The only approach I know of that I think has a meaningful shot to help solve such huge problems, which you might call “Scientific Entrepreneurship,” combines two methods into one:

(1) Rigorous science to deeply understand the causal structures of the problem and how strong an effect each cause has (which often will begin with a qualitative approach to understand the outlines of the problem and then move to analysis of carefully conducted measurements).   

(2) A “lean startup” approach, where you try things (guided by your current understanding of the causal relationships), see what happens, and then rapidly course-correct based on the results (and sometimes take large pivots) to iterate towards better and better approaches.

When dealing with these highly complex problems, I think that a “lean startup” approach without rigorous science ends up leading to lots of random attempts that have almost no chance of ultimate success (and sometimes even converge to self-propagating but useless approaches, such as charities that perpetually absorb money without genuinely helping the cause).  

On the other hand, a purely scientific approach without the lean startup iterative mindset often ends up missing critical contextual details that are actually essential for the project to work. You’ll inevitably encounter many specific barriers that the scientific theory doesn’t address. In summary, I think our best bet for solving highly complex world problems is Scientific Entrepreneurship: developing a deep understanding of the high-level causal structures through scientific rigor and then combining that with an entrepreneurial form of rapid iteration.

This piece was first written on May 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on June 5, 2024.

The mathematical proofs are, of course, very rarely disputed. The use of mathematics is much more often disputed.

Why do these disputes arise? I’ve observed five different types.

Disputes in Applications of Statistics to Science

(1) Disputes over philosophy:

Example 1: is it valid to assign a probability to an event that is not part of any clear sequence of events or mathematical process (e.g., trying to estimate the probability that humanity will go extinct)?

We don’t agree on what we mean by “probability.”

Example 2: under what conditions should a strange data point be considered an “outlier” and hence removed from our data before calculating our statistics?

We don’t agree on what we mean by “outlier.”

Resolving these disputes might require more consensus on what we mean by different concepts in statistics and potentially more disambiguation of possible interpretations of these concepts.

(2) Disputes over what we’re trying to achieve:

Example 1: Is a p-value a measure something that we directly care about, and if not, is it still worth using?

We don’t agree on the extent to which one of the most commonly used statistics is something we care about.

Example 2: When we’re testing multiple hypotheses at once, how should we adjust our resulting statistics to account for this “multiple hypothesis testing”?

We don’t agree on how to handle the increased rate of false positives that occurs when we put multiple statistics in a single paper.

Resolving these disputes might require more agreement on exactly what we’re trying to achieve with statistics.

(3) Disputes over what is “good enough” or “accurate enough”:

Example 1: when you’re comparing the means of two groups, when is it okay to use the very popular t-test, which assumes equal variances in the two groups, rather than the welch test, which doesn’t assume equal variances (this article does a good job of exploring what a horror show this seemingly simple question is).

We don’t agree on how much we should worry about the basic assumptions of our commonly used statistical tests being violated.

Example 2: to control for effect (i.e., “factor out” the influence of one variable on the relationship between two other variables), is it sufficient to run a regression that includes that control variable in the model?

We don’t agree on what is sufficient to remove the causal effects of one variable (that we don’t care about) on another we do care about in order to avoid having those effects contaminating our main results.

Resolving these disputes might require more agreement on how robust methods are to violations of their assumptions and clearer best practices for what to do when we expect the assumptions might be violated.

(4) Disputes due to misconceptions:

Example 1: it is often assumed that the true value has a 95% chance of falling within the 95th percentile confidence interval for that value, but that’s actually a subtle misinterpretation of the definition of a 95th percentile confidence interval.

We can easily misunderstand the extremely subtle proper interpretations of statistics.

Example 2: the trim-and-fill method is often used in meta-analysis to try to correct for the fact results that find no effect are more likely to go unpublished than results that find an effect, but unfortunately, this method sometimes doesn’t do what it is supposed.

We sometimes continue to rely on techniques out of inertia even though they are known to occasionally produce wrong results.

Resolving these disputes might require better statistical education around common misconceptions and common confusions.

(5) Disputes over what to do when we lack information:

Example 1: when we don’t have any empirical data or previous experience to use to estimate a prior distribution for a variable, how should we set our prior?

We don’t have standardized steps that everyone can agree on for all procedures.

Example 2: if we don’t have reason to believe that our data is normally distributed, but the test we would usually run requires that the distribution of the data be normal, should we instead use a non-parametric version of the test (even though it has less statistical power), or should we base whether to use the non-parametric version of the test off of the result of the p-value of a test for normality, even though doing the latter will form a “compound test” and hence potentially change the interpretation of our resulting p-value?

When certain information is lacking, we don’t have a consensus on how to adapt.

Resolving these disputes might require a more standardized agreement on dos and don’ts for situations where we lack critical information.

To elaborate, if a situation is causing you harm, you can:

(1) EXIT the situation so that it can’t harm you anymore.

For instance, if you’re in a burning building, you can try to leave the building.

(2) ALTER the nature or characteristics of the situation so that it harms you less, while still remaining in the situation, and otherwise behaving the same way within it.

For instance, if you are cold because your heater broke you can try to fix your heater.

(3) REACT to the situation differently by changing your future behaviors in it, but without trying to alter the nature of the situation itself, and without exiting from it.

For instance, if you’re doing badly in school, you can start paying more attention in class or spending more time on your homework.

(4) REFRAME the situation to change your thoughts or feelings about it (so that you experience less harm from it), without otherwise changing your behavior, and without altering or leaving the situation.

For instance, if you feel upset when friends don’t return your text messages quickly since you think it means they don’t care about you, you can try to reframe the situation by reminding yourself that your friends lead busy lives, which may be the cause of their slow responses; rather than a lack of caring.

I think it’s useful to keep this categorization in mind, since it’s easy to get stuck focusing on just one or two solutions, and miss a potentially better one. The key is to consider which of these strategies, or combination of them, has the best chance of helping you achieve your goals (when you factor in how likely each is to work, and how costly or risky each is). Applying this simple framework of four possibilities (“E.A.R.R”) can help structure your solution oriented thinking.

Consider this example to further illustrate the four approaches. If your boss at work is making your life miserable by frequently getting angry at you, you can try to:

(1) Exit (by quitting the job)

(2) Alter (by asking your boss not to snap angrily at you anymore)

(3) React (by trying to change your behaviors at work so that they no longer trigger your boss’ anger), or

4) Reframe (by trying to become less bothered by anger directed at you from your boss).

Sometimes one strategy won’t fit a certain problem (don’t Reframe if you’re in a burning building that you can Exit safely from, and don’t Alter by trying to put the fire out if it has already grown huge), but usually there will be multiple reasonable methods to apply.

So which method should you choose in a particular case? It depends on:

(a) how likely you think each is to work, and

(b) how costly each is to carry out (in time, money, pain, risk, frustration, emotional energy, etc.)

(c) your sense of justice or ethics (e.g. you may think it’s wrong to be treated that way by your angry boss and therefore not use the Reframe strategy, as a matter of principle, even if it would work).

Let’s consider in more detail when you might apply each strategy in the case of an angry boss:

(1) If you think it would be easy to switch jobs and are excited to do so, you may choose to Exit.

(2) If you think your boss is likely to stop acting up angrily towards you if you make a Human Resources complaint, you may choose to Alter.

(3) If you see a clear cut, easy to change, and undesirable pattern of your own behavior that’s triggering your boss’ anger, you may choose to React.

(4) If you aspire to be the sort of person who can handle being angrily snapped at without feeling bothered by it, and think you can come to feel differently about your boss’ behavior so that it bothers you a lot less, you may choose to Reframe.

So if you are facing a situation that’s causing you harm, it may be helpful to start with the question, what would it look like to Exit, Alter, React or Reframe in this case?

The boundaries between the four categories will not always be sharp (for instance, if you’re doing badly in a class at school, you may think of Exit as quitting that class, but you could instead think of Exit as quitting school altogether, with quitting just that class as an example of Alter, since it’s altering your school environment). There may also be occasionally be options that don’t neatly fall into any of these four categories.

Nonetheless, in most cases these four strategies, EARR, help you search for the best solution when a situation is causing you harm.

If it is obvious to most investors that there is a bubble, presumably, that bubble would be likely to burst quickly. So, we shouldn’t expect it to be particularly obvious from the inside of a bubble that one is currently happening.

That being said, here are some signs that I think tend to be predictive of bubbles (though they don’t all occur in all bubbles, nor are all trends that have all these traits a bubble).

Possible signs that a bubble may be occurring:

(1) Prices skyrocket

Explanation: This is simply part of the definition of a bubble (we wouldn’t say it was a bubble without this)

(2) The current level of prices (e.g., why prices are now at X rather than 2X or 0.5X) is hard for experts and investors to explain convincingly. They may be able to explain why a change in price occurred (“prices rose 20% in response to XYZ”), but they struggle to explain or can’t reach any consensus on why the raw price is X (as opposed to 2X or 0.5X).

Possible explanation: because price increases are, to a significant extent, being driven by high excitement, hopes of getting rich quickly, or fear of missing out, and those kinds of forces don’t tend to lend themselves to easily explainable or predictable price levels.

(3) Even while skyrocketing on average, prices tend to swing wildly up and down over short time horizons.

Possible explanation: a combination of reasons, I think. For instance, uncertainty in how to price the assets means that even those making lots of money tend to have high uncertainty about when to sell out positions vs. buy more. You get sudden pockets of increased buying when investors who had previously been on the sidelines jump into the fray, driven by fear of missing out or starry-eyed hopes of huge reward, but you also have pockets of increased selling as those who’ve made a ton start to cash out.

Sudden drops in prices may also spook other holders, who then might also sell, causing steeper declines. Some people may start trading “momentum” strategies, buying as prices appear to be rising and selling as they appear to be falling, which also exacerbates fluctuations.

(4) As prices continue to rise, some vocal, long-term holders start to claim that a new paradigm is occurring (where things are now fundamentally different than they were in the past or where previous risks people once feared no longer apply) and hence that past ways of thinking about valuation or risk or bubbles are irrelevant in this case.

Possible explanation: I suspect for some, it’s because they want to convince themselves they will continue making huge returns (and they have trouble explaining how that can happen without pointing to a paradigm shift), or in part because they want others to continue investing in large quantities, and it’s an exciting story. But also probably because those who become convinced of a paradigm shift are more likely to go on to become long-term investors in that asset class and then tell their theories excitedly to others.

John Templeton: “The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different.”

(5) Lots of people who know little about investing and who know little about the asset in question start to flock, trying to find ways to put their money into that asset, too. More generally, the asset tends to grow massively in popularity, with higher and higher trading volumes occurring.

Possible explanation: as knowledge of the asset class increasingly trickles down from the firstcomers to the general public, people start to hear about huge fortunes being made and, eventually, about fortunes being made by non-experts, which makes winning big seem attainable. Media coverage tends to spread these exciting developments as well (and increasingly so, the more prices rise because the story becomes more and more exciting). Amateurs may then start flocking to become investors because they think that maybe they, too, can make a fortune (or at least increase their investment by 10x) as so many people they’ve heard about have done.

(6) The supply of the asset (or of lookalikes to it) explosively grows, with many trying to make money from the steeply increasing prices by creating similar assets to sell to exuberant investors.

Possible explanation: even while investors are making great returns, those creating the asset to sell are potentially making even greater returns (or at least equally great returns), which attracts a frenzy of new would-be sellers attempting to produce similar assets.

The thing about bubbles is that even if you believe you are inside one, and even if you happen to be completely correct, it’s not necessarily easy to profit from this. Shorting a bubble can be extremely risky because even if you are right, it might rise in price by 2x or 10x before it collapses, causing you extreme losses. And buying put options to bet that it’s a bubble can also be tricky, as volatile markets make for expensive options, and you have to time the collapse well (which is very hard to do) or else buy expensive long-dated options. And those who say there is no bubble and keep buying (even if they eventually are proven wrong) may continue making huge returns for a while (or even for a long time).

Isaac Newton: “I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”

A legitimate bubble may burst (or experience a big price correction) in 3 days, or 30, or 300, or 3000. And while you’re waiting, people may still make 3x, 30x, or 300x returns (before many of them lose nearly everything).

It’s notoriously hard to predict when a bubble will burst (or have a big price correction) because it may be triggered by a sudden reduction in confidence that produces a negative feedback loop (i.e., the more that prices fall, the more that confidence disappears). And confidence tends to shift for all sorts of hard-to-preempt reasons (e.g., a bunch of investors happening to cash out at the same time, creating a sudden increase in supply and hence a dropping price, or people catching wind that insiders are starting to sell out, or an exponentially increasing creation of similar assets diluting values, etc.)

If you believe you are in a bubble, you could bet against it by shorting the market (i.e., borrowing the asset and immediately selling what you borrowed), but if you get your timing wrong, it could still go up 20x before the bubble bursts, and you could lose your shirt.

Unknown: “Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you, and I can remain solvent.”

You could try a safer pessimistic bet using some types of options or futures (if they even exist for this asset class), but the high volatility and huge market uncertainty may offer unexciting prices. A skeptic may prefer to make a bet with a true believer like “I’ll pay you $U if in Y years the asset is worth at least P% more at that time than it is today, and you pay me $D dollars if it’s worth at least P% less at that time than it is today.” where Y is probably at least 5 years. But this sort of bet is likely a difficult one to set up in practice (plus, the true believer may be bankrupt if the skeptic proves right, if the true believer never cashes out).

Skeptics (even when correct) are often not market participants, so they are not putting much downward price pressure on the asset (hence, the market may disproportionally consist of those who are exuberant). Skeptics often end up just watching from the sidelines, rolling their eyes as they witness others continue to make a fortune for 3 or 30 or 300, 3000 days until it all comes crashing down.

What I think is most important to remember regarding possible bubbles is that in possible bubbles, as in casinos, don’t bet more than you’re able to comfortably lose. Losing X% of your savings is likely to negatively impact your happiness significantly more than growing your savings by X% will make you happier.

True bubbles have an unfortunate aspect that is similar to Ponzi schemes: some people really do get rich from them (especially if they cash out just in time), but this is at the expense of those who are late to the game, who lose most or all of their investment.

Sometimes, but certainly not always, what emerges eventually after a bubble has burst (or had a large price correction) is something of true (and potentially great) value. It may be this intrinsic value that helped get people so excited about that new asset in the first place. It just takes a longer time to fully bloom than the bubble allowed for. Even the stuff of real worth may be unfairly punished during the crash because it’s not clearly distinguished from what was merely hype. But eventually (one hopes), the actual value shines through.

Benjamin Graham: “In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

This piece was first written on December 8, 2017, and first appeared on my website on July 16, 2025.

When we’re choosing what to eat, healthy food may not be the tasty, cheap, or convenient option. How can we prevent this tension between healthiness and the other factors we care about?

Another reason healthy eating is hard is that we are normally forced to choose whether to make the healthy choice (or not) over and over again each day. So, even if we resist eating junk five times, we may succumb the 6th time (and eat too much chocolate cake). How we can avoid choice fatigue and being worn down by temptation?

There is a simple trick that sometimes works like magic to solve the problems above:

A. Eat exactly the same breakfast, lunch, and between-meal snacks five days per week.

B. Choose those pre-selected meals and snacks very carefully. They must be (1) healthy, (2) tasty (to you), (3) convenient, (4) within your budget, (5) nutritiously diverse.

Why these five criteria?

(1) If the food is not healthy, it defeats the whole purpose. So be sure to pick your meals and snacks to be things you’re really confident are healthy (which can be trickier than it seems, given how much contradictory information is out there regarding nutrition).

(2) On the other hand, if the foods you choose are not tasty, you’ll be more likely to eventually quit or grow annoyed with the plan.

(3) If the foods are not convenient to make/get/prepare/order/buy, then when something unexpected comes up, you’re stressed or you’re busy, you may well deviate from the plan.

(4) If the food is not within your budget, you’ll be creating an unsustainable drain on your bank account.

(5) And if the meals are not nutritionally diverse, you’ll be exposing yourself to the possibility of nutritional deficiency and increasing the chance that you get tired of what you’re eating. Note that individuals seem to vary considerably in how quickly they get sick of foods.

I find that I get tired of homogenous foods (e.g., baked potatoes) rapidly, but diverse foods (e.g., a standardized salad with the same exact mix of highly diverse ingredients) I can eat for months without getting tired of them.

It’s really hard on a random day to find foods that meet all 5 of the criteria mentioned above, but this simple plan only requires you to do it ONCE and then to apply that template daily.

I find that, since the plan is totally standardized, it’s a lot easier not to experience temptation. It can become pretty automatic, which is what you want. But still, you should avoid keeping tempting foods nearby because they can make it a lot harder to stick to your plan. The key is to minimize having to make tradeoffs or resist tempting foods.

By regimenting your food in this way, it also can be easier to lose weight, (if that’s your goal, because you can vary the calories in your daily plan). It can also make it much easier to make other dietary alterations, such as reducing sugar or becoming vegetarian or vegan.

There are four reasons I recommend having the regimenting stop before dinner and not apply on the weekends:

• If your selected foods are not diverse enough, you may be missing out on something your body could benefit from, and allowing flexibility at dinner and on weekends will increase your food diversity. Food cravings may also help guide you to things your body needs (e.g., if you don’t have enough salt, you may crave it or find it extra delicious) though it’s disputed whether that sort of honed food craving is a real thing (clearly many cravings we have are not because our bodies need that thing; unless our bodies really need ice cream).

• Dinner time and weekends tend to be the most social eating times, so the plan won’t interfere as much socially.

• Food is one of the joys of life, so dinners and weekends will still give you time to explore the variety.

• By allowing variety with dinner and on the weekends, the whole plan will be less annoying, making it easier to stick with.

Of course, you’ll have to practice reasonable moderation at dinner and on weekends to make sure that you really are eating healthier overall. If you have trouble doing that, you may want to standardize even more meals.

Of course, this plan is not ideal for everyone. Some people would surely get sick of a daily regimen, even if it is diverse. Others might find it hard to stick to such a plan due to temptations or might conclude that the novelty of different foods is too important to them; even if the plan only involves breakfast, lunch, and snacks five days a week.

My prediction, however, is that many people would find this approach to be one of the simplest and most effortless ways to eat better.

If a food regimen like this is what you already gravitate to, or if you’ve been on such a plan for a while, then the next question to ask yourself is: can I make my plan even healthier without significantly losing out on cost, convenient or taste? Your future, healthier self will reap the rewards.

Too often, when we get used to problems, we stop reflecting on them. When we stop reflecting on them, we stop trying to fix them.

Two examples:

• At first, if one of the burners on your stove stops working (as I personally experienced), you notice it and are annoyed by it. Soon, you find that you’ve stopped trying to use that burner. You’ve been trained by annoyance to use a different one instead. Or, to put it another way, you’ve subconsciously internalized that the burner doesn’t work. The possibility of fixing it doesn’t enter your mind anymore.
• If your knee sometimes hurts when walking up steep hills, you are very aware of it at first and wonder about it. After enough time passes, though, you just view it as a thing that happens to you, an automatic consequence of walking up steep hills, or an inherent part of what your life is like. You don’t see it as something you should seek physical therapy for.

A reasonably good term for this is “acquiescence”; acceptance of something bad, without protest. In this case, it is something you don’t need to accept.

It’s certainly the case that some problems in life are either not fixable, or not worth the time to fix. And in those cases, the default strategy of getting used to them is the right strategy. Furthermore, it can be a bad idea to try to work on fixing too many things at once, so it’s important to prioritize. The problem, though, is that people often get used to problems quickly even when they are fixable and well worth fixing.

So: what problem in your life (that is worth fixing) have you gotten so used to that it doesn’t even occur to you to try to fix it?

Now’s a great time to remember that the thing IS actually still a problem, that problems usually can be fixed, and that fixing things means coming up with a strategy and carrying that strategy out. Don’t let your problems remain problems. Resist acquiescence.

What properties make a strategy game better, all else being equal?

Here’s my list!

(1) Variety: the game doesn’t end up getting into the same or similar positions most of the time (so that it feels new each time you play)

(2) Forgiveness: you don’t automatically lose when you make a mistake (which can be frustrating for new players, and unsatisfying to the people that beat them)

(3) Simplicity: fewer and easier to understand rules (so that newer players can get playing faster and so that people who haven’t played in a while have an easier time remembering how to play)

(4) Depth: a player who can plan out into the future one move deeper than another player should have a bit of an advantage, but it shouldn’t be so much as to cause victory automatically (so that there is a meaningful reward for thinking deeper, but not so much that a slightly deeper thinker always wins)

(5) Fairness: your initial order of play does not give any significant amount of advantage

(6) Optionality: you have a moderate number of possibilities to choose between each turn (at least 2, no more than 30, but 5-10 may be ideal so that players don’t feel constrained but also don’t feel overwhelmed or get decision fatigue)

(7) Acceleration: both players grow increasingly powerful throughout the game (as it’s fun gaining in powers even if you end up losing)

(8) Consistency: the game is fairly consistent in how long it takes (so you don’t end up with some games being short and others being multiple hours, which can make it hard to plan or get frustrating or boring)

(9) Duration: the game can be played in multiple formats that let you roughly control its time (e.g., 40m, 1h20m, so you can play in the amount of time you have available or that you prefer)

(10) Significance: most moves you make have some importance to the game, and only rarely is a move irrelevant to the outcome of the whole game

(11) Immersion: the game has an engaging theme representing the “world” of the game which relates deeply to the rules and elements (rather than being superficially tacked on)

(12) Longevity: you can play the game for years while continuing to improve and discover new nuances of tactics and strategy

(13) Speed: experienced players can make their moves relatively quickly (even sophisticated ones), so the other players don’t spend a long time waiting

(14) Possibilities: the game encapsulates a huge range of configurations or situations that differ from each other in meaningful ways

(15) Players: the game works well with different numbers of players (e.g., 2-6)

(16) Comebacks: a player who is reasonably far behind can still realistically come back to win

• Tell yourself you’ll eat just a few chips, then eat the whole bag?
• Watch funny YouTube videos “for a few minutes”, and then notice that an hour has passed?
• Choose to have “one drink”, and end up having five?
• Decide to play video games “for an hour” and then later discover you’ve been at it the entire night?
• Tell yourself you’ll check your stock portfolio “just once more” today, and then check it three more times?

Regardless of whether an activity is considered physically addictive, if you can’t stop doing it when you know you should, that activity is addictive (to you) in a meaningful sense.

Wikipedia’s description of addiction is enlightening:

Classic hallmarks of addiction include: impaired control over the behavior, preoccupation with the behavior, continuation despite consequences, and denial. Habits and patterns associated with addiction are typically characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward), coupled with delayed deleterious effects (long-term costs).

The way some people drink coffee, read wikipedia, refresh email, post to comment threads, eat unhealthy foods, and check Facebook satisfy most of these criteria.

Suppose someone tells you that the last five times he’s gone to McDonald’s he’s eaten more food than intended. He says that even noticing his overeating didn’t curb this behavior. What do you think will happen the next time he goes to McDonald’s? If willpower, and a conscious desire to eat less didn’t work for him the last five times, why would it work for him the next time?

Now suppose that this person who overeats at McDonald’s is you. You may be convinced that you have a choice as to whether to eat too much at McDonald’s, that you are in control of yourself. But if every time you’ve been placed in that situation you failed to stop, why should next time be any different? If your willpower failed before, why would it succeed this time? As long as you are not different than you were, and the environment is not different either, you should not expect to get different results.

The ideal rate of an activity that is addictive to you is not necessarily zero. Just because you can’t stop when you start doesn’t mean you should never start. Perhaps spending an entire saturday playing video games once every three months is actually worth it to you. But the fact that you find an activity addictive implies that you should be much more cautious about starting in the first place. The choice you are making is not between eating zero chips and eating five. It is between eating zero chips and eating the entire bag. Stop telling yourself lies: if you couldn’t stop at five chips in the past, you very likely can’t stop at five this time either.

Once you accept that if you buy the chips you’ll be eating the whole bag, then you’re more likely to buy them at a more appropriate rate. If you cling to the idea that you are in control, and can stop whenever you want, then you’ll buy as though you can stop at five chips, even though you’ll eat as though you can’t.

There are certain cases where the right rate of a pleasurable activity is actually zero. If five chips is worth it, but an entire bag never is, and you always end up eating the entire bag, you probably shouldn’t ever be buying chips. Fortunately, cravings tend to fade. Cutting something out of your life may at first lead to increased cravings, but for most things those cravings will diminish. As long as you can avoid situations which re-trigger your desire, you may even forget that the object of your addiction exists. So you definitely shouldn’t hang around smokers when you’re trying to quit smoking.

Sometimes, the right choice is not cutting an activity out, but changing its form. Perhaps you can’t stop playing World of Warcraft once you log on, but there may be other games you enjoy that you don’t have nearly as much trouble stopping. So switch to one of those. Or maybe there is a certain type of chip that you find you always over consume, but another snack you enjoy almost as much that you can eat in reasonable quantities.

Most people in America are addicted to something. Food, TV, drugs, the internet, and games are common culprits. Companies have a profit motive to make these products addictive. They balance the fat, sugar, and salt in foods to try to make them maximally delicious, maximally difficult to stop eating. Foods today are far more difficult to stop eating than anything your ancestors from a hundred thousand years ago would have encountered. Likewise, online gaming companies fine tune game parameters to maximize the time that you play. They know that if you find treasure chests too often the game lacks excitement, and if you find them too infrequently, the game is frustrating. So they experiment on millions of users to figure out the optimal rate of treasure chests to keep people playing.

Want to reduce your addictions? Start right now by answering these four questions:

1. What activities do you have trouble stopping once you’ve started (or start more frequently than you should), even past the point when you know you should stop?

Examples:

• Checking Facebook
• Playing console games
• Drinking alcohol
• Eating too much bread

2. What situations lead to you engaging in these activities?

Examples:

• While surfing the internet you find yourself logging into Facebook
• You feel bored and sit down in font of your game console
• Friends invite you to a bar, or you remember the bottle of vodka in your freezer and open the freezer door
• You’re at a restaurant and the server brings bread to the table

3. What could you do to avoid getting into these situations where your addictions are activated?

Examples:

• Lock yourself out of Facebook or other time-wasting sites during certain hours of the day (or limit your usage to a certain amount of time per day) using software such as WasteNoTime (Safari & Chrome), Nanny (Chrome),  LeechBlock (Firefox), Eclipse (Windows), Freedom (Mac & Windows), Anti-Social (Mac), or Concentrate (Mac).
• Sell your game console (or cancel your World of Warcraft subscription). Only play at friend’s houses, which will put a natural cap on how much gaming you can do.
• Suggest to your friends that you meet at a coffee shop instead of a bar. Don’t keep alcohol in your house, for any reason (even if you resist drinking 95% of the times you notice the alcohol in your fridge, you’ll still find yourself drinking the other times).
• As soon as you sit down at the restaurant, tell the server you don’t want bread (if the bread is sitting in front of you, you’re probably going to eat it).

4. What can you do right now to help make sure you carry out these strategies?

Examples:

• Download and setup one of the previously mentioned website blockers
• Immediately go post your game console on ebay
• Add repeated weekly reminders to your calendar to remind you never to keep alcohol at home
• Set a timer that will go off just before you reach the restaurant tomorrow, reminding you to tell the server you don’t want bread

You’ve got strategies now. Go implement them!

But another, important part of the story as to why resolutions are so often ineffective is that they often lack a plan. Sure you want to be more productive this year. But what strategies will you use to boost your productivity? And what will you do to increase the chance that you stick to these strategies?

To become more effective at meeting our goals, we need to go beyond just deciding what we want to achieve. We should stop making just resolutions, and instead make Planned Resolutions. A Planned Resolution is made by answering each of the following questions:

1) What do I want to achieve? This is just the standard question that is answered when making any resolution. But by itself, it’s not enough.

2) Why do I want to achieve this? Understanding why you want to achieve your goal can help prevent you from wasting time attempting to achieve something that won’t benefit you, or whose purpose can be more easily achieved in another way. People waste years in pursuit of a goal that they haven’t questioned for a mere hour. Sometimes when we understand why we are motivated to achieve something, that motivation disappears. For instance, if we’ve crafted some of our goals based on what others want us to do, rather than what we want ourselves to do, recognizing this may begin to shape what we want.

3) Is there an easier way to achieve the same underlying purpose? Since most of our goals have a deeper purpose behind them (even though we aren’t always aware of our underlying motivations), we may discover that there are more effective ways to achieve this purpose than through the original goal that we set. For instance, suppose that you’ve decided your goal is to get into a PhD program this year, and upon reflection, conclude that you want this because you’ll enjoy the job of being a professor. Well, even if you are correct that you would enjoy such a life, there may be other jobs that are far easier to get which would require much less time investment. Before setting yourself the goal of getting into a PhD program, it’s almost certainly worth spending some time to carefully investigate these other possibilities. Sometimes there is an easier way to achieve the true goal beneath the surface goal.

4) What strategy can I use to achieve my goal? Knowing where you want to go isn’t enough to get to that place, you have to know how to get there. If your goal is to lose weight, do you plan on dieting? If so, which diet will you try? It might be worth taking a look at the research on weight loss to see if some diets have proven to be more effective or easier to stick to than others. Or suppose that your goal is to improve your social life. Are you going to achieve this by seeing your existing friends more? Which friends? Or by meeting new people? If so, where will you meet them? Convert your abstract desire into a plan of action.

5) What can I do right now to get myself to apply this strategy? One of the other big reasons that resolutions fail is because people don’t actually follow through on pursuing the goal they set. Even if you plan a strategy to achieve your goal, it still raises the question as to how you’re going to get yourself to carry out this strategy. Four months from now will you remember the goal you’ve set? Will you have the willpower and motivation to carry out the plan you’ve chosen? Will you actually make the time to do it? Take a few minutes to plan out how you can get yourself to actually apply your plan. A few suggestions are:

• Put reminders (right now!) in your calendar that recur periodically to remind you of your plan.
• Tell a couple of friends that you need their help making sure you stick to your plan. Ask them to check in on you about it.
• Use stickk.com to put money on the line, betting that you’ll actually achieve your goal.
• Put a sticky note reminder in a place where you’ll see it pretty often (but not so often that you stop noticing it altogether).
• Make a list of reasons why things would be better off if you meet this goal, and mentally contrast that list to what exists now.

Once you’ve figured out what you can do to increase your chances of applying your strategy, immediately go and do these things. Tomorrow you may not remember, or may not feel the same motivation that you do today.

So stop merely making resolutions, and start making Planned Resolutions. Don’t just think about what you want to achieve, but also why you want to achieve it, and whether there is a more efficient path to achieve your underlying purpose. Then identify a plan of action, and a strategy you can use right now to get yourself to stick to this plan. Here’s a form (in Microsoft Word format) to help you do this.

Consider, for example, what happens when you feel tired. The obvious and natural thing to do is to lie down. This works well when there is time to sleep or nap. But what if you are feeling tired and should leave your house in 10 minutes? While lying down is what you naturally feel like doing, it is likely to make you feel even more tired, or cause you to be late. A better solution to your grogginess is to do things that you probably don’t feel like doing. Put on energetic music, make a cup of tea, and while it is heating, do fast jumping jacks for two minutes. Jumping jacks may sound really unappealing, but they are more likely to help you feel awake than lying down is.

Let’s take another example. When people are depressed, activities they usually enjoy very much tend to seem unappealing. Because of this, people tend to plan fewer fun activities when they are depressed than they usually do. Often, they have the inclination just to sit around their homes. Unfortunately, staying at home for long periods of time has a tendency to further people’s depression, socially isolate them, and make life seem even duller. As in the fatigue example, the solution is to fight against what you feel like doing. In this case, that means making plans and getting out of the house. To reduce depression, you should call friends to hang out, exercise, go for a walk, go out to dinner, etc. Behavioral changes like these are a key component of the therapeutic system known as behavioral activation, which studies indicate is one of the most effective treatments for depression.

Yet another example of our natural tendencies failing us is our reaction to our own anxiety. People who are anxious naturally tend to avoid whatever is making them anxious. The problem with this response, however, is that when we have irrational anxiety or fears that are blown out of proportion, running from the things that frighten us tends to reinforce our irrational reactions. If a man who is phobic of spiders runs away at the sight of one, he is reinforcing this behavior (via negative reinforcement). Whenever he runs from the spider, his anxiety is reduced (so the behavior leads to the removal of the negative stimulus, which acts as a form of reward for unhelpful behavior). A person with that fleeing behavior never truly learns (or becomes used to) the idea that most spiders are safe. If he had instead done the opposite behavior, and stayed in the room with the spider, it is likely that eventually his brain would stop reacting so strongly. Sitting in a room with a spider for 10 minutes may be terrifying when you are phobic, but sitting in the room with the spider for 5 hours is going to be downright boring. This technique, facing up to the things that make us anxious, is a key component of exposure therapy, which randomized controlled trials show is one of the most effective treatments for anxiety.

Anger, like anxiety and depression, also leads to counterproductive behaviors. People who feel angry tend to overact, take risks, attack, and damage relationships. But in the modern world, yelling often prevents people from discussing situations calmly and finding solutions, and it often furthers the anger of the other party. Anger increases the likelihood of physical violence, which rarely leads to productive outcomes. Often, the most useful way to react when feeling very angry is to fight against our inclinations and act to calm ourselves down. Walk away from the situation if possible. Take ten, slow, deep breaths, counting each one. Visualize something incompatible with anger (like petting a puppy, or watching your best friend laugh). Try to empathize with the person that has made you angry, asking “Why might he have behaved this way?” and “Have I ever behaved in that way?”

Fatigue  is the body’s signal for wanting rest or sleep. If it is not a good time to sleep, then you will be better off if you ignore what your body feels like it wants, and try to energize yourself rather than lying down. Depression often leads to a lack of desire to do activities, and underestimation of how fun they will be if you try them. But going with this inclination tends to promote further depression, whereas doing exactly the opposite (calling up that friend, planning that activity) tends to reduce it. Anxiety is your body’s way of warning you of danger, and there is a natural tendency to want to avoid and escape danger. But in many cases in the modern world we fear things that are unlikely to hurt us, and sometimes the anxiety is more harmful than the thing we fear. Fighting against your inclination to escape tends to reduce your fear, whereas fleeing reinforces fleeing in the future. Anger is part of a system that helps us preserve social status, and defend ourselves from enemies. But in today’s world it can get us in trouble, preventing helpful conflict resolution. We are therefore sometimes better off fighting against our impulses, and engaging in behaviors that reduce our anger.

When we are tired, depressed, anxious or angry the inclinations to do things that are not good for us can be very strong. But strategizing what is best for you to do while experiencing these strong feelings is very difficult. One solution that can be quite helpful is to, in advance, write down good strategies to use in these situations. This is rather easy to do while in an emotionally neutral state. These strategies take the form “If I am feeling Y then do A, B and C”. Then, when you next find yourself feeling Y, you can just consult this list of strategies (which ideally will be memorized). It can be far easier to follow a specific plan from a list than to come up with the right strategy on the fly. And if you get in the habit of consulting this list, the new reactions will start to feel effortless and natural.

Here are some pre-written strategies that you can save, print or memorize. You can then consult this list when the situation calls for it.

When tired, and it’s not a good idea to sleep:

• drink a caffeinated beverage
• put on energetic music
• do a couple minutes of fast exercise, like jumping jacks

When feeling depressed:

• call some friends and have a conversation with someone you like and feel close to
• plan some activities that you normally would enjoy (even if you predict you won’t enjoy them)
• exercise
• go outdoors
• force yourself to smile for two minutes straight, trying to imitate a real smile as closely as possible

When feeling anxious about something that is actually not going to harm you:

• don’t run away or avoid this thing that you fear
• face it, as this will help reduce your unreasonable fear in the long run
• expose yourself to similar things that you fear on a repeated basis, until you get used to them, not allowing yourself to leave the situation

When angry, and anger is counterproductive:

• walk away, if possible, and avoid acting until you feel calmer
• take ten, slow, deep breaths, and count them as you do it
• think about something incompatible with anger (like petting a puppy, or watching someone you love laugh)
• try to empathize with the person that has angered you (ask yourself “Why is he behaving this way?” and “Have I ever done something similar?”)