Willpower

drawn on the classic experiments of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his followers, who used play to improve children’s skills at certain tasks. The children in the experiments generally couldn’t stand still for a long time, but their endurance increased if they pretended to be guards on watch. Similarly, they had a much easier time memorizing a list of words if they pretended they were going to a store and had to remember a list of things to buy.
    The results of those laboratory experiments have been applied in a preschool program called Tools of the Mind, which encourages children to play pretend games that are planned (to some degree) in advance and are sustained for more than a few minutes (and possibly for as long as several days). As we have seen, much of self-control is about integrating behavior over time—passing up immediate gratification for future benefits—so playing a game over several days helps toddlers to start thinking longer-range. Prolonged dramatic play with other children also requires them to exert control over attention and sustain make-believe roles. Even simple pretend games like playing house or soldiers obligate toddlers to stay in character and to follow the game’s rules when interacting with other children. Independent research has shown that children who participated in Tools of the Mind ended up with significantly better self-control, by standard laboratory tests, when compared with children who attended more conventional sorts of preschools.
    Older children can reap some of these same benefits from another modern target of critics’ wrath: video games. We’ll grant that some of these games are mindless, that the violence can be gratuitous, and that some children spend way too much of their days shooting digital nemeses. But most of the popular criticisms have as much scientific basis as the old warnings about the dastardly perils of comic books, according to Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson. These Harvard researchers, after reviewing the literature and conducting their own study of middle school children, concluded that most children aren’t being hurt by playing video games, and that they can derive some of the same benefits from the games as from practicing music, playing sports, or pursuing other passions that require discipline. To succeed at a complex computer game, you need to focus your attention, learn intricate rules, and follow precise steps to reach a goal. It takes much more discipline than watching television.
    The self-esteem movement, fortunately, never took hold in the video game industry, probably because children would have been too bored by games that began by telling them what great players they were. Instead, children have preferred games in which they start out as lowly “noobs” (as in newbies ) who must earn respect through their accomplishments. To acquire skills, they fail over and over. The typical teenager must have endured thousands of digital deaths and virtual fiascos, yet somehow he retains enough self-esteem to keep trying. While parents and educators have been promoting the everybody-gets-a-trophy philosophy, children have been seeking games with more demanding standards. Players need concentration to fight off Ork after Ork; they need patience to mine for virtual gold; they need thriftiness to save up for a new sword or helmet.
    Instead of bemoaning the games’ hold over children, we should be exploiting the techniques that game designers have developed. They’ve refined the basic steps of self-control: setting clear and attainable goals, giving instantaneous feedback, and offering enough encouragement for people to keep practicing and improving. After noticing how hard people work at games, some pioneers are pursuing the “gamification” of life by adapting these techniques (like establishing “quests” and allowing people to “level up”) for schools and workplaces and digital collaborations. Video games give new glamour to old-fashioned virtues. Success is conditional—but it’s within your reach as long as you have the discipline to try, try again.

10.
    THE PERFECT STORM OF DIETING
    It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.
    —Plutarch
    How did I let this happen again?
    —Oprah Winfrey

    T here is nothing so universally desired in rich countries as flat abs. The more money we make, and the more of it we give to the diet industry, the more impossible that ideal seems.