Quote of the Day (Walter Mischel, on ‘The Core Strategy for Self-Control’)

“Regardless of age, the core strategy for self-control is to cool the ‘now’ and heat the ‘later’ — push the temptation in front of you far away in space and time, and bring the distant consequences closer in your mind.” —Walter Mischel, The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control (2014)

Yes, yes, all well and good—but this strategy simply goes out the window when you are traveling. “Cool the ‘now’”? Not when you have, say, fried ice cream sitting on a plate in front of you at a Thai restaurant in Hilton Head, S.C.

There is another way to regard this, of course. As my college friend Steve notes, it’s a well-known scientific fact that colories don’t count on vacation.

(I must say that I’m not sure of the authority for this fact. Cliff of Cheers, perhaps?)