say that they don't and on

average reviews of this literature have

suggested that the effect is much

smaller than you might hope despite all

the work that you put in and it's very

variable. So, some people will see some

gains, but they'll be small and but many

people will see no gains. That's about

willpower specifically and this is at

the point where I have to get a little

bit more detailed.

I think there's a difference between

willpower and self-control.

So, willpower is one of the ways that we

improve and enhance our self-control

abilities, but it's not the only one.

And so, the other ones, I've already

described some of them to you that

Walter Mischel discovered with the delay

of gratification paradigm. So, he wasn't

studying willpower. He wasn't seeing He

wasn't testing whether children could

just gut it out and use their own brains

to inhibit their behavior. Instead, he

was looking at things like covering your

eyes or covering you the bowl or turning

your head or imagining the marshmallows

to be puffy white clouds or imagining

that there's a picture frame around it.

So, it's not real. It's just It's just

the picture. Um all of these different

behavioral and psychological strategies

that children were using

These enhance self-control without

leveraging willpower.

At this point, you could ask what is

willpower?

And there it's not actually clear in

psychology what that actually means, but

most people understand willpower to be

the effortful inhibition or suppression

of impulsive tendencies. So, there's a

yummy piece of cake in front of me and

I'm really tempted to eat it.

Willpower or

inhibition is the active fighting of

that temptation. Telling myself, "Don't

think about it. Don't give in. Don't do

something that." I think this is sort of

the paradigmatic sort of version of of

of self-control in which you use your

mental muscles to push down those ideas.

Those trainings are the ones I was

telling are not very effective.

But, training some of the other

strategies that we might have like

closing your eyes or imagining a

cockroach crawl across the cake or

asking yourself,

you know, what your children would say

if they saw you eating the chocolate

cake after saying that you wouldn't.

All [snorts] these other strategies,

behavioral and psychological strategies

or tools, as we might refer to them,

those can be taught and those can in

fact improve your self-control. So,

whether or not self-control is something

that you can learn to get better at, I

think the answer there is yes.

Whether willpower is something that you

can get better at, there I am not so

sure.

I have this kind of running theory in my

mind, which is anchored in neuroscience.

We know that areas of the brain

are involved in kind of more

sophisticated

processes where we can imagine ourselves

now, think about our past, think about

our goals in the future. Kind of a

high-level strategy formation definitely

involves the forebrain, but it's a

distributed phenomenon. I think everyone

agrees on that. And then we have brain

areas that we know from stimulation

during neurosurgery, brain lesions, etc.

that they're kind of like switches. It's

like they make you want to eat. They

make you want to mate. They make you

want to vomit. They make any number of

things. These are hypothalamic, these

are deep limbic and hypothalamic

circuitry.

And

I have this kind of what very crude idea

that

when it comes to suppression of behavior

or it comes to aspirational

behaviors like motivating to do

something hard over time that

when we find ourselves at a friction

point, like we don't want to do

something we should or we're having a

hard time resisting something that we

shouldn't that we have to go a layer

deeper into the limbic system and

hypothalamus. Like we just have to come

up with contingencies that are much

grosser than the than the like like like

you said, like a cockroach on a on a

marshmallow. It's like sugar's good, we

have an innate circuit for being drawn

towards sugary things, fatty things,

yum. What is a like hardwired? So you So

we go towards the vomit reflex a little

bit, right? We

We don't want to get up and go to class

cuz we're exhausted and fatigue is real.

Fatigue is real. Shuts down our

forebrain, so the circuits are impaired.

Our hypothalamus is driving us to like

go back to sleep. But

we have to think about the fear of

showing up in class for an exam and not

knowing, you know, it's the it's the

nightmare everybody's had at least once,

right? So I feel like the the control

strategy seems to be to go to a deeper

layer of fear, disgust, etc. How well

does the opposite work? Like how good is

aspiration for good stuff? Because those

are also powerful drivers of human

behavior and and I'm curious whether

experiments have been done to

differentiate between sort of fear and

love if you will to put it broadly to

allow us to navigate all sorts of

circumstances. But I love the idea that

chasing love chasing desire all these

great things but there are times when we

have to be like oh no I got to imagine

the cockroach or else this whole I'll go

back to sleep. I'll hit the snooze

button.

I think what you're saying Andrew is

something super profound. More profound

than you might think. So for years

self-control researchers have assumed

that the secret to self-control is

actually doing exactly the opposite of

what you suggested which is turning off

the hot system but because they argue

that these limbic systems these hot

systems these more quote unquote

animalistic systems are the things that

make the temptations so powerful and so

by activating those systems

all we're doing is we're up regulating

the temptation impulses. And so for

years and and this is part of Walter

Mischel's fundamental model for example

and many many others they talked about

making your cognitions cooler. In other

words shutting down the emotional system

and thinking very coolly and calmly

about the thing in front of you in order

to make the right choice.

I think what's profound about you're

saying is that you've articulated two

alternatives. One is that I fight fire

with fire. So if this thing is pulling

me I'm going to find something that's

going to push me away.

Right? And as you said the example would

be like there's a piece of chocolate

cake and I imagine a cockroach crawling

across it.

There's not actually very much research

on that. The most most of the dominant

models in self-control really talk about

cooling your cognitions. You're you're

told not to fight fire with fire that

you need to be in a calm and collected

state.

The reason I think what you're saying is

true is that I have some other work

looking at the other strategy which is

you said finding love. So in my own

research we have shown that if we can

get people to think about their whys.

Um, you know, the purposes behind their

decisions, the broader purposes behind

their what they're doing, they're much

more likely to be able to overcome the

temptation. So, if there's a piece of

chocolate cake in front of me and I'm

trying not to eat it,

if I only think about cake-related

things, that could be really difficult.

But if instead I ask myself, like and

and even if you said, "Oh, I'm I'm not

supposed to eat that because I'm on a

diet." That doesn't have much magic to

it. It's like it it's kind of sterile,

so it doesn't move me in any way. But if

instead I'm saying things like I need to

do this for my family, I need to do this

to get to my children. I want to look

good for my children's for my children's

wedding photos or, you know, my children

are looking at me. I want to be a good

example or all these other kinds of

reasons that you might these

higher-order reasons that you might have

for getting healthier, being fitter, or

whatever, not eating the cake,

we show that that

increases the odds that people will

avoid the the cake. And we think it's

cuz it's giving people meaning. It's

infusing the moment, as you say,

fighting fire like fighting fire with

fire, not with fear, but with love. Like

these are these are higher-order things

that I care about, and these are what's

going to motivate me to hold out.

What you're highlighting is it with your

original example, something a little bit

different than that, which is fighting

fire by taking the positive and turning

it into a negative. And my PhD student

Paul Stillman and a colleague of his,

um, Caitlin Woolley, they did some

experiments in which they had people

think about it's usually when you think

about self-control, you think about the

short-term or long-term gains. They

instead had people think about the

short-term losses of indulging. So, what

are some of the things like what's the

like think about the sugar crash that

you would experience if you ate the

chocolate cake, right? So, and they

showed that that

kind of served much like you were

talking about the vomit response, it

pushes people away far enough. They're

in the short-term mindset, they're

thinking about short-term things, the

short-term is pulling them in, so they

fight that with a short-term repellent.

And they found that that's also very

effective for self-control. So your

ideas

are almost antithetical to what most

people would say the status quo in

self-control research. But for that

reason, I'm super excited because my own

work is starting to challenge that idea

as is as is Paul Stillman and Caitlin

Woolley's that we might be able to use

the limbic system. We might be able to

use our hot reactions. We We don't have

to assume that they're going to be bad

but or they're going to they're going to

pre- predispose us to indulgence but and

make us susceptible to indulgence but

instead they might be what inspires us

and gives us the motivation to do the

right thing. And I think that is really

exciting.

Fascinating.

And I'm so glad you you're doing that

work. Um you know, we had David Goggins

on this podcast. David author of Can't

Hurt Me um and famed for doing hard

things all day long. I I knew David

before he had a book before he was

public facing and I can tell you

I met him at a meeting and afterwards he

said he was running to the airport and I

thought he meant like rushing to the

airport cuz that's what that means to

me. He was literally running to the

airport. We're 16 miles away from San

Jose Airport and he was he went in the

back changing and like ran to the

airport with his luggage. So he's always

been that way at least uh

as long as I've known him. And I think

one of the reasons David is such a

shining example

of motivation is that he is very

open about the fact that he listens to

negative comments from social media in

his headphones when he when he runs.

He's talked about that. He talks he

tells himself what a piece of garbage he

is if he doesn't do this. I mean he he

basically flagellates himself into into

doing these things and any attempt to

suggest to him like, "Oh, maybe you

could take like a more soft gloves

approach." Like he's not hearing it. It

clearly works for him. He's actually

right now um

I think he went back to the military.

He's also in

paramedic school. I think he's he's

probably becoming a physician, too. I

mean, he's a he's a remarkable example

of that approach.

It's an approach that's very hard for a

lot of people and some people would say

it's pathological. I don't believe it is

cuz it clearly works for him and the

alternative was far worse. He'll tell

you that as well.

We could even talk about eating

disorders, right? Anytime we have a

discussion about suppression of the

impulse to eat cake, you know, there's

going to be a subset of people out there

that are saying, "Oh, so you know, what

you're talk talking about is

is eating disorders, right? Switching

the contingency. If I can avoid it,

that's rewarding." Which is associated

with certain eating disorders.

I love the idea that there's this other

side that you could entice yourself with

the positive outcome. What I'm hearing

you say

is that

if it's a short-term battle, like right

now, think about the downside or the

upside right now.

If it's a long-term battle, you want to

think in terms of long-term outcomes,

both bad and good. Is that right? Should

we have all of those in our toolkit?

>> I completely agree with you. And I love

the fact that you used the word toolkit.

Um my colleague Ethan Kross and I, we

wrote a paper in which we talked about

the self-control toolkit.

Basically, we argue we have lots of

different ways to enhance self-control.

We speculate that certain tools might

work better for certain people

at certain times.

We don't currently have a very good

framework for predicting what would be

the right strategy for this kind of

person in this kind of situation. And so

if you're if you're listeners are

saying, "Wow, that totally would not

work for me."

That's okay by me, too. I don't think

there's going to be one tool that's

going to work for everybody. The

self-control toolbox approach uh

explicitly um embraces the idea that

different things are going to work for

different people. So if you're the kind

of person who's very act reactant,

someone who says, "No, I can do it."

Then you might want to think about all

the bad things people say about you

because you're going to react to it and

say, "No, I'm going to do it." But, if

you're the kind of person who tends to

listen to what people say, and you

incorporate their perspectives, and

they're saying bad things about you,

well, then that's probably going to have

a demotivating effect, right? So, again,

the strategy that works so well for one

individual may not work for another.

>> [snorts]

>> It may also be that certain self-control

strategies work for certain contexts and

not for others. So, for example,

you know, for me, getting started with

the workout is the hardest part. I have

all I have a litany of reasons why I

don't want to do this today. And so, for

me, the hardest part is just getting on

the bike, or starting to lift weights.

You know, sometimes it's just putting on

the workout clothes.

The strategies I use for that, I usually

tell myself, like, you know, what would

my heroes do in this situation? So, the

quote-unquote, "What would Jesus do?" I

think is a very effective strategy in

those kinds of situations. You imagine

someone that you really admire, or you

imagine someone who looks up to you, and

you have you want to be you want to be

that person that you admire, or you want

to be that person that people see in

you. That for me helps me get going for

ex- at the beginning of exercise, but

when it comes to the end, when I'm like

just pumping out that last rep, or I'm

just the last minute of a really hard

climb, these things don't work so well

for me. Like, for me, at that point, I

just want to grit my teeth and get it

done. And so, willpower might be a

better strategy. So, I think we have to

explore the entirety of the self-control

toolbox. We have to be And through trial

and error, find what works best for us.

This is another reason why I would like

to stress to your listeners that

self-control is a skill that you tailor

for yourself. And it's a lifelong

journey, right? I'm not going to be able

to get up here and say, "Do XYZ," and

all of a sudden, people are going to be

amazing. Instead, they have to try,

and they have to fail. And it's in the

failure where you actually learn the

most, because you say, "Oh, that's not

for me," or at least that wasn't for me

at this time.

The reason why I find this approach

really

exciting and also hopeful is that I

think a lot of people when they fail at

self-control, they just say, "Oh, I'm a

terrible person. I'm never going to get

this. I just have bad self-control, bad

willpower." But instead, the learning

approach, the toolbox approach just

says, "Okay, that tool didn't work this

time."

And failure represents an opportunity

for self-growth and exploration and

discovery, which makes it a lot more

positively toned as opposed to wow, I

really screwed up. I'm a terrible

person. My goal is forever gone. And I

think that's a really important

implication of understanding

self-control not as an innate skill, but

something that you grow and cultivate

over time with things that you learn.

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Is motivation something that needs

warming up? I I've long chuckled at the

fact that we understand that you need to

warm up before exercise.

Even it's running, you got to jog a

little bit before you you you sprint.

Um certainly we need warm-up sets before

we do our work sets. Everyone

understands this. But for some reason, I

think people assume that focus and doing

hard things mentally um or creatively

should be like a step function where

you're like, "Show up to the work and

you're like, focus." I like to think

I've tried to

spread the gospel of Look, it's going to

take a little bit of warming up. Your

mind's going to flip to other things. I

mean, and you can drop into a groove. I

mean, I think the the really interesting

research on both the hypothalamus but

also these these higher brain states, if

you will, that the models say that

they're sort of like an an attractor uh

model where, you know, you sort like

your your brain state is sort of like a

ball bearing on a flat surface that's

kind of moving around, and the ball

bearing's moving and then over time it

becomes more and more concave, and

eventually focus you drop into a groove,

but that takes time. It takes reps. It

takes the mind

picking up your phone again for the

third time and then going, you know

what, I just got to get this thing out

of the room. The that focus isn't just

like a switch. Motivation isn't just

like a switch. And I don't think people

really

they either haven't heard it or they

don't believe it, but everyone is at

least to my knowledge has experienced

it. We're not robots. We're not robots.

And so, are there tools that people can

use to either embed that knowledge or

to, you know, move into focus states uh

more quickly or more effectively, as

well as move out of motivated states?

Has anything been studied about

transitions between tasks as something

useful? Because we have dynamic lives,

right? It's not just about the workout

or just about the class or just about,

you know, parenting or just about

whatever it is. It We have to move from

thing to one thing to the next, and

these are very different brain circuits.

I think what you're saying is really

fascinating. I love this idea of

attracter states. Um

in my own work, we don't have that kind

of model, and we don't use the language

of warming up.

But we do know that there is a dynamic

interplay between how you think about

something and the motivation that you're

experiencing. Right? So, if a workout

is, you know, oh, another hour of pain,

like we're not going to get super

excited about it. But if instead you

change your mindset about it, and and

again, this is the power of work that

Aliya Crum and uh folks who do growth

mindsets think about,

if you change sort of the cognitive

orientation you have towards it, a

different set of motivations can get

activated. So, if I say, it's not an

hour of pain, but instead of me becoming

the better me,

that set of cognitions, that set of

thoughts, activates a different set of

motives that comes to bear and and can

then be applied to the task at hand.

Now, that's not quite warming up, but in

some senses it is a warm-up. It's sort

of finding the right set of thoughts

that are working through your mind to

maximize the motivation that you're

experiencing at a given time.

Another interesting thing to think about

is that there's there's sometimes it's

not just about the amount of motivation,

but it's also the type of motivation.

For example, many sports have an

offense-oriented

component and a defense-oriented

component.

And they probably require very different

mindsets, and they probably also require

different motivational orientations.

One of the most important orientations

that we know from motivation science is

an orientation towards

um nurturance and advancement, moving

forward, gains,

versus an orientation towards safety and

security, preventing losses. And there's

been some speculation that the And

there's been some research to support

this that having the right kind of

motivation for the right kind of tasks

enhances performance. So, if I'm playing

offense, right? There's always There's

always that notion that you don't want

to play not to lose. You want to play to

win. Right? And that's particularly true

of offense. So, in offense, you want to

be about advancement, promotion, gains.

But when you're on defense, right? At

times, it might it very well might be

about preventing losses. And so, if that

were true, and again, that's not true

for every sport, but if that is true for

a particular sport, you might do better

if you're in a more promotion

motivational state when you are on

offense and a more prevention orient uh

motivational state when you're on

defense. And if you get that mixed up,

you won't be as effective. So, when you

get the match, research suggests that

you enhance performance, but if you get

a mismatch, you kind of have like not

quite grooving,

and you won't perform as well. You're

not kind of not right. You're just not

feeling right.

You're not feeling fit. You know, there

is research on regulatory fit, and it

suggests that if you can if you can get

task motivation fit, if you can find the

if you can get yourself in the right

motivation for the task at hand, you'll

have enhanced performance.

Now, the reason why I bring this up is

because research that I conducted with

my colleague Abigail Scholer and David

Mealey,

we've shown um that

people have some insight into this. They

know there are certain tasks that you're

better It's better to be promotion on

this task, and it's better to be

prevention on this task. And they also

kind of know the thought processes that

they have to engage in in order to get

there. So, are you going to be thinking

about gains, or are you thinking about

losses? Um Are are you going to be more

in a sort of a uh uh

uh again, uh security or advancement or

security mindset, they can tell us that

if I think this way, if I think about

security or I think about advancement, I

will do better on this task, which

suggests that people have some insight

into what not just the amount of

motivation, but the right type of

motivation to do well. And so, part of

what you're talking about warming up

might be that people are sort of trying

to cobble together the right set of

thoughts to get the right set right

right motivational type, not just the

right amount, but the right type in

order to do the task at hand.

There may also be an additional

complexity with the amount because we

know

not enough motivation is not good, but

we also know too much motivation is bad.

And so, you like Yerkes-Dodson rule,

like the the U-shaped functions. You

kind of want to be in the middle for

ideal. You want to be amped up to be

able to do the task at hand, but if you

have too much, right, you might choke

because it means so much to you that you

just you just overthink things, right?

So,

there there might also be regulation not

just to maximize motivation, but the

right type and at the right level for

the task at hand. So, you can imagine

your your colleague David Goggins going

absolutely crazy at a daycare soccer you

know, like some children's soccer game.

That would be bad, right? So, you need

to scale back motivation, find that

sweet spot. So, I think there is a lot

of this regulation that people kind of

do intuitively. Some people probably do

it better than others, and I love this

idea. I've never thought about it as

sort of warming up because it might take

a couple of moments to actually get all

the ducks lined up in a row so that the

system is is operating functionally both

cognitively, motivationally,

biologically, at all levels to maximize

performance, and I love this idea.

You also mentioned this idea of

switching, and there is an extensive

literature in cognitive psychology and

it's called task switching, moving from

one one set of tasks to the other and

rapidly switching back and forth.

There's something known as the switch

cost. There's a sort of delay and a

decrease in performance at the very

point of switching because you're

there's kind of an cognitive inertia.

You're still operating under the old set

and it takes some time to figure out how

to switch into the new one.

Sort of zooming out a little bit, I

think that's also related to research on

disengaging, right? So, um you know,

I've been pursuing this goal for so long

and I get it and now it's done. It it

doesn't really make sense to keep going

cuz you've already accomplished it. It's

time to move on to something else.

There is some research suggests that

that that disengagement process is very

difficult.

And we actually don't understand it

nearly as well as we understand

persistence. So, because of research on

and on self-control and grit, we know a

lot more about persistence than we know

about disengagement and it's a it's an

area of research that is really

important for us to get into. We do know

that disengagement is related to lots of

positive outcomes it

when the person is unable to pursue a

goal anymore. So, for example, if you're

a woman and you you always wanted to

have children, but you're now past the

biological age where you can have

children, it's probably healthy to

disengage from the desire to have

children. Similarly, if we age out of a

sport or we experience some kind of

catastrophic injury where we just can't

do it anymore or there's some window of

opportunity has closed, right? Research

suggests that for people who are more

adept at disengagement, they experience

better mental well-being outcomes and

they're able to re-engage in a new set

of goals much faster.

But beyond that, we have to really

understand more about the about the

psychology of disengagement and how we

know when to persist and when to

disengage.

That's a really important question, but

we don't know very much about it partly

because we tend to in our culture

emphasize persistence and grit more than

disengagement.

Seems like what we're trying to do when

we want to get motivated or when we're

engaging self-control is we're trying to

bring together state of mind and body

and concept. So, there's the the thought

piece like I'm I'm a person who works

out even if he doesn't want to provided

I'm not sick or injured, right? Cuz I

think it's important to have those

caveats. I don't believe in the no days

off thing. I take a day off every week.

I cycle my training, etc., etc. But

I also believe in state of mind and

body. And one of the things that's

kind of um

well, that just isn't discussed enough

among high performers and I think in

athletics, in academics, in music, etc.

is that

once you taste a really great workout

once you taste flow state, once you

taste neuroplasticity, like you grinded

out and you learn something and you now

have mastery of something

there's this temptation to need to be in

that perfect state in order to feel like

you can do it at all. Like as you ascend

the staircase that somehow like that's

going to happen more and more often. And

many people will assemble their entire

lives trying to recreate those states.

And I think one of the beautiful things

again about people like David Goggins,

we've we've also had Coleman Ruiz,

another uh SEAL Team Tier 1 operator, DJ

Shipley, Jocko Willink. I think what's

beautiful about that community is the

way that they describe doing hard

things, but actually

they were weaned in BUD/S and and in

their other training from a place of

suck. Like as Jocko, who's a good friend

of mine, says, "You know, we start where

it sucks. When your weapons are wet and

you're cold and it's sandy, that's the

starting line so that you completely

recalibrate this notion of optimal

performance." And I think that's

something that we don't really have an

analog for in in the rest of the world,

certainly not in academia. It's like get

great sleep, uh maybe caffeinate just

enough, be on the right place of that

U-shaped curve, right? Uh or inverted

U-shaped curve, not too stimulated, not

understimulated, and on and on. And I

think while all of that's great. It's

one of the reasons I don't like the

notion of optimization because

ultimately, optimization is about for

that moment. And the the idea that we're

trying to attain a perfect state before

we can do the real work, I think is one

of the more popular concepts about

motivation. So, is it possible that we

can rewire our thinking so that we're we

start from a place of suck? Like maybe I

should be doing my workouts at 3:00 a.m.

ala Goggins.

But I don't do that, right? I like being

rested, caffeinated.

Do you see what I'm getting at? I I

because in terms of building real mental

toughness, the ability to push into

something when everything is like

pushing back on oneself,

that seems to require crap conditions. I

think what you're saying is really

interesting because I do think we know

from research that people are incredibly

creative at coming up for justifications

to not engage in self-control. So, you

know,

I'm supposed to work out today.

Um my gym clothes don't match. Or, you

know,

I'm supposed to work out today, but it's

too sunny. I'm supposed to work out

today, but it's not sunny enough. It's

It's raining too much. It's raining too

little. Like people are remarkably

creative at coming up with reasons to

justify their indulging in their

temptations. So, what's really

interesting about what you're suggesting

here is that you can just I I And again,

I don't know that anyone's actually

studied this, but this is sort of there

might be sort of this bias or at least

we we capitalize on a bias that things

have to be just right for me to do it.

Like I have like I I I think of this

when I'm writing.

I um you know, I think a lot of us have

this idea that like I don't feel like

writing today.

Like the conditions just aren't right,

so I won't. I'll just put it off till

like the muses hit me and it's just

right, right? Um and you know, you learn

over time that like you're every day is

going to be that not so perfect day and

so you just have to learn to deal with

it and then once you get into it

as you were talking about earlier, you

might warm up to a point where now it's

actually optimal, but it takes some time

to get there. I think one of the things

that's really interesting about what

you're suggesting about the sort of

optimization culture

may be that we are embracing this partly

because optimization is an exciting

idea, but also it's

it's a great justification for not ever

doing the really hard things because the

conditions aren't quite right. And

again, I I think people are incredibly

creative at coming up with reasons why

they shouldn't do the the hard things.

In the moment of choice, it seems

perfectly reasonable. And that's one of

the things that's really frustrating and

challenging about self-control because

you mentioned the sort of idea of

aligning concept with body.

When self-control conflicts are far away

from us, so when I'm thinking about you

know, exercising more next year but not

today, next year, it's really easy to to

be able to say like that's that's the

right thing to do. That's the thing that

I really want.

But when next year becomes today

right? All of a sudden my my mindset's

in a different place and that choice is

really hard again. It becomes really

really hard. The clarity that I once had

is gone.

What's also frustrating with

self-control is so that makes it hard to

follow through with your intentions.

But what's also really frustrating about

self-control is as that moment passes

and you're looking back at it sometime

in the future, right? So now that that

the day to start has come and gone and

now you're looking back on it you have

distance again and the clarity comes

back and you're like

why didn't I do what I was supposed to

do? So again, one of the frustrating

things about about self-control is that

it's distance-dependent. The right thing

to do is really clear when it's far

away, but when it's close, it's hard to

figure out what I should be doing.

And research that I've done suggests

that this exists in part because our our

minds shift in how we think about the

event. When the event is in the distant

future, it's more abstract. It's or

distant future or it's happening to

somebody else or it's hypothetical. When

it's far away from me, it's [snorts] not

imminent, I'm more likely to think about

it

in terms of desirability, why I'm doing

it. Right? It's going to be much more

abstract. But as when that future

becomes now,

my mindset [clears throat] changes and

I'm thinking now more and more about

feasibility, how am I going to do it?

And much more much more concretely about

what I have to do. And the problem is is

a lot of these things that are hard, the

whys are really positive, but the hows

are really negative, right? That's

because they're hard. And so, just at

the point where I have to do the hard

thing is when I'm thinking about why

it's so hard the most.

And then that's why I say I don't want

to do it. And then again, time passes,

distance passes, it gets farther away

from me and I'm looking back at it and

be like, but that was something I really

really wanted to do because now I'm

thinking about it in terms of why again

instead of how. So, in order to try to

overcome that, in in my lab, we've

conducted experiments in which we have

people think about um we we we bring

them in and we have them think about

their goals and why they're pursuing

their goals or how they're going to

pursue those goals.

We then give them a self-control

conflict that's unrelated to those

goals. So, they're just thinking

generally about why or generally about

how. So, this is again the frame of mind

that we generally have when things are