I address the concerns about the writing style and content in my just-written comment here. Let me know your thoughts about whether that helps address your concerns.
Regarding clickbait and sharing, let’s actually evaluate the baseline. I want to highlight that 2K is quite a bit higher than the average for a Lifehack article. A typical article does not rise above 1K, and that’s considered pretty good. So my articles have done really well by comparison to other Lifehack articles. Since that’s the baseline, I’m pretty happy with where the sharing is.
Why would you be disheartened if I stopped what I was trying to do?
EDIT: Also forgot to add that some of the articles you listed were not written by me but by another aspiring rationalist, so FYI.
7 Surprising Science-Based Hacks To Build Your Willpower
Tempted by that second doughnut? Struggling to resist checking your phone? Shopping impulsively on Amazon? Slacking off by reading BuzzFeed instead of doing work? What you need is more willpower! Recent research shows that strengthening willpower is the real secret to the kind of self-control that can help you resist temptations and achieve your goals. The great news is that scientists say strengthening your willpower is not as hard as you might think. Here are 7 research-based hacks to strengthen your willpower!
Smile :-)
Smiling and other mood-lifting activities help improve willpower. In a recent study, scientists first drained the willpower of participants through having them resist temptation. Then, for one group, they took steps to lift people’s moods, such as giving them unexpected gifts or showing them a funny video. For another group, they just let them rest. Compared to people who just rested for a brief period, those whose moods were improved did significantly better in resisting temptation later! So next time you need to resist temptation, improve your mood! Smile or laugh, watch a funny video or two.
low willpower resisting BuzzFeed and doughnuts? You should improve your mood—try some Buzzfeed or doughnuts.
Clench Your Fist
Clench your fists or partake in another type of activity where you exercise self-control. Studies say that exercising self-control in any physical domain causes you to become more disciplined in other facets of life. So do whatever works for you to exercise self-control when you are trying to fight temptations: clench your fist, squeeze your eyes shut, or you can even hold in your pee, just like UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
Meditate
Photo Credit: Gleb Tsipursky meditating in the park
Meditation is great for a lot of things – reducing stress, increasing focus, managing emotions. Now research suggests it even helps us build willpower! With all these benefits, can you afford not to meditate? An easy way to get started is to spend 10 minutes a day sitting in a calm position and focusing on your breath.
Reminders
Our immediate desires to give in to temptations make it really challenging to resist them. Our emotional desires seem like a huge elephant and our rational self is like a small elephant rider by comparison. However, one way to steer the elephant is to set in physical reminders in advance to remind ourselves of what our rational self wanted to do. So put a note on your fridge that says “only one doughnut” or set an alarm clock to buzz when you want to stop playing video games.
Eat
Did you know that your willpower is powered by food? No wonder’s it’s so hard to diet! When we don’t eat, our willpower goes down the drain. The best cure is a meal rich in protein, which enables the most optimal willpower.
Self-Forgiveness
How is self-forgiveness connected to willpower? Well, what the science shows is that feelings of regret deplete your willpower. This is why those who eat a little too much ice cream and feel regret are then much more likely to just let themselves go and eat the whole pint or even gallon! Instead, when you give in to temptation, be compassionate toward yourself and forgive yourself. That way, you’ll have more willpower going forward!
Commitment
The most important thing to strengthen your willpower is commitment to doing so! Only by committing to improving your willpower every day will you be able to take the steps described above. To do so, evaluate your situation and why you want to strengthen your willpower, make a clear decision to work on improving this area, and set a long-term goal for your willpower improvement to have the kind of intentional life that you want.
Then break down this goal into specific and concrete steps that you will take based on the strategies described above. Research shows this is the best path for you to build your willpower!
So what are the specific and concrete steps that you will take to build your own willpower? Share your planned steps and the strategies that you will use in the comments section below!
To avoid missing out on content that helps you reach your goals, subscribe to the Intentional Insights monthly newsletter.
The generosity of readers like you made this article possible. If you benefited from reading it, please consider volunteering or/and making a tax-deductible contribution to Intentional Insights. Thank you for being awesome!
surprising
clickbait title. That’s fine.
science-Based
No. Bad. Not helpful.
Tempted by that second doughnut?
short term reward vs long term dieting goal with less salient rewards. You didn’t explain that.
Struggling to resist checking your phone?
how about asking why? rather than attracting someone to ring the yes that’s me bells in their head; instead attract them to the I should sort that out bells.
Shopping impulsively on Amazon?
What really? I know these are just your examples; but you should use solid ones. And don’t name drop Amazon and BuzzFeed.
Slacking off by reading BuzzFeed instead of doing work? What you need is more willpower! Recent research shows
research from who? the magical scientists
that strengthening willpower is the real secret
real secret kill me now.
to the kind of self-control that can help you resist temptations and achieve your goals. The great news is that scientists say
scientists say are they the same ones that were doing research before? Or different ones.
strengthening your willpower is not as hard as you might think. Here are 7 research-based hacks to strengthen your willpower!
Smile :-)
not inherently bad a suggestion; but really has not a lot to do with willpower. If you are a human who never smiles; you shouldn’t be looking at willpower things; you should be solving that problem first.
Smiling and other mood-lifting activities help improve willpower. In a recent study,
a recent study not linked to
scientists them again!
first drained the willpower of participants through having them resist temptation. Then, for one group, they took steps to lift people’s moods, such as giving them unexpected gifts or showing them a funny video. For another group, they just let them rest. Compared to people who just rested for a brief period, those whose moods were improved did significantly better in resisting temptation later!
in what way does this connect smiling and willpower?
So next time you need to resist temptation, improve your mood! Smile or laugh, watch a funny video or two.
no. This is reaching not-even-wrong territory.
Clench Your Fist
nothing wrong with this suggestion but it’s a bit of a weak effect.
Clench your fists or partake in another type of activity where you exercise self-control. Studies say
studies say Which ones? Where?
that exercising self-control in any physical domain causes you to become more disciplined in other facets of life.
hey wait—the nebulous idea of willpower, the draw of the science based, the entire idea that there are super secret answers is entirely the opposite of what rationality wants to convey. Truth is—if there were any ideas that really worked; you would already know about them; and probably already be using them. The entire idea of maybe if I keep searching for ideas I can uncover a secret truth is wrong. It’s an overstretch of exploration in the exploration-exploitation dilemma. The worst part is partial reinforcement helps to reinforce addictive behaviours (like endlessly browsing buzzfeed) more than anything else.
So do whatever works for you to exercise self-control when you are trying to fight temptations: clench your fist, squeeze your eyes shut, or you can even hold in your pee
just like UK Prime Minister David Cameron. What? Not a good thing to be referencing.
I’m gonna stop because this feels too much like a waste of time.
I realise it’s easier to criticise than generate content; I plan to try to do that in contrast to this article if I get the time.
So next time you need to resist temptation, improve your mood! Smile or laugh, watch a funny video or two.
no. This is reaching not-even-wrong territory.
On what basis? It matches my experience, something similar has been discussed on LW before, and it would seem to match various theoretical considerations about human psychology.
Truth is—if there were any ideas that really worked; you would already know about them; and probably already be using them.
This seems like a very strong and mostly unjustified claim.
E.g. even something like the Getting Things Done system, which works very well for lots and lots of people and has been covered and promoted in numerous places, is still something that’s relatively unknown outside the kinds of circles where people are interested in this kind of thing. A lot of people in the industrialized world could benefit from it, but most haven’t even tried it.
Ideas spread slowly, and often at a rate that’s only weakly correlated with their usefulness.
Given that you didn’t address the following, let me address it
Did you know that your willpower is powered by food? No wonder’s it’s so hard to diet! When we don’t eat, our willpower goes down the drain. The best cure is a meal rich in protein, which enables the most optimal willpower.
To be that raises a harmful untruth flag.
Roy Baumeister suggests that meals help with willpower through glucose. To me the claim that it’s protein that builds willpower looks unsubstantiated. It certainly not backed up by the Israeli judges.
Where does the harm come into play? I understand the nutritional consensus to be that most people eat meals with too much protein. Nutrition science is often wrong, but that means that one should be careful about giving people the advice of raising the protein content of their meals.
The nutritional consensus is also not about optimizing willpower. I would be somewhat skeptical of the claim that the willpower optimizing meal just luckily happens to be identical to the health optimizing meal.
My argument is about two issues: 1) There no reason to belief that protein increases willpower. 2) If you tell people a lie to make them improve their diet it’s at least defensible they end of healthier as a result. If your lie however makes them eat a less healthy diet you really screwed up.
Apart from that, I don’t believe that eating glucose directly to increase your willpower is a good idea or healthy.
I speak in the tone of listicle articles reluctantly, as I wrote above. It’s icky, but necessary to get this past the editors at Lifehack and elsewhere.
a recent study not linked to
Actually, it is linked to. You can check out the article for the link, but here is the link itself if you’re curious: www.albany.edu/~muraven/publications/promotion files/articles/tice et al, 2007.pdf
Smile or laugh, watch a funny video or two.
no. This is reaching not-even-wrong territory.
This I just don’t get. If experiments say you should watch a funny video, and they do as the link above states, why is this not-even wrong territory?
I address the concerns about the writing style and content in my just-written comment here. Let me know your thoughts about whether that helps address your concerns.
Regarding clickbait and sharing, let’s actually evaluate the baseline. I want to highlight that 2K is quite a bit higher than the average for a Lifehack article. A typical article does not rise above 1K, and that’s considered pretty good. So my articles have done really well by comparison to other Lifehack articles. Since that’s the baseline, I’m pretty happy with where the sharing is.
Why would you be disheartened if I stopped what I was trying to do?
EDIT: Also forgot to add that some of the articles you listed were not written by me but by another aspiring rationalist, so FYI.
no that does not answer to the issues I raised.
I am now going to take apart this article:
www.intentionalinsights.org/7-surprising-science-based-hacks-to-build-your-willpower
7 Surprising Science-Based Hacks To Build Your Willpower
Tempted by that second doughnut? Struggling to resist checking your phone? Shopping impulsively on Amazon? Slacking off by reading BuzzFeed instead of doing work? What you need is more willpower! Recent research shows that strengthening willpower is the real secret to the kind of self-control that can help you resist temptations and achieve your goals. The great news is that scientists say strengthening your willpower is not as hard as you might think. Here are 7 research-based hacks to strengthen your willpower!
Smile :-)
Smiling and other mood-lifting activities help improve willpower. In a recent study, scientists first drained the willpower of participants through having them resist temptation. Then, for one group, they took steps to lift people’s moods, such as giving them unexpected gifts or showing them a funny video. For another group, they just let them rest. Compared to people who just rested for a brief period, those whose moods were improved did significantly better in resisting temptation later! So next time you need to resist temptation, improve your mood! Smile or laugh, watch a funny video or two.
Clench Your Fist
Clench your fists or partake in another type of activity where you exercise self-control. Studies say that exercising self-control in any physical domain causes you to become more disciplined in other facets of life. So do whatever works for you to exercise self-control when you are trying to fight temptations: clench your fist, squeeze your eyes shut, or you can even hold in your pee, just like UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
Meditate
Photo Credit: Gleb Tsipursky meditating in the park
Meditation is great for a lot of things – reducing stress, increasing focus, managing emotions. Now research suggests it even helps us build willpower! With all these benefits, can you afford not to meditate? An easy way to get started is to spend 10 minutes a day sitting in a calm position and focusing on your breath.
Reminders
Our immediate desires to give in to temptations make it really challenging to resist them. Our emotional desires seem like a huge elephant and our rational self is like a small elephant rider by comparison. However, one way to steer the elephant is to set in physical reminders in advance to remind ourselves of what our rational self wanted to do. So put a note on your fridge that says “only one doughnut” or set an alarm clock to buzz when you want to stop playing video games.
Eat
Did you know that your willpower is powered by food? No wonder’s it’s so hard to diet! When we don’t eat, our willpower goes down the drain. The best cure is a meal rich in protein, which enables the most optimal willpower.
Self-Forgiveness
How is self-forgiveness connected to willpower? Well, what the science shows is that feelings of regret deplete your willpower. This is why those who eat a little too much ice cream and feel regret are then much more likely to just let themselves go and eat the whole pint or even gallon! Instead, when you give in to temptation, be compassionate toward yourself and forgive yourself. That way, you’ll have more willpower going forward!
Commitment
The most important thing to strengthen your willpower is commitment to doing so! Only by committing to improving your willpower every day will you be able to take the steps described above. To do so, evaluate your situation and why you want to strengthen your willpower, make a clear decision to work on improving this area, and set a long-term goal for your willpower improvement to have the kind of intentional life that you want.
Then break down this goal into specific and concrete steps that you will take based on the strategies described above. Research shows this is the best path for you to build your willpower!
So what are the specific and concrete steps that you will take to build your own willpower? Share your planned steps and the strategies that you will use in the comments section below!
To avoid missing out on content that helps you reach your goals, subscribe to the Intentional Insights monthly newsletter.
The generosity of readers like you made this article possible. If you benefited from reading it, please consider volunteering or/and making a tax-deductible contribution to Intentional Insights. Thank you for being awesome!
Struggling to resist checking your phone?
Shopping impulsively on Amazon?
Slacking off by reading BuzzFeed instead of doing work? What you need is more willpower! Recent research shows
that strengthening willpower is the real secret
to the kind of self-control that can help you resist temptations and achieve your goals. The great news is that scientists say
strengthening your willpower is not as hard as you might think. Here are 7 research-based hacks to strengthen your willpower!
Smile :-)
Smiling and other mood-lifting activities help improve willpower. In a recent study,
first drained the willpower of participants through having them resist temptation. Then, for one group, they took steps to lift people’s moods, such as giving them unexpected gifts or showing them a funny video. For another group, they just let them rest. Compared to people who just rested for a brief period, those whose moods were improved did significantly better in resisting temptation later!
So next time you need to resist temptation, improve your mood! Smile or laugh, watch a funny video or two.
Clench Your Fist
Clench your fists or partake in another type of activity where you exercise self-control. Studies say
that exercising self-control in any physical domain causes you to become more disciplined in other facets of life.
So do whatever works for you to exercise self-control when you are trying to fight temptations: clench your fist, squeeze your eyes shut, or you can even hold in your pee
I’m gonna stop because this feels too much like a waste of time.
I realise it’s easier to criticise than generate content; I plan to try to do that in contrast to this article if I get the time.
On what basis? It matches my experience, something similar has been discussed on LW before, and it would seem to match various theoretical considerations about human psychology.
This seems like a very strong and mostly unjustified claim.
E.g. even something like the Getting Things Done system, which works very well for lots and lots of people and has been covered and promoted in numerous places, is still something that’s relatively unknown outside the kinds of circles where people are interested in this kind of thing. A lot of people in the industrialized world could benefit from it, but most haven’t even tried it.
Ideas spread slowly, and often at a rate that’s only weakly correlated with their usefulness.
Given that you didn’t address the following, let me address it
To be that raises a harmful untruth flag. Roy Baumeister suggests that meals help with willpower through glucose. To me the claim that it’s protein that builds willpower looks unsubstantiated. It certainly not backed up by the Israeli judges.
Where does the harm come into play? I understand the nutritional consensus to be that most people eat meals with too much protein. Nutrition science is often wrong, but that means that one should be careful about giving people the advice of raising the protein content of their meals.
The nutritional consensus is also not about optimizing willpower. I would be somewhat skeptical of the claim that the willpower optimizing meal just luckily happens to be identical to the health optimizing meal.
I haven’t made that claim.
In the sense that you didn’t make it, neither did I say that you did.
My argument is about two issues:
1) There no reason to belief that protein increases willpower.
2) If you tell people a lie to make them improve their diet it’s at least defensible they end of healthier as a result. If your lie however makes them eat a less healthy diet you really screwed up.
Apart from that, I don’t believe that eating glucose directly to increase your willpower is a good idea or healthy.
Why not helpful?
I speak in the tone of listicle articles reluctantly, as I wrote above. It’s icky, but necessary to get this past the editors at Lifehack and elsewhere.
Actually, it is linked to. You can check out the article for the link, but here is the link itself if you’re curious: www.albany.edu/~muraven/publications/promotion files/articles/tice et al, 2007.pdf
This I just don’t get. If experiments say you should watch a funny video, and they do as the link above states, why is this not-even wrong territory?