Mark Manson - The Guide to Self-Discipline

a childs age correlated with their ability to delay gratification. It was an experiment in developmental psychology, not personality.

And sure enough, it did correlate: older children were, on average, able to wait longer before giving into temptation. This got published. Mischel went on with his career and the children went on with theirs. The marshmallow experiment was a success, but largely forgotten.

But the Marshmallow Experiment, as its now known, was almost lost to the annals of minor significance. Chances are I wouldnt be writing about it and you wouldnt be reading about it if it werent for a coincidence and 20 years of time.

It so happened that the subjects of Mischels original experiment consisted of his daughter (then five-years-old) and her schoolmates, including many of her friends. As the years dragged on and his daughter and her friends grew up, it became harder and harder for Mischel to ignore the fact that many of the kids who demonstrated no ability to delay gratification were getting in trouble at school and making poor grades, and the ones who had showed a perfect display of delayed gratification were scoring high on their SATs and getting admitted to prestigious colleges. He decided to track the children down and see where they had ended up as young adults.

The follow-up results were seismic and why the experiment continues to be so famous today.

A childs ability to delay gratification correlated with academic and professional success more than almost any other measure more than intelligence, more than standardized testing, more than household income, religion, personality tests, gender anything.

Psychologists conducted similar studies and found that people who were able to delay gratification longer were, on average, physically healthier, socially more popular, academically more successful, financially more stable, and overall rated their subjective quality of life higher. They produced better SAT scores, went to better schools, got better jobs, had more stable relationships and suffered from fewer mental illnesses.

A definitive predictor of future success eluded psychologists for close to a century. The measurement of IQ had originally been invented for this purpose, but failed spectacularly, and other measurements proved just as faulty. But it appeared Mischel had stumbled upon a reliable predictor on accident.

Do keep in mind these are averages, there are still a lot of factors that determine the quality of ones life. It just appears that self-discipline underlies many of them. In fact, many of the problems Ive addressed on this site for years overcoming anxiety , the actions required for happiness , success with women , to name a few research shows a correlation in people who have higher degrees of discipline and will power with successfully handling these.

I would also venture to guess that our current generation lacks self-discipline more than almost any generation before us. Will power was celebrated as a virtue throughout the Victorian era and prior. And for most of human history anyone who lacked a modicum of daily discipline would merely starve to death.

Today we are swamped with distractive forces television, movies, social media, internet, video games, texting and most of us have been raised by parents with a hands off child-rearing philosophy, you know, assuming they were around at all.

For our generation, (unless youre Asian) emphasis has always been put on self-esteem and not self-discipline.

Instead of engaged and nurtured, we were placed squarely in front of new nannies: cable television or a Playstation. Instead of being punished for half-assing, we were rewarded for mediocrity. Participation awards, A for Effort and trophies for everyone, even if they lost these reinforced the belief that we dont actually have to earn anything, its handed to us.

Without veering too far off into a sociological diatribe about how the (post-)modern generations have really fucked themselves up, let me distill it thusly: were a generation that while rewarded with the greatest abundance of opportunity and technology in history, we were never forced to earn what we got, and therefore developed little self-control.

This lack of self-control is bleeding over into our personal and emotional lives. And suddenly one can see how our generation currently reports all-time highs in anxiety disorders, depression and relationship trouble, statistics the extra medications fail to erode away.

When I surveyed you, my lovely readers, earlier this year, about what you felt your biggest weakness was, self-discipline was a common, but not top, answer given.

But on a second glancing through that list, and after the research Ive done on self-regulation (the fancy psychological term for will power) lately, it appears most of the top answers ARE symptoms of a lack of self-discipline being assertive, standing up for oneself, career advancement, life balance, time management and these would all be greatly remedied by a newfound discipline for ourselves, and the removal of that onerous space between wanting and doing.

But before we dive into how to build self-discipline, I want to establish a couple definitions. I realize these definitions are arbitrary and dont reflect psychological doctrine perfectly, but I want to make a couple distinctions which I believe will be useful for our purposes.

Will Power The ability to perform an action despite a negative emotional state. Or to put it in laymans terms: your ability to do something when you dont want to do it. Will power describes the short-term burst against internal resistance, that in-the-moment perseverance weve all resorted to at one point or another.

Self-Discipline How close your day-to-day behavior reflects the person you wish to be. This is a longer-term fidelity to how you envision your ideal self. Self-discipline, beyond simply persevering in the moment, represents a daily self-directness in all of your actions.

I split these two definitions up because I think most people trip themselves up by confusing them. Will power requires momentary psychic strength. Self-discipline requires days, weeks or months of daily habit and conscious control.

What well discover is that the more will power you exert in the short term, the more you can fatigue your self-discipline in the long-term. So in many ways, ENHANCING your short-term will power will actually backfire on your long-term discipline depending on how you go about it.

What I mean by that is, if you put all of your effort into short-term perseverance, you are often LESS likely to develop a life-long control of a certain behavior.

Anyone whos ever attempted a diet can probably tell you this.

Will Power Must Be Practiced

In 1994, psychologist Roy Baumeister made a startling discovery. People who were forced to exert will power (in this case, resisting eating cookies placed in front of them) did worse on puzzles and problem solving tasks than people who indulged themselves. Thinking that perhaps it was a fluke of particularly hungry people, him and other psychologists ended up reproducing the results over and over again people who are forced to exert will power and focus on one task, are worse at exerting will power and focus on subsequent tasks.

What this means is our will power is finite and can be drained.

We each have a certain fuel tank of will power that we can exert and once we use it all up, we are far more prone to give up and indulge ourselves in our whims, impulses and base desires.

This phenomenon is referred to in psychology as ego depletion .

Hence why after a hard days work, all you want to do is sloth around on the couch and eat ice cream. Or why after a week of strict dieting its so easy to convince yourself that eating an entire pizza isnt such a big deal. Or why after studying all day for an exam you feel justified in going out and getting shit-faced on tequila and exposing yourself in public (not that this has ever happened, just saying).