The Secret of Self-control

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?printable=true

by limist • 16 years ago

94 19 16 years ago

newyorker.com

adolph• 16 years ago

Thanks for linking to this. RadioLab has an episode covering the same Walter Mischel study, among other things:

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2009/mar/09/misc...

spicyj• 16 years ago

Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=603364

RiderOfGiraffes2• 16 years ago

The discussion there is interesting, but now closed, as that was over a year ago. I'm pleased to see this re-surface, and I've now added it to my "Great Articles" repository, ready for the day when I get time to spend on that project and need data to populate it.

michael_dorfman• 16 years ago

Have you seen this site? http://longform.org/

I think it might be a good source for your "Great Articles" repository.

awlo• 16 years ago

Isn't that an 'egg and chicken' type of problem? You can, after all, learn self-control / to defer gratification.

quantumhobbit• 16 years ago

chicken and egg indeed. It's easier once you have better self-control to learn better self-control.

I've discovered that practicing meditation helps me a lot with self-control.

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

It is situational.

You practice self control in situations where you have a reserve of self-control - say, in your own house before bed time. Theoretically this will let you build up a greater reserve for situations where you need more self-control - confronting a subordinate or superior on a job.

Sapslzr• 16 years ago

what about people following orders rather than waiting?

philfreo• 16 years ago

tl;dr version?

Natsu• 16 years ago

You get self-control by finding effective ways to distract yourself from the thing you want. If you focus on the thing you want you will give in to temptation. In that vein, note that thinking about not thinking about X is highly counter-productive. The kid who tried to stare down the treat caved quickly.

More effective strategies were techniques like pretending the food isn't real (telling themselves it's a picture, made of plastic, or whatever), singing songs, hiding under the table, covering their eyes, etc.

Anything that actually gets one's mind off of the temptation will work.

The rest of the article was fluff about how it is more measurable than most things in psychology, how he came up with it, how effective it was and assorted anecdotes.

jerf• 16 years ago

I am astounded by how much of the art of managing one's self is using your forebrain to feed your hindbrain a carefully crafted set of "exaggerated truths" that will produce the results the forebrain desires.

I say "exaggerated truths" because you can't really de novo lie to your hindbrain; it may "be a picture" or it may not be "important" but it is still a marshmallow. But your forebrain gets a lot of leeway on what aspects get enhanced and what aspects get suppressed.

And of course there isn't really a strict separation between "hindbrain" and "forebrain", but as I am working in English this will have to do.

annajohnson• 16 years ago

Thanks for posting this. I've heard about this study but never knew the details. I definitely think self-control/the ability to delay gratification is one of the keys to success in any challenging endeavor, whether it's elite sports or building a company. You have to have the ability to keep going when it really hurts rather than opt for the easier, more immediately gratifying path of giving up.

klbarry• 16 years ago

Fantastic in a thousand ways.

fhe• 16 years ago

I lost interested about 1/3 of the way through the article. I remember reading somewhere that long forms (5000+ word articles,which this particular one is, or 2hr videos) just don't work so well on the Internet: either it's something intrinsic to the Internet as a medium or we are being trained to having short attention spans. Just as I was giving up on the article (and came to HN for a summary), I realized that this is precisely what the article was talking about: not having the patience/stamina for delayed gratification, presumably will come about as one ploughes through the entire article.

My takeaway from the article: 1. delayed gratification is important to success. but even if you aren't good at it, you can hack it, by understanding your thought process. 2. there might be a place for long form journalism like at the New Yorker, but it's probably going to be a small niche.

brianwillis• 16 years ago

I had a similar reaction to the length of the article, but my conclusion was different.

Just yesterday, someone posted a link on Reddit to an article written by a young person who, for various reasons, refuses to adopt eReader technology. The article inspired some great comments on Reddit, but one that stuck with me came from the always insightful Kleinbl00 (http://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/d9jh2/at_26_im_part...) who drew an analogy to someone he once knew, taking the same stance with music:

>Her solution was to go back to the CD wallets she used to carry around. Note that her problem wasn't fidelity. Her problem wasn't portability. Her problem was that for some reason she didn't have the attention span to listen to an entire album in its entirety unless she was forced to press eject, fish the CD into a wallet, fish another back out of a wallet, and fish it back into the CD player while in traffic in Manhattan.

>And somehow, this was the fault of the iPod.

Attention management has never been harder. However, the problem isn't the medium or the message, it's us. I've noticed that it's gotten harder over the last few years for me to focus on any long form writing. Yet the amount of reading I do (in terms of words-per-day) has probably increased dramatically. Even quieting down my mind enough to read books has become tough, despite being something that used to be perfectly natural for me.

I'm sure this would make for an interesting discussion, so if any of you can offer some guidance, speak up.

sheena• 16 years ago

However, the problem isn't the medium or the message, it's us.

Unless you're claiming that people themselves have fundamentally changed, I don't see how the medium gets absolved of responsibility. The medium influences us, doesn't it? We're trained daily by the things we do and how we do them.

mansilla• 16 years ago

Very interesting article, and indeed, a meta experiment in itself in the context of it being a New Yorker piece (traditionally long form) in the today's popular "gotta-have-it-this-instant gist" CNN blurb format.

Mischel's focus on context would probably explain why I had no problems finishing this article -- I am a father of two young children that is interested in their development and well-being. If you were to present me with this article in the past, I'd probably be in the same boat as /fhe/ and bail 33% of the way through.

So, HN experiment to those that have bailed part way through the NY article (and possibly most other long-form pieces): Assume that it IS worth reading this entire article, because it's not just about the marshmallow experiment at childhood, but has useful context to YOU as an adult that could positively affect your life and those around you forever. (carrot) In that context, is it enough for you to switch from the short-delay satisfaction of a "profound" Twitter quotation, to the long-delay satisfaction of reading through an entire thought-provoking and well crafted New Yorker long-form article?

The Secret of Self-control

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