Willpower

because self-control was one of only two traits known to produce a wide spectrum of benefits, and the other trait, intelligence, had turned out to be quite difficult to improve. Programs like Head Start boosted intellectual performance while the students were enrolled, but the gains seemed to fade pretty quickly once they left. By and large, there didn’t seem to be much you could do to increase the intelligence you were born with. That made self-control seem especially precious, and social scientists set out testing systematic programs for improving it. The result, over the course of a decade, was a mix of successes and flops as researchers discovered the difficulty in getting people to do the assigned exercises. It wasn’t enough to find a workout that could theoretically build willpower. It had to be a workout that worked.

From Strength to More Strength
    Some of the most successful strategies were developed by two Australian psychologists, Meg Oaten and Ken Cheng. They generally recruited people who wanted to improve one specific aspect of their lives and could be given direct help in that area. Half got the help immediately, and the others served as a control group and received the help later. This procedure, called the waiting-list control group, was a good way of making sure that the test group and the control group had similar goals and desires. Everyone was offered the same service, but some waited for it, and during that time they took the same tests and measures as the ones who were given exercises to strengthen their willpower. And those exercises were directly related to the people’s goals, so that they would be encouraged by seeing the benefits of complying.
    One of the experiments involved people who all wanted to improve their physical fitness but hadn’t been regular exercisers. Some immediately received a membership in a gym and met with one of the experimenters to form a plan for regular workouts. They kept a log in which they recorded every workout and exercise session. Another experiment involved students who wanted to improve their study habits. The ones who got the immediate help met with an experimenter to set long-term goals and assignments, and to break down the tasks into smaller steps. Their study plan was coordinated with other obligations (like a side job), and the students kept a study log and diary to monitor progress. Yet another experiment gave people a chance to improve their money management by meeting with an experimenter to draw up a budget and plan ways to save more money. Besides keeping track of how much they spent and earned, they also kept a log recording their feelings and their struggles not to spend money—how they forced themselves to stay home to avoid the temptations in store windows, or sacrificed vacations to save money, or postponed purchases they would ordinarily have made.
    In all the experiments, participants came to the lab from time to time for an exercise that seemed irrelevant to their self-improvement programs. The experimental subjects had to watch a computer screen with six black squares. Three of the squares would flash briefly, and then all the squares would start sliding around the screen, randomly switching positions. After five seconds, each participant had to use a computer mouse to indicate which of the squares were the ones that had flashed initially. Thus, to do well, you had to make a mental note of which squares to watch and then follow them as they moved around. What made it extra hard was that during this exercise, a nearby television was showing Eddie Murphy doing a stand-up comedy routine in front of an audience that was howling at his material. If you turned to watch him or even just focused too much on his jokes, you’d lose track of the squares. To score well, you had to ignore the jokes and the laughter, focusing instead on the boring squares, a feat that definitely required self-control. The research participants took this test twice at each session. The first time was soon after they arrived at the lab and were fresh. The second came a bit later, after their willpower had been depleted.
    The pattern of results was largely the same in all these experiments. As the weeks went by, the people who regularly exercised self-control in doing physical workouts, studying, or money management got progressively better at ignoring Eddie Murphy’s comedy routine and tracking the moving squares. In particular, the main improvements were found