"Now think about this, you are always walking with an excitable Labrador (your emotional predispositions), it walks with you through life. Depending on what your excitable Labrador sees, hears, smells, touches, tastes, it sometimes overpowers you and does things which are not useful to you or are a waste of time. In order to get your excitable Labrador to obey you, simply don't expose it to things which cause it to disobey you if you don't have the time. Let your excitable Labrador do the things it wants to, only when it is in your self interest. Also try to train your excitable Labrador that some of the things it wants, are the things you need to do (form useful habits with willpower)."
"Willpower is the expression of our conscious thoughts into behaviour. Things that I need to do that are not enjoyable, I get done via my willpower, even though the doing of these things is very often in conflict with things that I want to do (what I find enjoyable, that produce positive emotion). So it makes sense that to reduce the conflict, just eliminate or minimize the alternatives that are desirable in respect of the emotion that they produce.
When I was at university, I hardly did any work when I tried to study at home. It was very hard to focus and never enjoyable because of the alternative uses of my time available at home – the internet, video games etc... However if I went to the library, which I rarely did, I always found it much easier to study, even enjoyable. That is because I didn't have more preferable alternatives immediately available. Emotionally speaking, it was much more doable."
you do something far less enjoyable than the most enjoyable thing you could be doing with the same time, it produces a kind of very slight but persistent pain and frustration at knowing you could be doing something much more enjoyable. In such cases it requires your willpower in order to sustain the doing of the less enjoyable thing."
"The problem with study was even the case with subjects that I was interested in. Although I was interested in the subject, it was generally not as interesting as playing a computer game or doing something for the purpose of entertainment. Of course in the library I did have the knowledge that I could at any point go home and play games, watch TV, surf the net etc. However the sheer amount of time involved in getting home to enable me to do those things, seemed to allow those things not to become strong desires as they would at home. Further, because I couldn't actually see my computer or TV in the library, those things didn't enter my mind much."
"Willpower is the expression of our conscious thoughts into behaviour. Things that I need to do that are not enjoyable, I get done via my willpower, even though the doing of these things is very often in conflict with things that I want to do (what I find enjoyable, that produce positive emotion). So it makes sense that to reduce the conflict, just eliminate or minimize the alternatives that are desirable in respect of the emotion that they produce.
When I was at university, I hardly did any work when I tried to study at home. It was very hard to focus and never enjoyable because of the alternative uses of my time available at home – the internet, video games etc... However if I went to the library, which I rarely did, I always found it much easier to study, even enjoyable. That is because I didn't have more preferable alternatives immediately available. Emotionally speaking, it was much more doable."
you do something far less enjoyable than the most enjoyable thing you could be doing with the same time, it produces a kind of very slight but persistent pain and frustration at knowing you could be doing something much more enjoyable. In such cases it requires your willpower in order to sustain the doing of the less enjoyable thing."
"The problem with study was even the case with subjects that I was interested in. Although I was interested in the subject, it was generally not as interesting as playing a computer game or doing something for the purpose of entertainment. Of course in the library I did have the knowledge that I could at any point go home and play games, watch TV, surf the net etc. However the sheer amount of time involved in getting home to enable me to do those things, seemed to allow those things not to become strong desires as they would at home. Further, because I couldn't actually see my computer or TV in the library, those things didn't enter my mind much."
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