Improving your Self-Control using Cybernetics
What is it and why I need Cybernetics?
Besides its misleading name, Cybernetic is the scientific study of Control. This science applies to animals and machines. Human psychology finds great support and application on it, especially on learning, cognition, adaptation, social control, communication, efficiency, and efficacy.
The cybernetic model tiers-down self-control into three components:
- Goal setting/Desired State.
- Monitoring for mismatches between goals and current behavior.
- Implementing behavior consistent with plans to reduce action–goal mismatches.
All the elements are connected via a feedback loop. By improving one or more of them, your self-control will improve. I will propose tools to practice each of them.
Goal setting
A goal is different from a wish, a hope, or a desire. Even if I really, really like to have or be <fill in the blank> that is not a goal.
Setting a goal implies that a person has committed thought, emotion, and behavior to attain it.
Wanting and planning to lose 5 lbs doesn’t make it a goal. I need to decide and commit at every level that I will accomplish it.
Goals are self-representations of a future wanted outcome. Setting a goal could be seen as a process that creates Discrepancy between who I am now and who I want to be tomorrow.
Setting a goal creates a gap. That gap is vital to activate self-control.
Improving your control by setting better, more consistent, and self-aligned goals.
Setting a concrete, realistic goal with a time frame creates superior performance as it allows a monitoring system to notice and eventually regulate the mismatches.
Type of Motivation, rather than amount
The quality of the motivation, other than its quantity, is vital to achieving the goal. Internally driven goals: those perceived as personally meaningful to you and without or with little relevance from the outer world hold intrinsic motivation. For goals driven by external elements, forces, or authorities, run on Extrinsic motivation.
It may not have the same driving motivation the goal “have money and fame” than the goal “have knowledge and independence.” The former could be more extrinsically motivated while the latter rather intrinsically motivated.
Both types of motivations are ‘good’; still, they differ in how much control you have over them and and on their duration.
The more Intrinsic is your type of motivation, the more control you have over the process. On the other hand, the more extrinsically motivated is your goal, the less control we’ll have over.
It is the type of motivation that drives us to the degree of effort we will put into something, rather than its amount.
Improving control by Monitoring
Paying attention to discrepancies between these goals and current behavior yields regulation. The critical point is to pay attention when we could be close to fail, in our goal; those will be the points where our monitoring systems should make adjustments.
For example, a person who wants to quit coffee intake. She should be attentive when she’s likely to fail and end up drinking coffee. With that information, she should adjust or create mechanisms to reduce those risks for slipping.
The most effective way of monitoring for achieving your goal is to notice and respond immediately to goal conflicts.
The more you notice and the quicker you respond to deviations in your path, the more likely you will attain your goal.
Mindfulness
One way to cultivate the capacity to monitor for goal conflicts is through mindfulness meditation. This practice developes your ability to monitor for conflicts.
However… the most inefficient and frequently utilized process is: when noticing your self-control errors: condemn yourself. But… just the opposite is best — self-control is improved when people acknowledge and accept their errors.
Acceptance
By “acceptance,” we refer to the open and nonjudgmental ownership of mistakes.
Acceptance, in other words, sharpens conflict monitoring.
Also, the acceptance of mistakes is a learning opportunity. Carol Dweck (2006) found correlation between prediction of conflict and monitoring, which in turn improve self-control.
Ex-smokers who can forgive their occasional slipups do not return to full-time smoking, according to large smoking cessation study in college students in the US.
Once we have set up a goal and understood the conflict, we need to adjust the process to counter those conflicts.
And what about the fatigue?
There is lots of controversy in the science of willpower about fatigue. Long story short: There seems to be an exhaustion of will after using our self control. This depletion drives a shift in attention to another goal. However, this is the good news: critically, personally meaningful goals promote self-control even in the face of fatigue.
Implementation intentions
As in the Plan part of the WOOP process, these are proactive strategies aim to front-load the decision. Knowing how we may fail, we could shortcut in advance that tricky part of the road.
If / Then plan:
Put your risk situation before the word “if” and set the behavior to overcome your obstacle after the word “then”:
If … (obstacle) … then I will …(behavior)
As in the example of reducing caffeine intake: If (they propose to meet at Starbucks) then I will (Propose to meet at the library instead)
You dont need to think, reflect, or reconsider the action. When the IF happens, you shortcut to do you THEN.
Putting it all together
Self-control poses a significant challenge for most people; it is not easy. However, recognizing its parts and implementing one or all of these strategies raises enormously the odds to reach your goal.