Self-Control part II: How to eat the marshmallow and not be a giant douche-shaped leech on society

So, last time we talked about how it turns out all you need in life is the ability to wait 15 minutes before getting what you want.

Well, actually, I just lectured at you.  To be totally precise, you read it and I wrote it and at no point were we ever within speaking distance.  Unless, of course, you're that lucky reader I've been stalking.  You read the blog right before you go to sleep, and I watch you while you sleep like a character from Twilight.

Jesus, that's my second stalking joke in a week.  I need to get out more.

As I ended the last blog post, ever since the marshmallow experiment, the prevailing opinion on self control has been that it works like a limited resource-- you have so much of an ability to focus on a task and/or delay getting what you want, and as you deplete the amount of self control you have, the worse you become at focusing until you need to take a break or you'll just start saying obscene things in public, like some kind of torrent of hateful bullshit.

 Maybe Santorum worked really hard when no one was around, and during public events just couldn't help himself?

There is, in fact, a lot of papers that seem to support this view.  Chapters of textbooks have been written with this perspective in mind.  It's a popular theory, and seems to check out-- people show the same sort of behavior with a depletion of self-control as they might with a depletion of strength or energy.  Generally, people like to lump self-control in with a sort of "willpower" pool that people have-- you expend so much will to get a task done (or resist performing a task) and then after that you have less willpower to use for other tasks.

I think its safe to say that psychologists are avid fans of tabletop games.  Or D&D is actually a crowning achievement in person modeling.

So, all of this is well and good, but what do you do if your willpower pool sucks ass?  Go out and find a tome of +4 willpower?

Well, you can try to start small-- it turns out, successfully completing a task, or keeping a schedule, or resisting temptation refunds your willpower pool somewhat and also expands it for future use, so the best way to go about getting more willpower is to just brush your teeth every morning.  Or keep some other trivial resolution.

Seriously guys, I think we're on to the most lifelike RP ever. 

 

So then, by keeping an easy goal, you can build up your self-control.  And then move on to harder goals, and build up your self-control more until you snowball and become a Buddhist monk.  If, of course, self-control is a limited resource after all.

Newer studies show that self-control (and maybe overall willpower) is tied to several other things, most of them dealing with emotions.  The ability to focus on one task you don't want to do may be tied to things like perceived task difficulty, emotional state, attention span, personal beliefs about willpower and feedback on the task at hand.

Looking at the aggregate of those qualities, you may be able to boost your self-control by simply believing that what you're working on is easy and that you have massive stores of willpower.  Of course, trying to go this route and then not being able to deliver means that you'll either end up an entitled crackhead, or crushingly depressed.

So yeah, maybe go for the small steps at a time method.