The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

VEGETARIAN BEFORE DINNER
Jeff, a thirty-year-old network systems analyst, was a conflicted carnivore. He kept reading about the
health benefits of eating less meat, not to mention the horrors of the food-processing industry. But then
there was the joy of a steak burrito, sausage-and-pepperoni pizza, a fast-food burger, and bacon at
breakfast. Jeff knew becoming a vegetarian would ease his ethical concerns, but when a slice of pizza
was within arm’s reach, the desire to be a better person dissolved in the steam rising off the melted
cheese.
His early attempts to eat less meat resulted in some creative moral licensing. He found himself
using one vegetarian item to cancel out the “badness” of a nonvegetarian item—such as ordering a
side of vegetable chili to ease his guilt about ordering a steak burrito. Or he would use whatever he
ate at breakfast to determine whether this would be a “good day” or a “bad day”—if he ate a bacon-
and-egg sandwich for breakfast, it was going to be a bad day, which meant he was free to eat meat at
lunch and dinner, too. Tomorrow (he told himself) would be a good day from start to finish.
Rather than giving himself permission to be good on some days and bad on others (which,
predictably, led to more bad days than good), he decided to take the challenge of reducing the
variability in his behavior. He settled on the strategy of “vegetarian before dinner.” He would stick to
vegetarian foods until six p.m., then eat whatever he wanted to for dinner. With this rule, he couldn’t
eat a burger at noon and tell himself dinner would be nothing but broccoli—and he couldn’t use the
morning’s cereal as an excuse to have chicken wings for lunch.
This approach is a great way to end the endless internal debate about whether you’ve earned a
reward. When Jeff was deciding between the ham-and-cheese sandwich and the hummus wrap at
lunch, the new rule made it easy to decide. Lunch is vegetarian, no conversation. Using a daily rule
also helps you see through the illusion that what you do tomorrow will be totally different from what
you do today. Jeff knew that if he broke his rule one day, he would—according to the experiment’s
instructions—have to break it every day for the rest of the week. Even though the ham-and-cheese
sandwich looked tempting, he really didn’t want to abandon his goal for the whole week. Seeing the
sandwich as the beginning of a new rule, not the exception, made it less appetizing.
Is there a rule you can live with that will help you end the kind of inner debate that talks you
right out of your goals?

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