Two methods on akrasia / unhealthy habits / addictions
1. Ignoring goals, tabooing / identifying with methods—the opposite of Beeminder, even the opposite of SMART
Suppose I want to lose weight. Have a general idea of how much and how fast, and decide on the method. Then I ignore the goal and focus on the method. I ignore both the long-term and short-term goal (no Beeminder), ignore the measurement (SMART), ignore all the common wisdom here. The reason I ignore them that I want to avoid constantly haggling with myself, using the soda example, “Surely this one glass will not set me back much?” and instead I identify with the method, such as, simply shaping my identity as a person who does not drink soda, period. Instead of being conscious of the goal, just focus on this new identity. Without a goal in mind, there is nothing to haggle about and that makes it work. So there is not that kind of “Perhaps, this is a special case because X so half a glass should be allowed...” instead, it is just taboo, because it violates my new sense of self of a person who just does not do that. The beauty of this solution that there is nothing to haggle about. It is a harnessing of the cognitive dissonance and protect-your-identity mechanisms, if the new self is the sort of person who just does not drink soda then the only way to not get dissonant and to preserve the identity is to not do so. This, so far, seems to be surprisingly easy for me. It is similar to religious taboos, like people who don’t eat X because then they could no longer consider themselves a pious follower of religion Y and it would shake their identity. You could say it is a custom-made nanoreligion each time. Being pious by not violating self-made taboos, preserving the identity of the pious person, without having keep the goal in consciousness.
2. Don’t fight The Boss
Someone casually dropped on stopdrinking.reddit.com “It is not about fighting your urges, it is about stopping to fight your better judgement.” Precisely. There is a Higher Self (say, Superego) telling me to live healthy and a Lower Self (Ego, Id) telling me to indulge in urges and cravings. Identify with Higher Self, and it is a constant fight with the Lower Self. Identify with the Lower Self and all I need to do is to surrender to the commands of the Higher Self. It does not feel good, but in this case it is okay to not feel good. I call the Higher Self The Bos. It is like “I really want to do X but The Boss does not let me do so. It makes me feel depressed. It is okay. Just accept the feeling and don’t fight The Boss. You can never beat The Boss. Just surrender and accept your fate.” It is also a nano, well, in this case a microreligion because it is more consistent than the one-off taboos of nanoreligions. Identifying with Lower Self is a bit of an “I am a sinner” thing, and this surrender to The Boss feels a bit religious, a bit close to the AA and 12-step methods.
The problem I see with this is that if, for whatever reason, you do happen to drink that soda one day, your pretense that you are “the sort of person who does not drink soda” is totally blown to pieces and you cannot continue to follow your system because you are no longer capable of deceiving yourself.
Likewise if you happen to fight the Boss.
Basically a system like that is very strong as long as their are no failures at all. But it seems better to me to have a system that will allow you to recover even if you fail on occasion, as you will.
“Safe fail, not fail-safe.” I get it. We will see how it works for me after the first defection. I think re-surrendering can work… I am using terms like “nanoreligion” and “microreligion” for a reason, I am actually borrowing techniques from there (ob. atheist or else this sentence would be formulated entirely differently) because they are excellent at mind-programming, even if in a dark-arts way. So perhaps re-surrendering takes the equivalent of a confession, remorse and penitence. This may also work as a reconstruction of the identity.
Incidentally, I never understood why even smart people of old religions (Aquinas) took justice e.g. punishment as balancing some cosmic ledger instead of something purely instrumental. Perhaps, at least on the penitence level, it acts as reconstructing an identity, if one submits voluntarily to punishment / penitence.
Maybe you’re right. Confession does work just like that for Catholics. For example if you have a Catholic guy who normally does not masturbate (because it is against Church teaching), and then one day he lapses, it is common that in the following days he will find it very difficult to resist constant repetition of the behavior—basically because his identity is ruined in the way that I said. But as soon as he goes to confession he can suddenly stop masturbating; he gets the identity back.
About the justice question, I think it is simply to justify the doctrine of hell, which does not fit well at all with the idea of justice as instrumental (because many people do not believe in hell anyway and because if it is a question of deterrence, surely a billion years of torture would be enough).
AFAIK it has more to do with poetry (Dante) than a firm doctrine but I may be mistaken.
Only if you choose to make that response to a lapse part of your system. But why would you do that? A soda is just a soda. All else is the meaning you attach to it.
One other approach to avoid constantly haggling with yourself (which I agree is draining and annoying) but without giving up the temptation completely is just to randomize whether you act on your urges.
At an old job, I used to want to go out to get a cookie in the afternoon a couple times a week. I didn’t want to act on the urge every time I felt it, but I also didn’t want to solve the problem by making afternoon cookies verboten forever. So, when I wanted a cookie, I went to random.org and set it to pick a number from 1-3. If it was a 1, I got a cookie, if not, not.
No decision fatigue, no being “bad cop” to myself, and I got to enjoy a thing I wanted intermittently!
A general form of deciding on a process and committing to it. Take the decision out of your hands. Ask the Magic 8 Ball.
A trick I’ve read (Baumeister?) is to just postpone the eating. Have a plan to have a cookie tomorrow. Or at the end of the week. Knowing that you’re going to have one is supposed (has been shown?) to lessen the immediate temptation.
In the random and postponement cases, your mind gets the satisfaction of maybe getting a cookie now or surely getting a cookie later. That anticipation is supposed to have it’s own satisfaction that makes the actual eating less motivating.
That is how gambling works, which is why I fear it can be horrible advice. Random reinforcement of expectations is more addictive than a predictable one. This is also why the Red-Pill types advice never initating and randomly reciprocating the affection of your partner. This an unethical, but also functional manipulation method, it forms addictions much more than predictable reinforcement.
Being addicted to a process that has you eating significantly fewer cookies could be ok.
How did it affect your desires for cookies? Did it stay the same? Lower? Higher?
The urge occured about as often as before, but when I did roll a one, I felt like I’d really lucked out. When I missed one, I felt good about having it settled, with no tsuris.
I’d tried Beeminding it before then (a cap per week) at it made it feel like I was using up my cookie slots when I went, muting my enjoyment, and meant I always spent a while mulling whether to go.
I just read Willpower, by Baumeister, and I’ve started on another book, Superhuman by Habit, and was thinking something similar. It is probably the Habit book where it came from.
It’s probably in line with your recent posts on self control vs. willpower as well.
Take a meta focus. Focus on process.
How about simply shaping your identity as a person who builds good habits?
I think that basic argument is in Superhuman by Habit. Maybe you’d like it. Part of the process is the level of commitment to executing the habit. There is always immediate gain through blowing off the habit for a day. It won’t really kill you. It’s only a day. But if you set up an artificial goal of doing the habit, and keeping your streak alive, then you’ve busted your streak that you’ve been working on.
The streak doesn’t really matter for the end result. You could skip. But once you’re thinking in those terms, you’re hosed. The streak is meaningless, so it needs to be invested with meaning.
I really wish there was a “Gamify your Life” android app, where you get points all day for doing things. Bling! You took your vitamins! Bling! You went to bed at a decent hour. I play Ingress, and I’ve noted how much time and energy I and others will put into “points”. Just call them points, and I’ll do anything. It’s insane. But potentially useful, if only I had a game aligned to my goals.
Google delivers: HabitRPG https://habitrpg.com/static/front
Looks like it’s open source too.
The problem I have with the other goal tracking is the cost of all the measurement, and then the incommeasurabilty of all the different goals, and then the Getting Things Done issue of all the other things you might be doing weighing on your attention for what you are doing, or more likely, are not doing. Somehow that “but what about improving this other X” has to get turned off.
I’ll give the app a try (maybe), and if so, let people know what I’ve found.
Or, promise future goodies to the Lower Self. The Lower Self is forgetful. And if you delay often enough, you’ve effectively cut down on the rate of the bad habit. Maybe that was from Baumeister, with an associated study or two.
Cf. Crossfit: “Men will die for points” X-)
I’m partially cheered, and partially disturbed that my insanity is so widespread.
It is so sad really. CrossFitters discover why sports are a good idea, and then turn around and go back to the stupid idea of fitness:
“In implementation, CrossFit is, quite simply, the “sport of fitness.” We’ve learned that harnessing the natural camaraderie, competition and fun of sport or game yields an intensity that cannot be matched by other means. The late Col. Jeff Cooper observed, “the fear of sporting failure is worse than the fear of death.” It is our observation that men will die for points. Using whiteboards as scoreboards, keeping accurate scores and records, running a clock, and precisely defining the rules and standards for performance, we not only motivate unprecedented output, but derive both relative and absolute metrics at every workout. ”
The issue is, obviously, that beyond health and sexiness, most modern people have no need for fitness at all. Their definition of fitness, “increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains”, is wonderful except we don’t actually need to do that sort of work. We sit at desks and get paid for it, and mainly want to be sexy and healthy, that is what we expect from the gym.
The reason sports are are better is that they give a reason to be fit. They give an actual real life goal to use fitness for.
I don’t agree and think you’re generalizing your viewpoint a bit too much. Having a well-functioning, capable body that doesn’t squeak, creak, and complain as you do a variety of things—other than sitting on a chair, that is—is a pleasure in itself, beyond health and sexiness.
There are many of these kinds, HabitRPG is fully general, Fitocracy is more specific etc. I don’t like them… too unserious. I dislike a silly robot calling me awesome for doing my pushups (Fitocracy) or HabitRPG havint the visuals of the JRPGs of old consoles I always found way, way childish (my old RPGs were like Dark Knights of Krynn on the PC).
I would use such an app if it would treat me like a grownup.
I will reflect about the other parts of your post later, but that takes some thought and research, this part was just faster.
Making these apps “skinnable” on feedback is a hugely important design feature. Having different modalities for the skins—audio, video, image—would be important. User skinnable would be best. Different strokes, for different folks.
It’s like that crazy woman on the audio loop at Safeway (a grocery store), who is just a little too damn perky for my taste. I berserker rage rises in the gorge every time she ever so cheerfully tells me about the fantastic values I can enjoy.
Maybe the core framework should be provided as a web service, like SOAP or REST. Most users don’t want to invest time into skinning. It would be more likely to have web designers, programmers, basing new sites based on the service.
Wait, this actually sounds like an important project. Since sites like this are likely to make a lot of lives better—I am currently testing Happify for me—an ecosystem of one web service and a hundred sites on top of for various tastes and attitudes sounds like something that could make quite an impact. Anyone from the Silicon Valley listening? :)
By skinnable I meant a facility whereby a motivated user can create a skin and make it available as a selection to the less motivated users.
Where the point is to plow new ground in personal motivation, I’d consider configurability important for expermenting and disseminating improved setups, and then personalizing the user experience.
How do you know?
If you are making a theoretical argument, to me it’s not clear that you actually address or understand the reasons of why the common wisdom exists. If you hold your beliefs based on your own experience and it being a successful heuristic for you, then write down more details.
I am making an experience based report with a sample size of 1 - something that may work at least for people who have some atypical feature similar to some of my atypical features. The theory is bolted on—I mostly stumbled upon these or let’s say it was subconscious theory-forming.
No, I don’t understand the reasons why the common wisdom recommends goal-consciousness. Do you?
I don’t really have many more details. With goal-consciousness I experienced internal haggling. “Just this once.” This is actually very similar to haggling with parents when I was a child. “Just this once let me stay up until the end of the film.” This may be a clue. Simply turning the rule into a goal-less taboo and identity-element turned that haggling voice off.
As a tentative theory, this may have something to do with upbringing, routines installed via parenting. Whether it works may depend on your upbringing. The Boss (higher self) is clearly a parental voice in my head. Also, lost my dad a year ago, and I made The Boss sub-agent only a month ago, it is quite possible that a parent needs to go from real living person to an idealized memory, and the way grieving works is that we simulate chunks of the deceased person in our mind, sometimes even converse with it (what would dad do etc.) and perhaps this all is a prerequisite for this. I.e. parent dies, you simulate him/her, after a year or so as some memories fade the simulation becomes less detailed and more idealized, and then the simulation can act as The Boss? Provided the parent was bossy enough. I would say, a respected school teacher, a mentor, sensei, basically an Obi-one Kenobi can work too. Minus the supernatural element, it is akin to what Luke was doing, simulating Kenobi’s ghost in his mind as a mentor.
But you were asking about the other aspect. I am not sure if that is related. Perhaps the loss of a parent can lead to a weakend identity, making it easier to construct a more useful one. As you certainly feel more “free”, way less judgement, but this does not feel like the good kind of freedom (for me).
There are still things I’m not clear about, but I have around to understand a bit. I’m having forum discussion about personal development issues for around a decade. After years of arguing that SMART goals are bullshit I’m finally having them and using them on a daily basis.
If you want to have a room at a comfortable temperature you have to give the thermostat a target temperature. A thermostat is a quite basic cybernetic system and most cybernetic systems simply work that way.
I believe human weight regulation to be cybernetic in nature as well. Both the Hacker diet and Seth Roberts Shangri La diet build on that principle. I also know hypnotists who think that changing the internal set point for weight is very important.
Goals in human movement are also interesting. If you take away movement goal via hypnosis and just tell a person to try to move their arm they can’t move their arm. Only when a goal of moving to position B comes into consciousness it’s possible to move the arm from A to B. Getting clear about movement intentions is also very useful in Alexanders Method and Danis Bois perceptive pedagogy. It allow doing movements with much less tension.
A personal report about an approach to weight loss isn’t worth much without the person actually speaking about their experience. How much weight was lost? Over what time frame?
In the case of “The Boss” the question is not only whether it works but whether it’s worth paying the price. I’m not sure you understand the price you are paying.
I have a hard time with the goal setting phase. Do I really want the goal? Would doing X really achieve the goal? Even if doing X achieves the goal would the cost be too high? Sometimes I think this is akrasia other times I think it is being accurate that the goals are wrong.
In sense I have it easier because I have it harder. How to put it… lately I was wondering what advice would I give to my 14-16 years old former self. What are near-universally good goals? I cannot say with certainty if people should pursue their passion—if they have any at all—or go get a safely employable degree for example. So I don’t think I have life figured out, and don’t know I know what goals to set. But I am fairly sure of these three being good ideas for almost anyone almost al lthe time 1) don’t get hooked on drugs, booze, cigs or unhealthy food 2) improve your body, be fit, healthy, sexy, preferably through fun sports and not boring exercise 3) keep learning, all kinds of things.
The reason I have it easier because I have it harder is that I am hooked on booze (12 days dry though, with these methods) and unhealthy food (later) and my sporting is still a bit sporadic (also, fat) so these are very clear goals to set.
But if I was looking like a tennis player without addictions, would like salad, and read 3-4 new informative books a month (not just re-read old stuff or read fiction), I would find it hard to set new goals to be sure.
I’d say that there is one overriding concern.
Transform yourself into a goal fulfillment machine and get good at operating that machine.
Do you think finding goals is easy? Because if it is hard, it does not sound like such an obvious idea. If goals are rare and hard to find, being good at fulfilling them pronto just makes a lot of empty bored time.
I think goals are a factor of environment: goal-rich environments are ones with high risk factor, where you could lose, and thus need to work hard to survive, but you could also win big. I would say, I am living in a safe and boring, goal-poor environment. The literal opposite of the Wild West.
With access to the internet, and the apparent time to use it, how are you goal poor?
My problem is more being overwhelmed by the options of what I might do. There are endless opportunities for improved health, fitness, and well being, at a time in history when radical life extension is a possibility. Or do those not count as big wins?
Easy. I am not given many duties. More below.
No. I don’t know how to explain it. I was not… raised… to live a self-centered life focusing on happiness. I feels wrong. My ingrained attitude is more like do the duties you are given. Fight the honorable fight of trying to provide your family a middle-class existence (my dad was born dirt poor, and not very first-worldy circumstances) and at 60 when your kids graudated college you may as well die as there are not many more duties to discharge. Perhaps, leave the wife a comfortable estate. (Dad died at 63, doing that.)
But I was not raised to be very altruistic either. I mean if I just wanted to overlook myself and work on improving humankind I could find many goals. But in my background it was more like focus on your immediate family, kin, blood.
At this point I don’t really care about living long or well-being. As my child came late, I am 37 and she is 1, I do need to fight on for 20-25 years, so I made some changes, stopped getting drunk daily (this is was too normal in my background, father-in-law still does it at 58), got into regular sports, made some diet changes, but I don’t know if I care much about well-being.
Besides, I had enough Buddhist / stoic influence to know chasing happiness or well-being is a losing race, as your desires always expand, it is better to desire less and be content with less rather than to get more. And it is easier and lazier.
Life extension scares me. I hardly have enough duties to fill out the 20-25 years I need to stay alive for the sake of my family, I don’t know how I would deal with having to make 70 or 80 with reduced mobility and things like that, a life where you cannot even get some minimal amount of tedium-reducing excitement from something like a boxing sparring because you are 75 scares me. While I love my family, part of me regrets the decision a bit, because if I stayed single then I would just need to pull on as long as my parents live, and I could be completely free and no duties owed afterwards, free to end it or to make dangerous, “bad” decisions like trying drugs or signing up to be a mercenary in a bush war or any of those kinds of deadly dangerous but definitely boredom-killing adventures.
Maybe things would be better if I would change careers, currently I am stuck in boring ERP software jobs (similar to SAP or Oracle, although not them), but I make more money than any of my relatives and I owe that kind of financial security for my family. But I never had a dream job and never understood why people can have passions for jobs, in my family job was just “travaille”, torture, something you must teeth-grindingly endure to be allowed to make a living by the Higher Ups which means bosses and politicians and generally Big People In Suits. So I don’t think I could fix anything by changing careers except endangering our safety.
Well, maybe it sounds depressing. I have no idea, since I never really raised to expect that kind of happiness where people run around smiling and enjoying jobs, I cannot really tell the difference between normalcy and functional depression. I don’t see that on my coworkers either, they come to the office because the bills won’t pay themselves but don’t look very overjoyed by it.
How does this work for you? Life extension, for example, how do you expect to fill out a day at 60 or 70? My mother got widowed at 60 and know she is trying to clean the house really slow so that she can pull it out for the whole day, to have something to do. Then repeats the next day. It is not easy. Since she has enough money that survival reflexes don’t motivate her and just like me chasing happiness is not on the table, what could she do? Same problem as me except that having a job and a child to raise makes me more occupied.
I don’t think the OP is asking about what he could do—he is asking about what he would want to do.
It’s not a question of opportunities, but of motivation.
Sure. There are a lot of largely arbitrary goals of little practical use beyond exercising your goal fulfillment capabilities and developing your self control.
That’s largely what school is, a gym where you develop self control, and why it is a disaster for smart children who simply find no challenge in the level of work demanded. When the weights are just way too light, little training effect occurs.