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Created July 22, 2012 04:34
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Many of us have a problem following through on our intentions. And it’s more than just a difficulty in predicting our future desires. It’s not like "Gee, I thought I wanted to get in shape but it turned out there was always something really good on TV!" No, even in hindsight, you regret not doing what you said you wanted to do. It’s not even that you’re merely conflicted about what you want. The trade-off you made -- more TV watched, still not in shape -- was patently ridiculous. You somehow don’t do what you genuinely want to do. Philosophers back to Plato and Aristotle have a fancy term for this paradoxical failure of the will: akrasia. It encompasses procrastination, lack of self-control, lack of follow-through, and any kind of addictive behavior. Another way to define akrasia is by generalizing from procrastination to include preproperation as well. Procrastination is the irrational delay of tasks with immediate cost and delayed benefit. Preproperation is the irrational not delaying of (overindulgence in) activities with immediate benefit and delayed cost. Why do we have this problem? The technical answer is time inconsistency and is illustrated nicely in a study on grocery-buying habits: When buying groceries online for delivery tomorrow people buy a lot more ice cream and a lot fewer vegetables than when they’re ordering for delivery next week. In other words, our preferences are inconsistent -- in fact, logically contradictory -- over time. Your ability to weigh the costs and benefits (yumminess, healthiness) is severely compromised when some of those costs or benefits are immediate, which is why the ice cream vs vegetables decision plays out so differently when you decide it from a distance. How do we solve this problem? The answer is self-binding, that is, the use of commitment devices. The term commitment device is from game theory and applies to strategic situations. It refers to a way of changing one’s own incentives to make an otherwise empty threat or promise credible. This can be quite rational. A classic example is from Thomas Schelling, who pioneered this aspect of game theory. You’ve been kidnapped and you’d like to promise your kidnapper that if they let you go you won’t rat them out to the police. The promise is useless because the kidnapper knows you’ll have no incentive to keep it once you’re free (and so they won’t set you free). But if you can change your future incentives (implicate yourself in the crime, perhaps?) then suddenly your promise can carry weight. [1] Limiting your future options by voluntarily imposing consequences on your future self can be quite valuable in a strategic negotiation or conflict. But it’s hard to characterize as rational the use of self-binding with no one but oneselfuntil you appreciate that there’s in fact more than just one self. Here’s a ubiquitous example. Why not save money by buying bulk-size candy? It’s technically entirely irrational not to. You should buy the bulk size, save the money, and then ration it to match the pace you’d eat it at when buying the individual sizes. Same consumption rate, less cost. The problem is your future self won’t be rational with a pile of candy in the house. Sugar is a bit addictive, after all. So it’s worth spending some extra money to constrain the choices of your gluttonous future self. Similarly, some smokers buy cigarettes by the pack instead of the carton, paying a hefty premium to throttle their future consumption. So what’s the antidote? There’s an endless stream of advice about how to beat akrasia but I believe that most of it misses a very fundamental point that renders it nearly useless: The myopic future self that thwarts your intentions is every bit as smart as your current, forward-looking self. You can make lists and set rewards and break tasks into small chunks, or plan diets and buy treadmills and establish routines, but mostly your future self will see right through all the tricks and just won’t give a damn. That version of yourself just wants to surf the web and/or eat pie. So that’s what you do, when the chips are down. The only way to be immune to future-you thumbing his or her nose at your current intentions is self-binding. Which is to say that successful anti-akrasia tricks will involve commitment devices. That’s because, by definition, a commitment device meaningfully constrains your recalcitrant future self’s actions. Here are a slew of commonly used commitment devices (and at the end of this article are additional fascinating ones) in the form of a straw poll: * Buying individual-sized instead of the cheaper bulk-sized candy. * Buying a gym membership even when it would be cheaper to buy individual passes, i.e., purposefully making it a sunk cost. * Getting a mortgage in part to force yourself to save. (See the first reason listed here for buying vs renting.) * Deleting games from your computer. * Going somewhere without internet access to get work done or using a purposefully handicapped computer. * Signing up for a class (or hiring a private instructor) when in theory you could just draw/run/paint/whatever regularly on your own (but without the commitment of the class you won't). * Using software that stops you from visiting time-wasting sites like facebook. E.g., LeechBlock or SelfControl. * Not having a TV in the house (even though it would be worth having for certain occasions). * Identifying and eating as a strict vegetarian/vegan despite not actually minding whether you eat an occasional animal product. * Starting a project close to its hard deadline to limit the amount of time you can spend on it. (Though more often this is a manifestation of rather than a remedy for akrasia!) * Not buying an unlimited metro card because once the subway fare is a sunk cost you won't be as motivated to commute by bike. * Choosing to live somewhere that will force you to walk/bike further. (In theory you could live closer and take a longer route, but you won't.) * Having more than the minimum tax witheld from your salary, a zero-interest loan to the government, to force yourself to save enough to pay your taxes. * Using Certificates of Deposit with withdrawal penalties that outweigh the slightly higher interest rate they pay compared to a savings account. * Not taking a high-paying job for fear of getting hooked on the lifestyle it will lead to. * Using debit cards instead of credit cards, which force you not to spend more than you have. * Withdrawing less cash from the ATM to limit future spending. What I find fascinating about that diverse list of commitment devices is the minuscule dent they put in the overall problem of akrasia. The tricks people actually use are mostly band-aid solutions (see the list at the end of this article for some interesting exceptions). [exactly, and this was part of the reason why I dismissed precommitment so readily before] The problem is not with the concept of precommitment. (Remember that akrasia is fundamentally a problem of your future self failing to follow through on your current intentions.) The problem is failing to commit hard enough. Take a goal like weighing twenty pounds less in a year. Band-aid commitment devices are things like keeping junk food out of the house and joining a gym. Why not get straight to the heart of the problem and make a contract with a friend that commits you to forfeiting a very painful sum of money if you don’t follow through on your weight-loss plan? Well, here’s why not: You’re a procrastinator. You might spend the first ten months with your head in the sand and the last two months literally starving yourself, scrambling to meet the deadline. With the goal a year in the future you have a new, recursive commitment problem: getting yourself to get started on the year-long commitment before the last minute. So better than committing to the long-term goal directly is to commit to daily, inexorable progress towards it until you actually reach it. That’s the fundamental idea behind Beeminder. 1 Pick your goal weight and goal date. 2 Let Beeminder create a “Yellow Brick Road” for you to follow 3 Place a large bet with a friend that you’ll stay on that Yellow Brick Road. If you go off (above) the road even for a single day you lose. 4 Procrastinate like hell until you’re about to lose the bet. The change in focus from “weigh 20 pounds less next year” to “be on the yellow brick road tomorrow morning” makes all the difference. If you’re in the wrong lane of your road today then it’s crunch time. You have to be on your road tomorrow morning. Pull an all-nighter on the treadmill if that’s what it takes. In one sense that mentality’s crazy. Whatever you do in any single 24 hour period makes essentially no difference to your weight next year. But that’s the kind of thinking that let you drift away from your ideal weight in the first place. Beeminder’s tagline is “Bring Long-Term Consequences Near!” [5] Akrasia is the failure to adequately consider long-term consequences (like the health problems with remaining overweight) when there are immediate consequences pointing in the opposite direction (this pie is mind-bogglingly delicious!). Beeminder’s secret is to use the Yellow Brick Road to automatically break down your long-term goal into day-to-day guidance. And then, critically, add a commitment device so you can force yourself to stick to it, to force yourself to actually make that gradual but inexorable progress. In other words, you transform the long-term consequences into near-term consequences (“I’ll forfeit this money if I’m not on the road in the morning!”). Many people who agree with the above in principle react viscerally to the idea of involving money. I’m partial to money myself but I don’t claim it’s the only way. Still, many obvious alternatives — like harnessing social disapproval — can fail if implemented naively. To make the long-term consequences of failing at your goal immediate, you need a bright and painful line. Using shame as a motivator with a public Yellow Brick Road doesn’t quite cut it because there’s minimal shame in having one datapoint slightly off your road — you’re still totally going to catch back up, right? As you then gradually drift away from your road the shame grows only gradually as well. You’re back in “one more day won’t matter” akrasia-addled fantasy land. I speak from experience Speaking of bright lines, the next most sticky sticking point with commitment contracts is probably a predilection for leniency and clemency. Or you could call it weaseling when it comes from the self-binders themselves. “Shouldn’t I still win if I get back on my Yellow Brick Road and end up reaching the final goal?” they (preemptively) whine. Absolutely not. Recall Beeminder’s goal: bringing long-term consequences near. greatCopy In other words, the fact that you lose the game if you’re off the road today is by design. To reprise the core akrasia problem, it’s very hard to, for example, forgo that piece of pie merely because it will make it harder to weigh 20 pounds less 10 months from now. Please! One piece of pie won’t make the difference and there’s plenty of time to catch up! Each individual piece of pie is totally worth it. Same with each workout you really don’t feel like doing right at this moment. Which of course is how you ended up 20 pounds overweight in the first place. With a Beeminder contract that whole dynamic changes: when you’re in the wrong lane of your road that one piece of pie could very well make the difference tomorrow morning and you’re acutely aware of it. The consequences are immediate. And of course even better is the flip side of that coin: if you are well into the right lane of your road (or below it) then it’s very nice to be able to enjoy your hard-earned safety buffer and eat that piece of pie guilt-free. The change in focus from “weigh 20 pounds less next year” to “be on the yellow brick road tomorrow morning” makes all the difference. If you’re in the wrong lane of your road today then it’s crunch time. You have to be on your road tomorrow morning. Pull an all-nighter on the treadmill if that’s what it takes

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