Dr. Kentaro Fujita

And again, I don't know that anyone's actually studied this, but there might be sort of this bias, or at least we capitalize on a bias that things have to be just right for me to do it.

I think of this when I'm writing.

I think a lot of us have this idea that I don't feel like writing today.

The conditions just aren't right, so I won't.

I'll just put it off till like the muses hit me and it's just right, right?

And you learn over time that like every day is gonna be that not so perfect day.

And so you just have to learn to deal with it.

And then once you get into it,

As you were talking about earlier, you might warm up to a point where now it's actually optimal, but it takes some time to get there.

I think one of the things that's really interesting about what you're suggesting about this sort of optimization culture may be that we are embracing this partly because optimization is an exciting idea, but also it's a great—

justification for not ever doing the really hard things because the conditions aren't quite right.

And again, I think people are incredibly creative at coming up with reasons why they shouldn't do the hard things.

In the moment of choice, it seems perfectly reasonable.

And that's one of the things that's really frustrating and challenging about self-control because you mentioned the sort of idea of aligning concept with body.

When self-control conflicts are far away from us, so when I'm thinking about exercising more next year, but not today, next year, it's really easy to be able to say, that's the right thing to do, that's the thing that I really want.

But when next year becomes today,

all of a sudden my mindset's in a different place and that choice is really hard again.

It becomes really, really hard.

The clarity that I once had is gone.

What's also frustrating with self-control is, so that makes it hard to follow through with your intentions.