This week’s book learning is from Willpower by Roy Baumeister.
Researchers looked at different kinds of self denial. Subjects were shown pictures of a tasty and appetizing dessert.
Group 1 imagined eating it.
Group 2 imagined passing up dessert by deciding not to eat any at all.
Group 2 imagined passing up dessert by denying for now but told themselves they would eat at some later time.
Then, they measured how often they were distracted by yearning for desserts in a later activity as unfinished tasks tend to intrude in our thought process.
It turns out the “Not now” group were less troubled than both groups – even those who had imagined eating it! This is because our mind marks “I’ll do it later” as a “completed” task.
The mind never takes no for an answer and even indulging it fuels a craving for more. The best solution is to just say “later.”
Sketch by EB
As Mark Twain put it ‘To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body go do that very thing.’ So, every time we face a tough food choice this week, let’s never say never and always say “later!”
A Learning a Day 
