Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated | Hacker News Reader

Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated

alfiekohn.org

59 pointsanuleczka13 comments

> Finally, most people who cite these experiments simply assume that it’s better to take a bigger pay-off later than a smaller pay-off now. But is that always true?

I've always thought that this was the key element of the research: that delaying gratification indicates your time-value of gratification is higher, that your "discounting rate" for future gratification is low. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-value_of_money

It happens that basically every observed behavior which is common and financially detrimental for low-income individuals and uncommon for high-income individuals can be explained by a single intuitive variable in the human mind: the discounting rate of future gratification. For example, engaging in rent-to-own is more expensive in total than saving up over time to buy out-right. But if your personal discounting rate for that future spent money is high, the extra money is less valuable to you than the current gratification of purchase, and your choice is the rational one.

This expands beyond the obvious example and into basic life choices: school or no? Depends on how you value the future benefits of school, relative to the current difficulties. Work day and night for years on a startup? Likewise.

If this basic model is correct, then our decisions are profoundly, fundamentally affected by our personal discounting rate. If that's true, then education can likely focus on this aspect of our perspective to improve children's appreciation for the payoff of work and so on.

The comments are interesting, and I'd love to see research expand on the question and address his concerns, but there's a reason this interpretation is repeated: it seems consistent with observed behavior.

Did you mean to link to the "MM" fragment?

Given that HN loves gender differences, he probably did.

And on that note, I'm not sure the marshmallow study is particularly relevant to his point. The reason girls do better in school is probably for a number of reasons, maturity probably being key, but his point that boys are more rebellious is probably part of it. Guys are less risk averse than girls, which is probably why more girls tow the go-to-college line and more boys start their own businesses. For that he should have cited studies on gender differences in risk aversion and the benefits of risk taking, not the marshmallow study.

Except for that the article is about self-discipline, not about gender differences or doing well in school.

(Unless you're talking about the submitter and not Kohn.)

I'm talking about the submitter. The section header that the submitter linked to (#MM) is entitled "On Marshmallows and Gender Differences: Rereading Self-Discipline Research."

Yes, I wasn't sure about that either. The whole thing really is worth reading (in fact the sidebar was arguably the less interesting part).

> "What worked best wasn’t “self-denial and grim determination” but doing something enjoyable while waiting so that self-control wasn’t needed at all![40]"

The author and I have very different definitions of 'self control'.

Could you please define what 'self control' is to you? I only ask because you seem to have a negative perspective on the article.

I'd guess that he feels that what the author is describing here is an example of self-control, even if it's a bit indirect.

I'm not even sure that indirect is accurate. It's a different style of control, that's all.

At the risk of being tautological: self control is doing what you plan to do. The exact mechanisms of avoiding temptation, laziness, fear, etc are orthogonal to results.

I believe the author was making the point that as humans we cannot always do what we plan to do. We run out of 'ego' before we run out.

Training yourself to enjoy what you want to work on is where it's at.

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