4 Self-Discipline Secrets to Help Balance Your Life

Struggling with the age-old balancing act of work, family, and downtime? Exhausted by the drive to have it all? According to the latest science on willpower, the best thing you can do for your productivity, waistline, and equanimity is give yourself a break.

We tend to think of self-control as a spiritual virtue, like love or charity. However, research shows it's more like a muscle, subject to fatigue, lifestyle, and energy supply. You can wear out self-control not only through traditional tests of will-resisting pastries, not cheating on your spouse-but through less obvious means: making too many decisions, having lots of competing goals, castigating yourself if you fall off whatever wagon you're trying to stay on, failing to sleep or eat well.

Like most women who are out there trying to have it all, my self-discipline is fried, and I'm longing to revert to a state where none is required. So what's a weak-willed girl to do to bulk up?

1. Beware Decision Fatigue
It was Baumeister's psychology lab at Florida State that first discovered that making too many decisions at once under­mines self-control. And we're not talking Sophie's Choice here: Picking out gifts from a wedding registry, for example, made women perform more poorly on tests of self-­control-even in the group who said they relished such tasks. When Baumeister's team surveyed shoppers at a mall, those who'd made more decisions about purchases gave up on simple math problems more quickly. Studies of Israeli ­parole rulings found that judges were more ­lenient earlier in the day than later, when they'd already made a slew of judgments ­(denying parole is thought to be the easier choice because it's basically no choice-it maintains the status quo).

It seems to me that women are at particular risk of having their self-discipline henpecked to death. While men may still wield more geopolitical power, women are overwhelmingly the Deciders of daily life. Marketing studies show that we make, on average, 80 percent of major and minor household purchases and decisions such as food, cars, health care, and the house itself.

You can't delegate or duck choices about your finances or kids. But I realized there are some things I can eliminate. First, don't laugh, but I came up with a "uniform": Taking a cue from my husband, the king of no-decision dressing (he owns 40 nearly identical blue shirts), I chose button-front shirts and pants. During busy periods and deadline weeks, I vowed to wear the uniform every day, no matter what. Dress it up, dress it down, but don't even glance at the dress rack. After a week road-testing the concept, I can say it gets me out the door faster and with less brain damage. When I sort of half-apologized to a chic friend for my unimaginative outfit, she told me this was why French women are always so well turned out: "They pick a uniform every season and wear it every day."

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I've also made some rules for shopping: The wedding registry studies, for example, found that women who liked housewares and linens (which I do-I have an inner '50s housewife who wishes we had canapés and cloth napkins with dinner every night) could make a few discrete decisions without gutting their wills. So I've been delegating the no-fun shopping (we need a generator for our sump pump) to my wonderful, much less decision-fatigued husband.

2. Build a Better To-Do List
Sociologists say that women inhabit more roles these days than ever. This multiplicity of hats can translate into nonstop competing goals (work or kids, kids or spouse, spouse or self, self or community, community or extended family). Researchers conducted a series of studies in which they cataloged subjects' goals, asked them which conflicted, and then looked at their medical records and tracked them for a year with beepers, contacting them at random moments to find out what they were thinking and feeling. The study found that the more subjects' goals clashed, the more they worried, the less they got done, and the more likely they were to be physically and/or mentally ill.

Baumeister and Tierney quote a military general's planning method: "First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three on down." I've heard this before-that you can do only two things well at one time-and it always strikes me as particularly ­inhumane counsel for women, who generally find themselves squeezed between career, spouse, and children at some point.

To prevent competing goals from eating you alive, Baumeister and Tierney are fans of the to-do list and organizational guru David Allen. Allen advises that each item on a to-do list must be immediately actionable. So you shouldn't write "Food shopping" if you first need to plan meals and make a grocery list. An actionable list doesn't lighten the workload or align your goals, but at least it clears your mind.

3. Avoid Ego Depletion
Ego depletion is the state you reach when you're so exhausted and stressed that you feel totally out of control. If you've ever quit smoking, the homicidal feeling when withdrawal is at its peak is textbook ego depletion. But garden-variety travails-traffic jams, fights with your sister-can get you there too. When research subjects are systematically ego depleted (by, for example, being instructed to remain ­emotionless while watching films of animals suffering), they perform terribly when playing simple word games afterward, and brain monitoring shows especially sluggish activity.

You can limit ego depletion by eating well and giving more attention to rest and relaxation. To perform with peak self-­control, you have to treat your brain as though it were an elite athlete. Blood glucose levels are highly correlated with self-control in some studies. People with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) have even been found to be more likely to ­commit an array of offenses, everything from ­traffic violations and embezzlement to arson, public masturbation, and domestic abuse. Of course, every dip in blood sugar doesn't make you set your house on fire, but if you have low glucose from skipping meals or making poor diet­ary choices, you don't have enough energy available for your brain to excel.

In a study in which people played a computer game that became increas­ingly difficult and then were deliberately insu­lted by a lab technician (one bit of ancillary knowledge I got from the books is that willpower studies are almost comically cruel), the subjects who recently had a glass of ­sugary lemonade worked diligently at the game and responded with restraint to the rude comments. Those who'd received lemon­ade with artificial sweetener (and thus no calories) ­typically swore, banged the computer, and got aggres­sive with the lab tech. (Though ­researchers tend to use sugar drinks because they're easy to make and serve in labs, all three authors point out that a healthier snack containing a mix of protein and complex carbs will sustain your blood glucose more evenly.)

Stanford University psychologist Kelly ­McGonigal, PhD. points out that sleep depri­vation similarly unhinges the brain by impair­ing how it uses glucose. Because a good night's rest is such a boon to will­power, sleep interventions are even ­being tested as treatments for substance abuse, she reports. "It hardly ever occurs to us that we don't need to become better ­people," she writes, "but to ­become better rested."

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Meditation apparently has an equally near-magical effect on willpower. I know many people (myself included) who've ­eschewed it out of frustration-they ­cannot get their minds to stop jumping around like a monkey on meth. But being bad at meditation is apparently marvelous for self-control. If your mind went blank without any effort, you wouldn't get anything out of meditating. Each time you have to bring your mind back to your breath or mantra, McGonigal says, it ­remodels your brain­-strengthening your will, quieting your cravings, and improving stress ­management, impulse control, and self-awareness. "Over time, [meditators'] brains become finely tuned willpower machines," she writes, with "more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness." As little as five minutes of meditation a day can alter your brain, she says, if you do it consistently.

4. Love Thy Future Self
There's a psychological phenomenon that is actually (scientifically) called the What-the-Hell effect. It's what happens when you blow your diet by eating a doughnut, then say, "Ugh, what the hell. Today's a wash. I may as well get a shake and large fries with lunch."

The What-the-Hell effect applies to eating, drinking, procrastination, and just about any other act of will. The key, however, isn't that you shouldn't try to control eating or drinking; it's how you react when you fail. In studies of drinkers, the worse people felt about drinking too much one night, the more they drank the next two. The same went for procrastinating ­students: The harder they were on themselves for missing a deadline, the more ­likely they were to miss a subsequent one. On the flip side, the more compassion people show for themselves, the more likely they are to take responsibility for failures, seek advice, and correct the situation.

"If you view setbacks as evidence that you're a hopeless loser who screws up everything," McGonigal explains, "your most urgent goal will be to soothe those feelings, not learn from your experience." Instead, she counsels, treat yourself like a friend or be a supportive parent to yourself. (Or you can sing the little ditty my son learned from Sesame Street: " 'Cause everyone makes mistakes. Oh yes they do! Your sister and your brother and your dad and mother, too!… Everyone makes mistakes, so why can't you?")

On the other hand, you can't let yourself get too carried away with self-stroking. So-called moral licensing is the process by which you say, "I was so patient with my kids this morning, I deserve to have a Cinnabon even though I'm on a diet." Or, "I've been working so hard prosecuting criminals and governing the state of New York, I'm going to reward myself with a high-priced call girl." In other words, when a moral licenser acts virtuously in one sector, she gives herself permission to be less angelic elsewhere.

The basic problem, McGonigal ­argues, is getting your goals tangled up with vice and virtue. If you view the effort to cut back on sugar as a moral battle-as ­opposed to just a step toward the goal of controlling diabetes, for example-you're more likely to fail. (But don't confuse seeking the help of a higher power with moral­izing. If you ­believe in God, believing that He loves you despite your flaws and is helping you and watching over you has ­actually been shown to increase your will­power.) Moral ­licensing "convinces us that self-­sabotaging behavior-whether breaking your diet, blowing your budget, or sneaking a smoke-is a 'treat,' " ­McGonigal writes. "It's an incredibly powerful trick of the mind." Indeed, the treat seems more like a trick when the credit-card bill comes or the extra pounds pack on.

Baumeister and Tierney joke at the end of their book that "the best way to reduce stress is to stop screwing up," and I'd amend that to say that you have to stop screwing yourself. I wouldn't treat a dog (especially my dream golden retriever) the way I treat what the willpower philosophers call my future self. When I don't feel like writing a story or cleaning the house, who do I turn to? My poor future self! "I'll do it," I tell myself, "but tomorrow." Stuck with all the dirty work my current self doesn't feel like doing, left to eat salad tomorrow because I wanted ice cream tonight, that's the lot of my FS. To increase "future-self continuity" (the ability to see your future self as still yourself-just as uninterested in salad tomorrow as today), McGonigal suggests simply imagining how you'll feel later about the choices you make today.

When, as I was writing this ­article, my husband asked whether I ­wanted to go with him and the kids to see the 3-D rerelease of The Lion King ­movie-my kids pleading excitedly for me to "Come, Mommy, come!"-I at first grabbed my handbag and put my com­puter to sleep, eager to escape my work. But, as I was ­tying my sneakers, I started to imagine my used-and-abused future self, staying up an extra three hours to do work I could've done during an uninterrupted afternoon. The Ghost of Rachael Future looked miser­able, hunched over her computer while the rest of the world slept. I decided to do my future self a ­solid: I skipped the movie and went back to work.

Was it worth it? Well, my story is done, and I still have time to have a glass of wine with my husband, meditate, and get a good night's sleep. Who knows-if I keep this up, I may even have room in my life someday for that golden retriever.


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