Tag: Self Control

The Time for Nudges

The Time for Nudges

Posted on by jabittan
One of the most common examples for why nudges should be used by governments, employers, parents, and grandparents is the example of using nudges to encourage financial savings, especially for retirement. People don’t save enough for retirement, and are often quick to spend their money before they even have it, leaving themselves financially vulnerable to job losses, car breakdowns, and severe weather events. Governments can offer tax breaks for savings, employers can default employees into retirement savings accounts at high levels, parents can teach children to save allowances, and grandparents can start long-term savings vehicles for young children and nudge them to use the money wisely at a reasonable age. What the retirement nudge examples all show, is the importance of thinking about time when considering nudges and behaviors.

 

In their book Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler write, “Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time.” Nudges, the authors explain, are incredibly valuable when time is an important factor. When our behaviors and actions provide small immediate rewards at the cost of larger later returns, then nudges can play a huge role.

 

Teaching children self-control, and encouraging them to show restraint and save their weekly allowance for a larger purchase that will last longer than some gum or candy does the same thing as helping employees contribute more than 5% of their paycheck to a retirement account. In the present moment it would be nice to have a dopamine hit from a candy bar, but a new Gameboy game is going to provide hours of entertainment after the candy bar is gone. Similarly, a lease on a new sports car might be affordable, but an earlier retirement, sending a kid to college without saddling them with debt, and surviving a costly MRI during an unemployment spell in an economic downturn is much more important than impressing the neighbors.

 

Self-control is easier when there is a short time period between our action the consequences we will face. If I know that yelling at someone on the phone while I’m in the presence of my boss could cost me my job, I’ll probably be able to hold back. But many of our self-control requirements have much longer time spans for the benefits or costs to become apparent. While it doesn’t feel like we lose anything by scrolling through Twitter for a few minutes after lunch each day, those minutes add up, and could be the difference between a promotion a year from now and missing out on a big break for career advancement.

 

Nudges are helpful because they can help us better understand costs, use better discount rates for the future, and make the difficult decisions that payoff in the long run.  This is why the retirement examples are so common when discussing nudges, because they are the precise examples of where our brains make cognitive errors that could harm us in the future, and they are spaces where small actions can help us overcome poor decision-making, impulsive behaviors, and short-term thinking to behave in ways we would chose if we were acting more rationally.
Self-Control & Environmental Effects - Joe Abittan

Self-Control & Environmental Effects

Posted on by jabittan
I discount the idea of the self more than most people. I don’t think that it is useful to think about ourselves as definable individuals the way most people do, and as a result, I don’t think self-control, discipline, and individual responsibility should be as prominent in our economic and political systems as we make them. From my perspective, the systems, structures, and environmental conditions of our lives shape our decisions and behaviors to a much greater extent than I think most people want to admit.

 

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler provide evidence that supports my position in their book Nudge. Sunstein and Thaler write about the hot-cold empathy gap which describes how much self-control we predict we will have when we imagine a temptation versus how much self control we actually have when faced with a temptation. It is easy to say that we are going to limit how many sweets we eat at a Christmas party when we are still at home, getting ready to leave. But once we have arrived at the party and smell fresh baked cookies and pies, our self-control is effectively thrown out the window.

 

“When in a cold state,” write Sunstein and Thaler, “we do not appreciate how much our desires and our behavior will be altered when we are under the influence of arousal. As a result, our behavior reflects a certain naivete about the effects that context can have on choice.”

 

What is important to take away from this quote is that there is a disconnect between the way we expect to behave and the choices we expect to make and the actual behaviors and decisions of the moment. I believe that systems and structures matter a lot, but if we set up certain systems and structures in our lives without recognizing how hard it will be to actually make the choices and decisions that we expect to make, then we have not actually built any type of system or structure that we can be successful within. We can buy all the swiss chard that we want and write out a weekly menu full of healthy foods, but if we buy a pack of Oreos at the store convinced that we will only eat one a day for dessert, we will be unlikely to actually stick to our plan at 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon when we crave something sweet.

 

Environmental effects are important and often overlooked when we think about our decisions and behaviors. This is because our reflection is done in a cold state when we are not tempted by mindless TV, cookies, or sleeping in for an extra hour. If we want to be successful and develop systems and structures that will actually encourage self-control and good decision-making, then we have to predict how we will feel when we are in hot states, and we have to arrange our environment in a way that completely prevents the choices we want to avoid. We can’t have Oreos in the house at all, we have to install a website blocker to stop us from browsing social media, and we have to place the alarm away from the bed, so we have to actually get up when it goes off. Expecting that our self-control will hold is a good way to fail when temptation is all around.
Self-Control Depletion, Continued

Self-Control Depletion, Continued

Posted on by jabittan
“The evidence is persuasive,” writes Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow, “activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation.”

 

Yesterday I wrote about our misconceptions regarding individual self-control. I wrote about how important it is to structure our environment accordingly for productivity and self-restraint. We are influenced by far more factors in our environment than we like to admit, and we don’t have as much self-control over our behaviors as we believe we do. Being intentional with our environment, shaping the systems, structures, and institutions around us, will enable us to move through life without needing unreasonable (or unattainable) self-control and motivation.

 

Today’s quote from Kahneman gets more detailed with self-control, ego depletion, and our experience of focus, attention, and mental effort. Cognitive load, as mentioned in the quote, is the effort put on our thinking processes. Remembering a 7 digit number is a light cognitive load, while holding 7 digits in your mind and adding one digit to each number to get a new number is a higher cognitive load. At a certain point under cognitive load, our mind simply can’t hold any more information and can’t continue to accurately do more mental weight-lifting. This is the point where ego depletion sets in if we continue to try to push through and maintain the hard work.

 

The more we engage System 2, the part of our brain needed for focus activities and complex problem solving, the quicker we lose motivation for mentally taxing activities. This is the ego depletion that Kahneman writes about. Our brains in theory can keep going, we could keep reading, writing, plugging away at a spreadsheet, but our brains start to get tired, and our motivation to focus and push through with continued mental effort fades. If we continue to exercise self-control, preventing ourselves from a diversion, such as playing a video game, then we are slowly going to wear ourselves out, and we will be more likely to get a cookie, have a drink, or binge watch a whole TV series once we do stop.

 

Just as our brains are not able to continually hold more and more information without making mistakes, our brains are not able to continually do more and more deep work without reaching a breaking point. As Cal Newport writes in his book Deep Work, for most people who are serious about doing their best work, the limit is roughly 4 hours of intense deep work per day. The mind, even a well trained mind, will get tired and lose the motivation to keep pushing through more deep work without making dangerous mistakes and becoming less productive in the long run. We have to keep in mind the twin forces of cognitive load and ego depletion, and focus on doing the right work at the right time, before our cognitive load is overwhelming and before our self-control has been depleted. We can do great work, but we have to be intentional about how we do our deep work, and we have to set up our environment to minimize the pull of distractions and the need for self-control.
Depleting Self-Control

Depleting Self-Control

Posted on by jabittan
A theme that runs through a lot of the writing that I do, influenced by Stoic thinkers such as Marcus Aurelius and modern academics and productivity experts like Cal Newport, is that we don’t have as much control over our lives as we generally believe. Writings from Aurelius show us how much happens beyond our control, and how important it is to be measured and moderate in our reactions to the world. Newport’s work shows how easily our brains can become distracted and how limited they are at sustaining long-term focus. Fitting in with both lines of thoughts is research from Daniel Kahneman, particularly an idea he presents in his book Thinking Fast and Slow about our depleting self-control. His work as a whole shows us just how much of our world we misunderstand and how important structures, systems, and institutions in our lives can be.

 

Regarding our ability for self-control, Kahneman writes, “an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion.”

 

Self-control is overrated. We think of ourselves and others as having far more self-control than is really possible. We are quick to judge others for failing to exercise self-control, and we can beat ourselves up mentally when we don’t seem to be able to muster the self-control needed to achieve our goals, stick to a diet, or hold to a resolution. But the work of Roy Baumeister that Kahneman’s quote describes shows us that self-control is limited, and that we can run out of self-control when we are overly taxed. Self-control is not an unlimited characteristic that reveals a deep truth about our personality.

 

It is easy to think up situations where you might have to restrain yourself from behaving rudely, indulging in vices, or shirking away from hard work. What is harder to immediately think of is how your initial act of self-control will influence the following situations that you might find yourself in. If you spend all day trying hard not to open Twitter while working, then you might give in to a post-work cookie. If you sat through an uncomfortable family dinner and restrained yourself from yelling at your relatives, then you might find it hard to hold back from speeding down the freeway on the drive home. We don’t like to think of ourselves as being so easily influenced by things that happened in the past, but we are unable to truly separate ourselves from things that happen around us. As we exert effort via self-control in one situation, we lose some degree of our ability to exert self-control in other situations.

 

It is important that we keep Kahneman and Baumeister’s research in mind and think about how we set up our environment so that we are not fighting a self-control battle all day long. There are tools that will stop you from being able to open certain websites while you are supposed to be working, you might have to decide that you just won’t buy any cookies so that they are not in the house at 2 in the afternoon when your sweet tooth acts up, and you may need to just Uber to and from those tense family dinners. If we put it all on ourselves to have self-control, then we will probably fail, but if we set up our environment properly, and give up some of the idea of self-control, then we will probably be more successful in the long run.

About Being Mad

Posted on by jabittan
Marcus Aurelius in his philosophy of stoicism constantly made an effort to look beyond the surface and make deep considerations of people and events before he made any attempt to sort out what they meant. This practice allowed him to delay pressing judgement onto others and gave him the ability to think clearly about something before letting his opinion bias his thoughts.  Throughout his book Meditations, you see him apply this skill to many areas of life, giving us examples of how we can use deeper thought and the ability to control our impulsiveness in various relationships and situations. In the quote I wish to highlight today, Aurelius discusses our anger in situations where disputes may arise. He writes, “The dispute then, he said, is not about any common matter; but about being mad or not.”

 

This quote to me speaks about our often hidden decision in conversation and social situations to react to something by being offended and angry.

 

At a certain point in a discussion or debate we may recognize that our views conflict with those of another, and we have a choice of how to move forward. In our culture in the United States we do not do a good job of understanding how to meaningfully build conversation from differences of opinion, and we often default to the simple option, argumentative debate. When we begin to notice that our views do not match, something inside us triggers and we allow ourselves to become mad. We fail to be constructive in our discussion and allow our hot mind to push the conversation in a volatile direction. In terms of our discussion, we make the decision to become angry, and that decision derails the path of our conversation. At a certain point when this happens, we are no longer actually discussing the original point, but instead we have staked out our identify, fortified ourselves with rage, and shifted the discussion to something completely different: our moral superiority and right to be angry.

 

This reminds me of a quote from Aurelius that I previously wrote about on August 3rd, 2016:

 

“On a personal level, outrage makes us feel superior. By becoming indignant, we’re drawing a line in the sand and declaring ourselves to be on the right side of a given issue. We’re saying, ‘How horrible this situation is, and how capable am I of declaring right and wrong, and passing judgment on those involved!’”

 

We do not become angry with others or with situations because of the effect or impact they have on us, but rather, we become angry by our own choice. We use anger as a defense mechanism that barricades us on the side of righteousness and pierces through the shortcomings of others. Making the decision not to become angry at others allows us to look at people as rational human beings (meaning that they are making decisions based on their own perceived utility), and also allows us to remain humble as we constructively build our relationships and as we cognitively piece together the reality around us. Without developing this ability, we simply entrench our tribal nature, but in a way that is hidden from our consciousness, preventing ourselves from growing and being able to view the world from perspectives beyond our own.

 

As Colin Write wrote to start his book Considerations,

“Few of us take the time to consider.
     It’s not that we’re ‘inconsiderate’ in the sense that we’re rude or brash or one of the other myriad associations we’ve tacked on to the word over the years, but we are often ‘inconsiderate’ in the sense that we act while seeing the world from only one standpoint: our own.”

Avoiding Explosive Reactions

Posted on by jabittan
Towards the end of George Saunders’ letter for James Harmon’s book, Take My Advice, Saunders writes, “enter a new moral space in which the emphasis is on seeing with clarity, rather than judging.” He writes this as an explanation of his actions when someone is deliberately infringing upon his rights, intentionally damaging his property, or simply doing something that upsets him.  What he is explaining is that we can choose how we want to see a situation, and by adopting new perspectives we can make better decisions with how we react to other people’s actions.

 

Saunders in this quote reminds me of Paul Jun whose blog Motivated Mastery has been a huge inspiration for me.  Jun often writes about self awareness and self control, and being able to pause and think in situations where it is easy to become highly reactionary.  While Jun’s focus is internal, Saunders’ focus is more external. Both advocate for self awareness and self control, but Jun follows a more stoic mindset and encourages you to forget the other and not let their actions affect you, while Saunders encourages you to take action to protect yourself, but only if your actions are constructive as opposed to punishing or explosive.

 

What Saunders pushes for is a society that does not want people to instantly deem others as evil monsters.  His letter begins with a thought experiment that focuses on two babies born at the same time, but born to two very diffenet families. One child is born to a strong and supportive family, while the other is born into a broken home of drug addicted parents.  The child who grows up with an unsupportive family, in Saunders’ view, is not a monster,  but simply does not have the advantages and support needed to grow up in a way that society typically deems respectful and appropriate. Rather than creating more obstacles for that individual and finding excuses to judge their negative behavior, Saunders would advocate that we understand their past, and take constructive steps to prevent ourselves from being harmed by their bad decisions, but still accept who they are.  For him this involves a clear understanding of other people and their situation, and a willingness to be open minded so that we can invite these individuals into a conversation about how we can all create a better place.  Immediately judging others shutting them out of conversations to improve society by labeling them as evil monsters harms everyone in society, not just the individual who is excluded.