Resist temptation by telling yourself that you can indulge “some time later”
Yes, I’m telling you to procrastinate on your desires.
“When would you have time to plan my bachelorette party?” a message from my sister read.
I love my sister, but I hate coordinating things. I hate researching activities and venues, managing WhatsApp groups, and making lots of small decisions.
It doesn’t help that my idea of a bachelorette party is a group of women dressed up as bunny rabbits or beauty pageant contestants marching around the city getting drunk. I wouldn’t need to organize such a party, would I?
“Sometime soon,” I responded.
As you may guess, sometime soon didn’t turn into right now until I transformed the ambiguous, scary blob of a bachelorette party into a bite-sized to-do list (and until I started worrying that further postponing the planning might make her think I don’t actually love her).
Vague plans are a bad idea when you’re trying to pursue a goal. But what if I told you that, in certain situations, vague plans can improve self-control?
While researching how to boost self-control in the heat of the moment, I came across a rather obscure strategy: postponing a desire until later.¹
Here’s the self-control strategy in a nutshell:
When you face a temptation, you tell yourself that you can give in later without specifying when or where you’ll do so. For example, when you feel tempted to grab a free cinnamon bun at your company’s quarterly business review, you tell yourself that you can have one “another time.”
Yes, the idea is to procrastinate on your temptations.
If this sounds like the dumbest self-control strategy you’ve ever heard of, well. . . it may very well be. But it does have some scientific backing which I personally find pretty fascinating.
And who wouldn’t want to be told that it’s OK to procrastinate?
Vague plans can help you overcome temptation
Break your goal into bite-sized pieces.
Time block your workday.
Create if-then plans like “If I walk through my living room door which has a pull-up bar, I will do five pull-ups.”
We’re often advised to be more specific when striving towards our long-term goals — for good reason. Specific plans help us deal with inertia and forgetfulness,² reduce the cognitive load of unfinished goals,³ and shield against alternative pursuits.⁴
But when we’re being tempted — a sweet cinnamony scent is floating around the office — not making specific plans can be helpful:
“[T]he pitfalls of vague plans can be leveraged against desires to promote self-control success.”⁵
But how?
In one study, researchers had subjects do a reading comprehension test with a bowl of cookies in front of them.⁵ The subjects were divided into two groups which were both asked to refrain from having the cookies. Additionally, the first group was asked to write down “If I have the urge to eat cookies, I will tell myself that I can eat cookies some other time.” The second group was asked to write down the same sentence but with the ending “in exactly 1 week.”
The researchers were interested in seeing whether the group with a more vague intention was less occupied with the bowl of cookies in front of them. They were. The vague intention group was able to focus on the reading task similarly to the baseline group which completed the task without any cookies in sight. The group that was given a specific intention (in exactly 1 week), however, struggled more with focus and performed worse.
But what is it about vague plans that can make people less occupied with temptation?
Why vague plans to “give in later” work
A key concept in social psychology is that people learn what they like and value by observing their own behavior.⁶ I take multiple dance classes a week, so I must really like dancing.
A classic study conducted with kindergarten children demonstrates this well.⁷ In the study, children were told not to play with a toy they found attractive. They were either given a mild (“If you played with it, I would be annoyed”) or a severe threat (“If you played with it, I would be very angry. I would have to take all of my toys and go home and never come back again.” Yikes!). Later, when they were allowed to play with all toys again, most of the children who had received the mild threat still avoided the previously prohibited toy. (The children in the severe-threat group were more inclined to play with the toy.)
The researchers explained their findings with cognitive dissonance theory: Under a mild threat, the children had to search for additional justifications for their behavior: I didn’t play with the toy, so I must not like it that much. In the process of doing so, they altered their preferences — at least for the duration of the study.⁸
Ambiguity leaves room for interpretation. So we fill the void with explanations that make sense to us.⁹
“This is what makes telling ourselves that we can give in “some time later” such a simple yet effective self-control technique. Vague plans force us to search for explanations for why we’re not acting on our urges.”
This is what makes telling ourselves that we can give in “some time later” such a simple yet effective self-control technique. Vague plans force us to search for explanations for why we’re not acting on our urges. As a result, we interpret postponing our desires as a lack of interest or indifference: I said I can have a cinnamon bun another time, so I guess I didn’t want it that much after all.⁵
But what happens afterwards? Do we go home and binge on all the sweet things we can get our hands on?
But do we eventually give in, just later?
It would be easy to predict that allowing ourselves to give in later would make us do exactly that: Give in. Later.
But if we use the technique introduced in this article, that doesn’t necessarily happen.
In one study, researchers made subjects complete some exercises with a bowl of M&Ms in front of them (the M&Ms were supposedly unrelated to the study).⁵ They divided the subjects into three conditions:
- indulgence: “I can eat M&Ms”
- restraint: “No, I will not have M&Ms”
- postponement: “I can have M&Ms some other time”
It’s probably no surprise that the indulgence group ate the most candy while working on the exercises. But who do you think ate the most when the study was over (or when the subjects thought the study was over. . .)?
The restraint group. The subjects in the indulgence and postponement groups ate similar amounts.
This means that telling yourself that you can indulge some other time may be just as effective as actually indulging — and much better than telling yourself, “No, not ever.”⁵ How you talk to yourself when you refrain from a desire matters.
But what happens if we keep postponing our desires over and over again? Eventually, absence must make the heart grow fonder, right?
The long-term effects of postponing desires
In 2020, I decided to eat only plants for a month. I had read about the health benefits of a whole-food plant-based diet and wanted to test if it could help heal a stubborn skin condition. I chucked out all the animal products and stocked my fridge and pantry with broccoli, kale, melons, oranges, black beans, lentils, whole-wheat pasta, brown rice, and the like.
To my wonder, the red area on my face kept diminishing week by week. By the end of the 30 days, it was barely noticeable. And I had become curious. So I kept going: Another month passed. And then three. Six. Twelve.
I’ve now been postponing eating animal products for almost five years, although I no longer see it that way. Not only have I developed the identity of a plant-based person,* but I’ve also grown fond of lentil dals, cashew-cream carbonara, and black-bean tacos. When people ask me which animal products I miss the most, I have to disappoint them by saying, “None.”
This is exactly what the science predicts will happen:
“Interestingly, when people choose to quit consumption, we predict and find that longer non-consumption periods reduce desire by altering people’s perceptions of themselves and their identity as consumers of this product.”¹⁰
The key here is “when people choose to,” that is when they’re willingly refraining from consumption — not when it’s imposed on them. It also helps to entertain broader goals like “eating a comforting evening snack” as opposed to something specific like “eating bread with cheese” and to have substitutes (bread with hummus or peanut butter and jam).**
So the next time you really feel like having something you’ve decided to refrain from, don’t beat yourself up about it or say you’re never having it again. Simply tell yourself that you can have it another time. Later you may realize that you never did.
And even if you do, you can be grateful for giving in at a more appropriate time, a time when the temptation isn’t interfering with an important long-term goal:
“[P]ostponing a desire until later (and giving in then) may indeed be the most adaptive strategy because it allows for greater balance.”¹
If you enjoyed this, check out the other articles in my series on self-control:
- The secret life of people with high self-control (it’s easier than you think)
- The upside of failing at self-control
- Make self-control effortless by choosing goals that light you up
- Cultivating meta-self-control: 3 ways to make willpower unnecessary
- Overcoming the sneaky temptations that sabotage your goals without your noticing
References & notes
You can find all the references in this Google Doc.
*I don’t consider myself vegan because I don’t eat plant-based food for merely ethical reasons and usually eat animal products three to five times a year — baklava made with butter, fish my family and I fish at our cottage in the summer, a complimentary meal on a flight — and occasionally buy leather products. But in practice, 99% of my meals are fully plant-based.
**Interestingly, one study found that the degree to which students missed food from their hometown — the dumplings, the ginger milk curd, the orange tea — while attending college away from home depended on whether they could find a substitute. If they had eaten a substitute, they missed the desired food less as time passed. If they hadn’t, they missed the food more over time.¹⁰
