Master Self Control & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Kentaro Fujita

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In my own research, we have shown that if we can get people to think about their whys, the purposes behind their decisions, the broader purposes behind their what they’re doing, they’re much more likely to be able to overcome the temptation. So, if there’s a piece of chocolate cake in front of me and I’m trying not to eat it, if you said, “Oh, I’m I’m not supposed to eat that because I’m on a diet. ” That doesn’t have much magic to it. But, if instead I’m saying things like, “I need to do this for my family. I want to look good for my children’s wedding photos.

” Or, you know, “My children are looking at me. I want to be a good example. ” Or all these other kinds of reasons that you might these higher order reasons that you might have for getting healthier, being fitter, or whatever, not eating the cake, we show that that increases the odds that people will avoid the cake. And we think it’s cuz it’s giving people meaning. If these are higher order things that I care about, and these are what’s going to motivate me to hold out.

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools [music] for everyday life. I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Kentaro Fujita, professor of psychology at Ohio State University, and an expert in the science of self-control and motivation. If you’re somebody who has ever struggled with procrastination, sticking to a goal, or coming up with the goals for your life, today’s episode is for you.

We start off today’s discussion talking about the famous two marshmallow experiment, the one where they placed kids in a room with a marshmallow and told them that if they delayed gratification for that marshmallow, meaning they didn’t eat it, they would then get two marshmallows. Those experiments received a lot of attention in that they were supposed to predict whether people would be successful later in life. We talk about the criticism of those experiments, but also how some of those conclusions were valid, and more importantly, how people of any age, including you, can build mental resilience and your ability to experience deferred gratification toward your goals. We also talk about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. These are topics that are very misunderstood out there, but Dr.

Fujita clarifies that when we receive rewards for something we are naturally inclined to do, meaning that we love, it does not reduce our motivation to do that thing. And this is an important point and we go into it in terms of the practical steps for building and maintaining your progress on goals. We also talk about what the data say about the specific steps that are most effective to both initiate and reach short and long-term goals. We also talk about how to get out of impulsive states and states of procrastination. What the data say about how to do that.

Today’s episode is really focused on science and more importantly practical takeaways, several of which I plan to incorporate into my own life. I only wish I had this knowledge when I was younger, but now thanks to Dr. Fujita coming on the podcast, people of all ages can make great use of the information and data from his studies. Before we begin, I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, today’s episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Kentaro Fujita. Dr. Kentaro Fujita, welcome.

Thank you. Really excited to be here today. I’m super excited to talk to you. We hear so much about motivation, discipline, willpower, tenacity, but we really haven’t had a modern update on the psychology of these in a long while. Not just on the podcast, but I think most people have heard of the so-called marshmallow experiment, which hopefully you could explain to us.

Tell us what it revealed, some of the criticisms, maybe even some criticisms of the criticism, because I think the marshmallow experiment, which everyone will learn about momentarily if they don’t already know what that is, sort of stands as this, you know, symbol of whether willpower is somehow innate or whether it’s something that can really be cultivated. So, if you would, uh what is the marshmallow experiment? >> So, the marshmallow test was actually a series of experiments that was conducted by Walter Mischel uh in the ’60s to ’70s to ’80s at Stanford. And what happens in the classic paradigm is a child comes in and is seated in front of a plate with some kind of thing that they really want. Generally speaking, it was a single marshmallow.

And the children were told that the experimenter was going to leave for a while, but if they could avoid eating the one or or basically hold out and not eat [snorts] the one, and it was still there when the experimenter came back, they could get two marshmallows. So, this is essentially [snorts] a self-control problem because you have a smaller, sooner reward, and you’re sort of trading that off with a larger, later reward. And the key dependent variable here was how long the child could wait. Now, the dirty little secret about the marshmallow experiments is that no child waited the full 15 minutes that the experimenter was gone, but what you could do is you could basically, as soon as the door closed, you would start the timer, and then the the amount and and you were just basically looking to see how long the children would wait. That was interpreted as the child’s delay of gratification ability or the otherwise self-control.

Now, there were a series of experiments that we can talk about. Um they used these experiments to learn a lot about the different tactics and skill uh tricks and tools that kids could learn to use to improve their delay of gratification, but that’s not what everybody knows. What everybody knows about these experiments is that many years later, they analyzed data in which they looked at children’s delay times. So, again, how long did they wait before they indulged in the one uh one marshmallow, and then they they they saw to what extent it was correlated with important life outcomes like academic achievement, career success, income, uh even things like incarceration, social relationships, and what they found was shocking. The longer children could wait before eating the single marshmallow, the more likely uh they were to have to to do well in school, more likely make more money, have more friends, have better physical and mental health, uh and also have lower incarceration uh and problematic behave social behavior reports.

Uh and so this got people really excited about self-control because it was like it it suggested it was a key skill for important life outcomes. And this is what generated a lot of that excitement. Did any of the kids actually get two marshmallows as a reward? It depends on the data set. So, research has now shown that the marshmallow test waiting times depend on a lot of things.

Um so, in the original experiments, there were something like 15 minutes. Others experimenters have shortened that time to 10 minutes, and that’s a little easier for children to do. Another really important thing about the marshmallow test is that the child has to trust the experimenter. If you don’t trust the experimenter, why should you bother waiting, right? It’s perfectly rational just to go ahead and grab the one if you don’t trust the experimenter’s actually going to bring you two.

Um so, there have been experiments in which the experimenter looks reliable or unreliable in front of the child, so they forget something or they remember to do something. And when ex