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*[https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/articles/what-advice-would-you-give-someone-lacking-motivation What advice would you give to someone lacking in motivation?], Mental Health Foundation
*[https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/articles/what-advice-would-you-give-someone-lacking-motivation What advice would you give to someone lacking in motivation?], Mental Health Foundation
== Researchers and psychologists who view self-control and willpower as being different ==
The ''Science News'' article ''Most people say self-control is the same as willpower. Researchers disagree'' indicates:
{{Cquote|Psychologists say self-control is about planning ahead to avoid needing willpower in the moment.
A scientific squabble over how to define self-control draws from an unlikely source: A story from Greek mythology.
Sailing home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, Odysseus longed to hear the Sirens’ legendary song. But he knew that was a very bad idea. The Sirens, the goddess Circe had warned, lured passing sailors to their island to kill them. So Circe helped Odysseus form a plan. As his boat approached the Sirens’ island, Odysseus handed crew members balls of wax to plug their ears, and he ordered the men to tie him firmly to the boat’s mast. He told the crew to tie him tighter if he begged and pleaded to heed the Sirens’ call. His plan in place, Odysseus was able to both hear the Sirens and live to tell the tale.
The science is clear. Proverbially tying oneself to the mast — or crafting strategies in advance to thwart temptation — is the optimal way to meet one’s goals. But not all agree that such preemptive strategies constitute self-control.
Social psychologists say Odysseus utilized exemplary self-control. That’s because they tend to distinguish between strategic self-control — that is, the Odysseus approach — and willpower. Willpower would be akin to Odysseus resisting the Sirens’ call in the moment without rope and muscular crewmen...
But then research began to emerge that challenged that framework. In one study, researchers analyzed the results of about 100 self-control studies of almost 33,000 participants. People who scored high in self-control were no better than others at resisting temptation in the moment, those scientists reported in the February 2012 Personality and Social Psychology Review. Instead, such individuals reported having established habits or routines.
In another study, researchers pinged over 200 people on beepers several times a day to measure their desires in real time. Individuals who scored high in self-control reported experiencing less temptation and weaker desires than those with lower scores, the team reported in the June 2012 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology...
Those studies led to a seismic shift in the field of self-control, says social psychologist Malte Friese of Saarlund University in Saarbrücken, Germany, who was not involved in that work. “Apparently the people who are good in self-control … don’t inhibit all day long. They do something different.”
Thus began the willpower/self-control split. Scientists began exploring the tools that could help people do those different things — while sticking to the moniker “self-control.” Some research focused on strategies people could call on in the moment to move beyond simple willpower to resist temptation, says Kentaro Fujita, a social psychologist at the Ohio State University in Columbus. For instance, research has shown that distracting oneself or focusing on the negative aspects of a temptation can help people overcome immediate desires.
But with evidence mounting that preplanning à la Odysseus presented the key to long-term success, that’s where researchers focused their attention, says Fujita, who outlined those strategies in the October 2020 Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Some tips include linking goal failure to a self-imposed punishment, such as forcing oneself to donate to a loathed organization. Another involves bundling a disliked action — say, running — with a desirable one, such as listening to a favorite podcast.
“This article challenges a common belief: that successful self-control requires willpower,” Fujita and his coauthors wrote.<ref>[''Most people say self-control is the same as willpower. Researchers disagree''], Science News. 2024</ref>}}
== Books ==
== Books ==