Having someone watch me. Works four out of five times. From talking to other people it has a much higher success rate, but I’m still trying to figure out what’s akrasia and what’s an executive functioning deficit resulting from minor frontal lobe damage.
I have a friend who hires people to sit across from her at work. Pays for itself with the extra work she can get done.
Stepping back and watching the meat-I-am start to do stuff helps too, but not nearly as often, and I only learned that trick a few weeks ago—from this site.
I wonder if sticking a poster of a person looking at you to a nearby wall would help to trick the mind into believing that it’s being watched.
I vaguely remember reading an article (or a book chapter? Freakonomics?) about a bagel experiment like this one, where putting a picture of a face on the bagel box has reduced the theft rate.
This certainly works for me. I find I can get a significant increase in performance at the gym when I use the machines that are facing towards the posters of attractive women, compared to the otherwise identical machines facing the windows. I know its a trick, and I know why it works, but that doesn’t stop it from working :-)
I find I can achieve this effect by publicly committing to a goal. Which is good, because having someone watch me would likely be counterproductive, as I need to feel free to explore an idea that might turn out not to work.
Having someone watch me. Works four out of five times. From talking to other people it has a much higher success rate, but I’m still trying to figure out what’s akrasia and what’s an executive functioning deficit resulting from minor frontal lobe damage.
I have a friend who hires people to sit across from her at work. Pays for itself with the extra work she can get done.
Stepping back and watching the meat-I-am start to do stuff helps too, but not nearly as often, and I only learned that trick a few weeks ago—from this site.
I wonder if sticking a poster of a person looking at you to a nearby wall would help to trick the mind into believing that it’s being watched.
I vaguely remember reading an article (or a book chapter? Freakonomics?) about a bagel experiment like this one, where putting a picture of a face on the bagel box has reduced the theft rate.
This certainly works for me. I find I can get a significant increase in performance at the gym when I use the machines that are facing towards the posters of attractive women, compared to the otherwise identical machines facing the windows. I know its a trick, and I know why it works, but that doesn’t stop it from working :-)
del
Shouldn’t this mean theists suffer less akrasia? (Not that that is impossible, it is just a very interesting conclusion!)
del
I find I can achieve this effect by publicly committing to a goal. Which is good, because having someone watch me would likely be counterproductive, as I need to feel free to explore an idea that might turn out not to work.