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by Nomentatus 1275 days ago
The research seems to show that those who seem to have self-control are actually just good at creating an environment with fewer temptations. Air gapping works for me, although it's now 2PM and was 'sposed to have switched to my offline comp hours ago. I've been using a comp with hard drive slots so I just switch hard drives, reboot and go.

Making it hard for yourself to be bad, is good, generally. For catastrophic temptations, like alcoholism, I have heard that some keep a full sealed bottle around so that temptation is unvarying, however; and find that keeps them from starting again.

2 comments

> The research seems to show that those who seem to have self-control are actually just good at creating an environment with fewer temptations.

I think the actual notion of “self control” is kinda fake but I also don’t believe there exists research to defend your point.

There are lots of people who all have brains that work very differently and lots of type of “work” to be done that requires wildly different environments. If it was true that controlling distractions was straightforward through environmental management then everyone’s office would be a strike while room with no seams or windows.

Maybe before calling someone a liar next time; do a little googling. There are literally decades of studies here. Start with this one, and it's bibliography:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...

Dig in further by googling "pubmed" and then entering your terms for a search. Stop fantasizing about what peer-reviewed studies do and don't exist: there's an internet, now; you can find them in seconds.

I don't recommend the hard drive slot solution though, I've lost a few hard drives along the way; too easy to short 'em out accidentally I would guess.