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Willpower (or Lack of It) Is the Wrong Way to Think About Weight
New York Magazine: When you succeed at eating healthy foods and avoiding junk, you probably attribute the bulk of your success to your ability to resist unhealthy impulses, the sheer power of your mighty will.
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A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying
The New York Times: Just be yourself. The advice is as maddening as it is inescapable. It’s the default prescription for any tense situation: a blind date, a speech, a job interview, the first dinner
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How the Brain Uses Glucose to Fuel Self-Control
The Wall Street Journal: Steam power sets massive, clunky turbines into motion. Horsepower involves explosions of work, with engines hurtling cars down a freeway. Solar power taps the awesome might of the sun itself and
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What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?
The New York Times: One day in the fall of 1981, eight men in their 70s stepped out of a van in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. They shuffled forward, a few
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What the Marshmallow Test Really Teaches About Self-Control
The Atlantic: The image is iconic: A little kid sits at a table, his face contorted in concentration, staring down a marshmallow. Over the last 50 years, the “Marshmallow Test” has become synonymous with temptation
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A Feeling of Control: How America Can Finally Learn to Deal With Its Impulses
Pacific Standard: The children’s television show Sesame Street has always had a way of reflecting the zeitgeist in shades of Muppet fur. Consider, for instance, the evolution of Cookie Monster. For his first few decades on air
