Dr. Kentaro Fujita

Again, it's all purely speculation, but I think there is some basis in science.

I think what you're saying is fundamental to understanding self-control.

Self-control fails when we are not able to move in distance, right?

So I talked about how self-control is distance dependent.

When it's far away, it's easy.

When it's close, it's really difficult.

And so many of the most effective strategies in self-control require either physically distancing yourself, as you've already talked about, or psychologically distancing myself, finding ways to either...

to activate the mindsets that I have when the thing is distant, so I'm thinking about it as if it was distance even though it's proximal, or finding other ways to frame it as if it's distance.

So, as I said, in my lab, we talk about, again, when things are far away, we tend to think about things in terms of why, but when they're close, we tend to think about them in terms of how.

And so in my lab, we sort of stress knowing your whys as one way to extricate yourself psychologically from the situation that you're currently in.

Now, you mentioned things like being drunk or being angry or being tired as things that predispose us to self-control failure.

I don't know if it's necessarily that it's difficult or if it's just they bias us in one direction or the other.

And, you know, strong emotional states, being, we know with alcohol it creates myopia, we know that when we're tired we tend to think more, again, more myopically, more here and now because we just want to rest, we don't want to think about the long term.

That our mind sort of – there's a tractor state towards being very concrete and thinking about how, which again brings us actually proximal to the temptation.

So I'm not sure that it's necessarily harder to do in the sense that like it's that much more –

and all else is being equal, it's just that the situation has put us in a situation where it's a lot easier to think proximally than think distally.

So what are some other ways in which you can think, get more distance from a temptation that's not necessarily thinking about why versus how?

Other ways might include, and these come from my colleague Ethan Cross, who I know has been a guest on your show.

referring to yourself in the third person as opposed to me.

So I might say, what does Ken want to do in this situation versus what do I want to do?