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WHEN someone says they have “good intentions”, it typically means they mean well or have positive motives behind their actions or words. It suggests that they aim to do something beneficial or kind, even if the outcome does not always align with what they intended.
When working with people, assume good intentions. When listening to them, interpret their words generously. You will occasionally get burned or mistreated by always assuming the best in others, but it is still a far better way to live than assuming the worst.
Many of us begin a new year with resolutions: to get fit, learn a new skill or eat differently. But if we truly want to do these things, why wait for an arbitrary date that marks nothing more significant than a timekeeping convention?
British psychologist Tom Stafford has asked this question, and he is not alone. The answer reveals something important about the psychology of motivation and what popular theories of self-control overlook.
At bedtime, you may intend to get up early and go for a run, but when the alarm sounds, you discover that what you really want is to sleep longer.
As exam day approaches, you may wish you were the kind of person who had spent every afternoon studying, yet on each of those afternoons, you preferred to spend time with friends on social media.
We could view these contradictions as failures of self-control: impulses for immediate pleasure somehow override our long-term interests.
One well-known theory of self-control, proposed by Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, is the “ego-depletion” account. It holds that self-control is like a muscle that can be exhausted in the short term. Thus, every temptation you resist supposedly makes you more likely to yield to the next one, even if that temptation involves something entirely different.
A corollary of the “self-control as a muscle” theory is that willpower can be strengthened through practice over time. Baumeister, for example, found that people instructed to keep their backs straight whenever possible for two weeks demonstrated improved willpower when they returned to the laboratory.
More importantly, however, the theory does not explain why we wait until New Year’s Day to begin exercising self-control. If willpower is a muscle, we should start strengthening it as soon as possible rather than wait for an arbitrary date.
Another explanation may answer this question, although it is not as fashionable as ego depletion. In his book “Breakdown of Will”, George Ainslie presents a theory of the self and self-control that uses game theory to explain why we struggle with our impulses and why our attempts to control them take the forms they do. The blank page of a new calendar creates a clean break between the old and new versions of ourselves — a psychological boundary that may help us keep our resolutions.
To borrow Stafford’s phrasing once more, Ainslie offers an answer to why our resolutions so often begin on January 1. The date is entirely arbitrary, but it draws a clear line between our old and new selves. The theory’s practical lesson is that a resolution should be framed so that, at any moment, it is absolutely clear whether we are keeping it. Such lines may be arbitrary, but they help preserve the truce among our competing interests.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is a familiar proverb. An alternative version says, “Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works.”
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