#52 Mindset: Understanding Impulses and Self-Control
Patrick McCarthy
Performance Psychology Consultant | Doctoral Candidate in Human Performance | ACA | MSc Sports Psychology
Today's research is by Dr Angela L. Duckworth, Jamie L. Taxer, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Brian M. Galla, and James J. Gross: Self-control and academic achievement
I have deviated to a subset of mindset this week (self-control) as it's something I've been thinking about in recent weeks. If you enjoy it, find a way to let me know (like/comment/DM) and I can keep this style of newsletter.
My (quick) Summary
For two days I've been thinking about this opening sentence. The language in self-control research is hard to understand, so I've done my best to simplify it here. I tried my best to find a replacement for the word regulate, but I haven't found one yet. So instead, I'll explain it in normal terms first.
If you think of a home heating system, it would monitor the current temperature, and based on that, either increase, maintain or decrease the temperature in the home. It regulates the temperature by monitoring where the temperature is supposed to be and correcting that by measuring the temperature and making adjustments to it. Psychological regulation is like that but harder. Unlike simply measuring temperature, psychology asks you to consider thoughts, feelings and actions. Now that you have that context, I can define self-control as:
"Your ability to regulate your thoughts feelings, and actions when enduring valued goal conflict with momentarily more gratifying goals"
Let's unpack that.
Valued goal conflict
Valued goal conflict is when you have set longer term goals that you care about, and don't work towards them because of a shorter term, instantly gratifying action. Here's an example:
Your goal is to eat healthy. To do that, you need to make your lunch for work every day. This means a 7am alarm to prepare it. That's all great. The next morning, your alarm goes off at 7am and you have the urge to pick up your phone. This is a conflict between enduring valued goals (eating healthy) and instantly gratifying goals (scrolling on your phone). The conflict is considered to be between the long term delayed benefit of getting up to eat healthy and the instant benefit of scrolling.
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Self-control is the ability to understand the trade off of the conflict in these moments, and set up your life in a way that you can navigate the distractions. It's a constant battle, but the good news is it's a skill that gets easier over time. It seems so simple when it's written that way, but that doesn't take into account how addictive the alternatives are. Who wants to get up to make a salad versus playing another level of candy crush? Or read at night versus watching youtube highlights of the Six Nations? It happens everyone.
A really popular book at the moment is Atomic Habits. It's fascinating. In essence, it takes into account the power of instant gratification, and helps you design habits to take away the value goal conflict by eliminating the alternative (or at least making it a much harder choice). For example, James Clear talks about habit stacking. Habit stacking is (as it suggests) stacking habits on top of one another. Take a habit you do automatically (brushing your teeth) and add another habit onto it (weighing yourself). I think it's a very cool book to read if you're interested in that type of stuff.
Three Insights from This Research
One Question for You
How could you reduce the availability of short term instant gratification options in your weekly schedule? Something I have done on my iPhone is turn off all notifications in work mode - it helps me focus for short periods. Would that work for you?
Until next week,
Patrick