I was slogging away on the elliptical yesterday (no treadmills or bikes were available; why does the elliptical make my feet fall asleep?) and started listening to a Radio Lab podcast of an episode called "Help." The episode was about how people use external things to battle internal problems, from addiction to writers block. It made me laugh because it started with the story of a woman who for decades just couldn't make herself stop smoking, until the day she said to her friend that if she ever smoked again she'd have to donate $5,000 to the KKK. Now, Sarah Palin isn't nearly as bad as the KKK and $25 isn't anything like $5,000, but it still made me laugh. It was also a really interesting episode. Turns out that the deal I've made is called a Ulysses Contract--a promise made now to bind your future self (as in Ulysses making his crew bind him to the mast so he could hear the sirens' song but not be able to respond to it). The episode mentioned in passing (and I'd have liked more information about this) that brain imaging shows that the urges of now are much, much stronger than the drive provided by promise of future benefits, so you have to do something to make the future effect a reality now in order for it to have any force. So you set up your pay so that your retirement money is taken out before you ever get your hands on it, or you put your alarm clock across the room so that you don't hit the snooze button a half a dozen times, or you make a public promise to give money to a cause you can't stand to force a change in daily behavior.
The episode is here if you are interested in listening:
http://www.radiolab.org/2011/mar/08/
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