

Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated - anuleczka
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/selfdiscipline.htm#MM

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Empact
> 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.

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

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araneae
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.

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Alex3917
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.)

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araneae
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."

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skorgu
> "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'.

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

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skorgu
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.

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peregrine
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.

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

