In the last of my current series on self-control, let’s focus on how to boost it.  Fortunately, there appears to be several ways to manipulate or improve ones self-control.  The first is perhaps the most obvious…

Motivation

It’s not terribly surprising that the more motivated you are do something, the stronger your chances of actually doing it.  If you decide at work that you’ll follow-up on your actions straight after every meeting, rather than waiting for them to build up, a recent opportunity for promotion (or indeed, for demotion) is likely to increase your chances of actually doing it, over simply deciding that it’s a good idea.

Doing some form of regular exercise is a common challenge. The discipline needed to regularly perform your new exercise regime needs to last long enough for the regime to become part of your daily routine.  Whereas we all know that exercise is good for us, often that isn’t motivation enough.  But, what if you are doing it for someone else?  What if you want to stay healthy in order to take care of your family, perhaps to be around long enough to see your children make good lives for themselves?  Each time you face a struggle to exercise, remember who you’re doing it for.

Related to motivation is seeing the big picture.  In the moment back at work where you’re faced with checking your email or following up on those meeting actions, the email might be the easy option.  But, considering the big picture: when will you do the follow-up, what’s the impact on you or your team of doing the follow-up, how will you feel at the end of week if these actions are out of the way, what do they mean to your career, etc..  Seeing the big picture, can give you the jolt of motivation you need, to stick to your promise to complete your actions straight after the meeting.

Whatever your approach, considering and even manipulating your motivation can be a useful tool to fight the urge for instant gratification over the longer term good.

Energy

I briefly covered this in “Why does the chocolate win after a hard day?” Roy Baumeister and colleagues created the analogy of a muscle to self-control strength.  One thing we know about muscles is that when they work they use energy, and at some point you have to stop and eat to refuel.

Just like the Judges making parole decisions (“Even Judges decision making ability fades”), making hard decisions often requires self-control, to properly examine all the options and avoid procrastination, which burns energy, just like a muscle.  So, after using it for a while, you need to take a break and refuel your energy reserves before exercising it again.

I like the idea that the original experiments investing self-control and energy, used Lemonade as the fuel – sweetened with either sugar (giving an energy boost) or an artificial sweetener (no energy boost).

Exercise

Continuing the muscle analogy, you can build strength through exercise practice.  For example, Megan Oaten and Ken Chang, researchers in Australia showed how practicing self-control in money management, or regular exercise or by students following a structured study program, could build self-control strength.  Following one structured approach (e.g. monitoring finances), built their self-control muscle such that it benefited other areas of their life – for example the students following the study program consumed less alcohol and caffeine, smoked less, increased healthy eating, monitored their finances, and it even helped them do more household chores!

The self-control exercise doesn’t have to be terribly meaningful.  Here are some of the tasks that have been used to exercise and build self-control: setting yourself the task of sitting up straight, not using slang words, using a non-dominant hand for regular tasks like cleaning your teeth and regularly practicing the stroop test.

One of tips that comes out of the many studies considers that, because self-control is both general (it’s the same self-control that helps you follow-up on boring actions, and go to the gym) and it depletes with constant use, you should only tackle one new self-control testing thing at a time.  If you want to start an exercise regime, don’t try and change your diet at the same time.  Working on one thing, will initially conserve your self-control strength for that one thing, and at the same time, will increase it’s strength. So once you’ve followed your new regime long enough for it to become a habit, you’ll be in a good position to take on a new, perhaps tougher, challenge.

Good luck boosting your self-control, remember it’s one of the most important, general strengths there is!

Be remarkable,
Mark

What’s your pleasurable vice for which you restrict your consumption?  Mine is chocolate, well it’s one of them anyway – it’s always handy to have multiple options.  But perhaps the question ‘why does the chocolate win after a hard day?’ is just too simple – we’re hungry, chocolate has lots of calories, it’s a fast way to refuel, our brain urges us to eat it (oh, and it tastes great)!

Hmm… except I don’t think that’s the only explanation.  Perhaps we’re normally really good at restraining ourselves, restricting our intake, a paragon of self-control.  But sometimes, that willpower just goes out of the window – as if during our hard day we’ve used it all up.

In fact, that’s quite likely.  Researchers in the lab of Dr. Roy Baumeister & Dr. Dianne Tice discovered a number of things about self-control, including that we have a finite amount and once we’ve used it up, we need a break in order to rebuild it.

So, consider that hard day – perhaps you’ve successfully driven yourself to complete a project, tying yourself to your desk, resisting that chat at the coffee machine, staying later than usual, and then gifted with busy traffic on the way home.  Or the children are at home and it’s just been one of those days when you’ve had to exert your saintly parenting powers just a little too often.  You get to the kitchen, take a deep breath, and having thoroughly spent your finite self-control reserves you open the cupboard, only to be faced with your nemesis from the land of sugary vice.  We can all see who’s favourite to win this showdown.

Of course, controlling our sugar intake is an obvious challenge.  Some are a little better disguised.  Perhaps you’ve just had enough and you say something in a meeting that you really wish you hadn’t.  Or both you and your partner have had a challenging day, and that evening becomes one on which you tackle your gripes of domestic bliss in the guise of dirty dishes not being put in the dishwasher, and it blows up into a domestic storm.

I think firstly knowing that self-control fatigues with use, like a muscle, is handy.  Put the sugary vice in a place that takes a lot of effort to retrieve it – use the fatigue to your advantage.  Use your last vestiges of control to suggest a break in the meeting when you feel yourself on the edge of exploding.  And, watch a movie together and tackle the domestic bliss issues in the morning.

Oh yes, one of the other things Baumeister discovered about self-control was that it needs energy – the same kind that we expend during exercise and refill when we eat and rest.  Darn, as if the ‘eat well and exercise’ mantra needs any more props.  But there it is – yes the chocolate will provide the energy boost that may raise your level of self-control, just before it plummets as your pancreas kick-in to deal with the overdose and strip it away again, leaving you open to another round of sugary vice.

So approach mid-day chocolate with caution – perhaps I’ll smother a carrot with it and see how that works.

Be remarkable,
-Mark

P.S. I highly recommend the book by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, “Willpower: Why Self-Control is the Secret to Success”, my inspiration for this post.