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Many are accustomed to blaming themselves and others for the lack of willpower.
It seems so easy to just say no to an unnecessary purchase or cigarette, go to a workout or close TikTok – it’s just a matter of taking the issue seriously. But in reality, impulsive behavior cannot always be controlled by willpower alone.
To break bad habits, adopt healthy ones, and achieve goals, it’s important not to rely on willpower alone but to seek out other strategies. Molecular biologist, science journalist and author of the book “Willpower and Self-Control,” Irina Yakutenko, explains what these strategies might be and how our brains react to temptation.
What you will learn:
- How self-control is related to success in life
- Causes of impulsive behavior
- The part of the brain responsible for self-control
- What influences the level of self-control
- Impulsivity and work
- How to commit fewer impulsive actions
- How to make yourself work
- How to make others work
- Self-control and meditation
- What to read about willpower
Is possessing self-control truly essential for achieving success in life?
Yes, a large amount of research shows that the developed ability to control one’s impulsive behavior is the best predictor of success in all major areas of life, from family to professional.
The pioneer of these studies was American psychologist Walter Mischel, who in the late 60s – early 70s conducted a series of experiments at Stanford University, known as the “marshmallow test”.
The general scheme was as follows: preschool children were offered to either eat one marshmallow right now or wait until the experimenter returned and receive a second one. Some children were able to wait, while others could not. And when Michel checked what happened to these children after 20 years, it turned out that those who resisted and did not eat the marshmallow were generally more successful in life. Since then, many scientists have repeated the marshmallow test in various variations.
They were testing people’s ability to control their impulsive behavior and then comparing it to questionnaire data showing their success in various areas of life. The correlation was roughly the same as Michel’s. However, some claimed to have refuted his conclusions, but the quality of such refutations does not withstand criticism.
Of course, Michel’s conclusions are not surprising at all. Even if you take such different activities as sports and programming, it turns out that in both cases, in addition to natural abilities, perseverance, systematic training, readiness to work hard for a long time, and giving up something pleasant for the sake of a distant result are important for success. Most people do not cope well with this and ultimately drop out of the race without reaching their goal. Or at least they spend much more time achieving it than people who control themselves well.
What regions of the brain are accountable for impulsive behavior?
Those who are responsible for emotions are primarily the amygdala and the adjacent nucleus. The first is mainly responsible for negative emotions, while the second is necessary for the manifestation of positive ones.
Emotions arose during evolution a long time ago for quick response to stimuli from the environment. For most of history, our ancestors lived in conditions of radically incomplete information about the surrounding world. At the same time, it was necessary to react quickly to stimuli that came from there: to mate with this female or not? Is there food or not? Resist the attacker or run away? Emotions arise instantly and determine our attitude towards an object or another living creature, and accordingly, give guidance on how to act – for example, we fear the enemy, but we like the female. That’s why we run away from the first one without hesitation, and mate with the second.
Since prehistoric times, our brain “hardware” has remained the same, but the world around us has changed greatly. Quick impulsive decisions, which were often correct then, now often bring problems – for example, make us behave aggressively when there is no need for it. In addition, there are many artificial temptations that make our emotional system react, distracting us from long-term goals. When we do not have enough positive feelings, we start looking for where to get them. Today, it is commonplace to relieve stress with sweets, alcohol, or by numbing ourselves with smartphones or TV shows. Our brain becomes addicted to such emotional “junk food.” It is difficult to work when we have Facebook at hand where we can hang out for hours.
What area of the brain enables us to exercise self-control?
The prefrontal cortex analyzes information and makes rational decisions. It appeared much later than emotional centers, and it is difficult for it to suppress their impulses due to evolutionary reasons. In the struggle for existence, our ancestors who had stronger and faster impulses were the ones who won – that is, they better urged immediate actions. The rest were eaten or, for example, did not have time to mate with a desired female before a rival and pass on their genes further.
Therefore, as shown by the experiments of Michel and other scientists, about 2/3 of people are bad at controlling their emotional impulses. Such a person can be “on a diet”, but constantly eats cakes, and each time the intellectual zone of his brain comes up with justification. Like, I’m tired, I was depressed. This is called rationalization.
But the real reason is that in the moment they cannot control the emotional impulse that says, “The cake is delicious, I want it!”
Is the degree of self-control predetermined by genetics or is it influenced by one’s upbringing?
It’s very difficult to separate one from the other, but usually these factors – heredity and upbringing – are closely linked. Impulsive parents often have impulsive children. There isn’t a single gene for impulsivity, but there are multiple genes that affect how we process emotions in response to external stimuli.
The main enemies of self-control are dopamine and serotonin, or more precisely, the improper functioning of the brain with these neurotransmitters. Some gene variants are less favorable for self-control. For example, they contribute to the too rapid removal of serotonin from synaptic gaps between neurons. As a result, such people constantly feel emotional discomfort – and, as we already know, it motivates them to seek positive sensations. And it is especially difficult for them to refuse a cake while on a diet or Facebook during the busy workday – because these are sources of serotonin that they are acutely lacking due to the structure of their brain.
Dopamine determines the feeling of anticipation of pleasure, hence motivation, because it is the anticipation of pleasure from something that makes one desire it. And in people with self-control problems, dopamine mechanisms often do not function optimally, for example, causing an excessive desire to distract from work and look at social networks.
This is a hereditary story, but upbringing can affect it. Unfortunately, there are no methods that can definitively help a child learn to control themselves better. However, it is quite possible to worsen the situation. As we have already mentioned, impulsive parents often have impulsive children, because they inherit parental genes. Such children often throw tantrums because their brain requires positive emotions, they are more susceptible to temptations, and it is difficult to distract them from these temptations. Strong-willed parents could endure, but impulsive ones quickly respond and exacerbate the child’s reaction with their own response – for example, they cannot withstand screaming and give the child what he is asking for, reinforcing such behavioral patterns.
Do individuals with impulsivity face comparable challenges in regulating their emotions across all domains of life? Alternatively, do they encounter more difficulty in specific areas such as work?
If a person is impulsive, it will manifest in all areas of their life. But some of them are particularly difficult in this sense, such as work. Because at work, you need to regularly do things that won’t bring pleasure right now. But they will bring twice as much enjoyment later, like finding extra marshmallows in the dough.
Salary is not paid immediately, its size is often not related to how intensively you work, and career advancement does not happen immediately either. Of course, if a person is engaged in their favorite work, they receive positive emotions simply from the process and easily reconcile with the routine. But not all of us do our favorite job, unfortunately. Someone works as a lawyer because they studied to be a lawyer, or their parents forced them to. Someone needs to feed their family and so on. Where does motivation come from in this case? Especially when there are so many temptations around.
Another classic example is sports. Most people don’t enjoy it and come up with a million excuses every day as to why they can’t go to the gym today. Theoretically, we know that if we exercise every day, the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases in 30 years significantly decreases. But 30 years is an unrealistic prospect for most people, especially when you need to get up from a warm couch right now, go somewhere, work hard, sweat, endure pain and unpleasant reflection in the mirror.
Partly because of this, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death. The second reason is the inability to switch to a healthy diet and give up obviously harmful foods, which is also associated with weak self-control.
What steps can I take to decrease my impulsivity and enhance my self-control?
First, it is important to understand: you will not become less impulsive. If you have inherited a not very good set of genes and your neurotransmitters are processed in your brain in this way – you will always have an increased sensitivity to things that promise pleasure right now, and problems with denying yourself something for a long time. That is, you will always be inclined to make impulsive acts, procrastinate instead of working, endlessly postpone going to the gym, and so on.
However, there are strategies that help such people achieve their goals. They rely on using the same prefrontal cortex. Yes, in some cases it is unable to restrain the impulses of the amygdala or adjacent nucleus, but it is capable, for example, of planning life so as to encounter sources of temptation as little as possible. For example, if your problem is impulsive shopping, don’t go to the store at all or at least don’t go with a lot of money because you will inevitably spend it. If you struggle with bad eating habits, but you have candy and cake at home, there will always be a reason to eat them. So just don’t keep them at home. Like cigarettes, if you’re a smoker and want to quit. This is the first strategy.
The second strategy is to provide oneself with controlled external coercion. It frees us from the painful act of self-control. We simply comply with circumstances, rather than willfully refraining from the pleasant.
For example, when I need to do something without distractions, I set a timer for 45 minutes, turn off my phone for that time, close social media tabs, and focus solely on work. I know that I only need to push myself for a certain period of time, and then the timer will ring and I can zone out on Facebook.
If you arrange yourself such forty-five minute intervals, you can accumulate several hours of full work per day. If you can’t work for 45 minutes in a row, reduce it to 40 or 35. Without such limitations, many seem to sit at the computer all day, but in fact sometimes they don’t even accumulate an hour of pure work time.
Another good example of controlled external coercion is walking a dog. Scientists have compared health indicators of those who have a dog and those who don’t. It turned out that the former are noticeably healthier than the latter. This is because walking with a dog requires at least half an hour a day. These are the same minimal 30 minutes of physical activity that WHO recommends to everyone to be healthier.
Many say they simply cannot find these 30 minutes in their schedule, but in reality this is self-deception again. They don’t have a desire to go outside, and they come up with excuses. With a dog, this won’t work. Everyone understands what will happen if they don’t take her out, and in the end, half an hour, and often more, is always found.
The third strategy can be conditionally called “blackening temptation.” The idea is to create a negative stimulus that will override the promise of pleasure from a positive stimulus.
Walter Mischel wrote that for many years he couldn’t quit smoking until one day he was in the hospital on business and saw a man with lung cancer being taken to surgery down the corridor. The man couldn’t walk on his own, saliva was flowing from his mouth, and there was a bedpan nearby because he could no longer use the restroom without the help of a nurse. Mischel later wrote that this image struck him because he realized that he would most likely end up like that man in a few years if he didn’t quit. And after this incident, every time he wanted to smoke, he remembered that man. This negative emotion was so strong that it overrode the positive emotions that cigarettes promised him.
Suppose I have a daunting and intricate task, and I am unable to motivate myself to initiate working on it, what can I do?
It’s normal, the brain gets scared of big tasks and finds a million reasons not to tackle them. In such cases, the old good method of breaking a big task into many small ones works well. Each of these small tasks should be real and time-limited.
For example, I need to write a book. If I immediately give my brain such a task, it will be frightened and dopamine will stop being released in that direction altogether. On the contrary, there will be only negative emotions, procrastination, and stress. That’s why I make roughly this plan: “Today I will write the introduction. Tomorrow I will search for sources. The day after tomorrow I will write the first 10 pages…”
Sometimes boredom can surprisingly help to accomplish a big and complex task. The brain will engage in anything to avoid the discomfort of boredom, which can be quite unsettling. In this regard, I like to tell the story of J.K. Rowling, who struggled to finish the seventh volume of Harry Potter. Eventually, she went to Scotland and checked into a hotel-castle. She shut herself off from social media and other distractions and worked on the book until it was finished. Boredom is the strongest motivator, but in today’s world, it is vanquished by the internet and gadgets, and we lose a lot as a result.
What actions should leaders take to reduce procrastination and increase the effectiveness of their subordinates?
It is necessary to make sure that work becomes a source of dopamine for each employee. To do this, a person must be motivated to do what he does, and everyone’s motivation is different. For example, for a hypothetical linear employee, stability and comfort are important in work so that he can work quietly for his 8 hours and no one bothers him. Such employees should know what and when needs to be done. A clear plan for them is the same controlled external coercion, without which they feel lost, procrastinate, and feel uncomfortable.
But for a manager focused on career growth, stability is a swamp, he wants a competitive environment to prove himself. The need to work within strict boundaries will most likely offend him.
For many people, a powerful source of dopamine is recognition and a sense of their own significance. If an employee does not receive this, they will not work effectively, even for a good salary. This issue is especially relevant for remote workers, where feedback from colleagues is less. Therefore, it is important to regularly talk to employees so they feel their work is valuable. This problem is especially acute for programmers: a frontend developer writes code, sends it off, and doesn’t know if it’s even used later, or if anyone even looks at what they created. Journalists have it easier, as they always have feedback in the form of likes and views.
There are some other tricks. For example, I recommend creating a work schedule so that employees do not have to exercise self-control more than necessary. Let’s say you’ve decided to organize English language courses for all employees. But if you schedule them for the very beginning or end of the workday, people will find many reasons not to attend. For example, a doctor’s appointment or something else. But if the courses are in the middle of the workday, it will be much harder to avoid them.
In general, routine and unpleasant tasks should be performed as if on auto-pilot, and it’s good if they are immediately followed by a reward – even in the form of simple praise.
In contemporary times, meditation is often advocated as a means of improving self-regulation. Does it genuinely have an effect?
A meta-analysis of scientific studies conducted on this topic shows that the effect of meditation practice is no greater than that of any other practice, such as yoga or Pilates. If you enjoy it and find pleasure in it, why not? One of the problems of impulsive people in the modern world is the lack of safe sources of pleasure. And if they are not available, the brain, which needs pleasure, will get it from harmful sources such as alcohol, drugs, sweets, etc. Meditation, if you enjoy it, can become such a safe source.
As for the supposed disciplinary effect of regular meditation or any other practice, it’s a myth. You cannot train self-control. The famous “survivorship bias” applies to athletes as well: people say that they are all strong-willed because they train every day, but in reality it’s the opposite. Those who originally have strong willpower and are capable of enduring intense pressure and regular training for many years to come are the ones who remain and achieve success in professional sports, possibly winning medals after many years. In general, it’s the same story with marshmallows.
So if you like to meditate – meditate away. But don’t expect that this will immediately improve your affairs. Meditation helps some to calm down; perhaps in a calm state you will be less sensitive to temptations and will be able to work longer without being distracted. But this is purely individual – there is no universal effect proven by good samples for meditation.
Which books would you suggest regarding the topic of self-discipline?
You can read “The Willpower Instinct” by psychologist Roy Baumeister and “The Development of Willpower” by Michel. However, they approach the topic more from the perspective of psychology, delving slightly into neurobiology.
I don’t know of any other popular science books, besides my own, that delve one level deeper and provide such detailed explanations of the genetic basis of willpower and self-control. However, I don’t rule out the possibility that they exist, I just prefer reading scientific articles.
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