Insight Synthesis

Spend at least $10+ buying something you really want to eat. The healthier, more expensive, more ethnic – and anything else that may make it easier to justify eating the meal, the better.

Buy this meal, prepare it, unpack it, etc, and then have it sitting in front of you. Oh, and don’t eat it. Just sit.

DO NOT taste any part of the meal. Don’t even taste the ketchup packets.

DO NOT eat anything for the next 8 hours.

DO notice the smell and freshness of it.

DO make note of every justification you’re coming up with. (See list below)

Remember that this is a test of self-control, not healthiness, finances, or anything else. The cost of the meal is the cost of the experiment, not “a waste of money.” Yes there are starving kids in Africa, but when did you give a shit?

This will likely take a few tries, but try to 1up the last meal you failed to resist.

Justifications that may be going through your mind:

• I’m wasting money
• I’m wasting food
• My mom/Gods told me never to throw food out.
• I never tried food from this place
• I never tried this dish/item
• I’m gonna be awake for a long time so I should eat
• I’m hungry. It’s not healthy not to eat
• I need protein (or carbs, or fats, or calories, …)
• I have dry mouth (water is OK but don’t fill yourself up)
• I’m afraid of getting an ulcer (or some other medical condition)
• I just drank coffee, alcohol or <insert other drug>, it’s better if I eat something with these drugs
• I don’t have self-control, who cares?
• I’ll try this again some other time
• Just a bite (1 bite is justified same way as entire meal)

Notice that in the back of your mind, the goal that you will eat the food will remain. What’s stopping you from eating the food is your search for a reasonable justification. The point of the task is to stop this searching and just accept the unwanted end result – no soup for you.

There are no benefits to freaking out. None. Deep breath and a slow exhale.

When you don’t feel like doing something, you may decide to take a nap, or postpone the task to a later day (most likely tomorrow). This seems like sound logic, but it usually disregards the fact that when the time comes to actually do the task, you will not feel anymore desire to do it than, than you did the time you postponed the task. And you will likely postpone it again.

There are situations in which putting things off is OK, or even the best solution at the time (i.e., too drunk, etc), but most of the time, you might be postponing something simply because you haven’t given it much thought yet and have no idea where to begin. The task seems overwhelming, or because the task just provides no immediate pleasure.

“I’m too tired” and “I’ll take a nap” are excellent excuses because we imagine waking up refreshed, energetic and ready to take on anything. This is almost never the case. In fact, when I have a lot of things piled up from the prior week, I definitely don’t want to get out of bed. This becomes worse when more todo-list items, especially ones of high priority, are all reaching their deadlines or are already past due.

Always give tasks a thought on what the exact steps required are to complete the task, and about how long it will take, before postponing it. If it takes less than 10 minutes, why not do it right than and there? It will end up taking much longer than 10 minutes if you’re going to postpone it multiple times and potentially suffer a consequence.

An analogy would be being too lazy to login to pay your credit card bill, but all the while worrying about it, and finally getting a late fee and lower credit score.