Quotes from Roy F. Baumeister

For a more radical form of precommitment, you could skip the party altogether and seek out gatherings with lower-calorie offerings—and thinner people. We're not suggesting you dump your chubby friends, but there does seem to be a connection between what you weigh and whom you socialize with. Researchers who have analyzed social networks find that obese people tend to cluster together, as do thin people. Social distance seems to matter more than physical distance:

Write or nothing. It's the same principle as keeping order in a school. If you make the pupils behave, they will learn something just to keep from being bored. I find it works. Two very simple rules, a. you don't have to write. b. you can't do anything else. The rest comes of itself.

and to follow the Two-Minute Rule: If something will take less than two minutes, don't put it on a list. Get it out of the way immediately.

Before, I'd see a pile of papers and wouldn't know what the hell was in them and just be like, Oh, my God," Carey says. "The day I got to zero, which is GTD talk for having nothing in your in-box—no phone messages, no e-mails, nothing, not a piece of paper—when I got to that point, I felt like the world got lifted off my shoulders. I felt like I had just come out of meditating in the desert, not a care in the world. I just felt euphoric.

Girls' superior self-control is probably one reason they get better grades in school than boys do.

commitment three months from now that we'd never accept if it were next week—and then discover too late that we still don't have any time for it. Researchers term this the "Yes . . . Damn!" effect.

Self-control turned out to be most effective when people used it to establish good habits and break bad ones. People with self-control were more likely to regularly use condoms, and to avoid habits like smoking, frequent snacking, and heavy drinking. It took willpower to establish patterns of healthy behavior—which was why the people with more willpower were better able to do it—but once the habits were established, life could proceed smoothly, particularly some aspects of life.

There's nothing wrong with a toddler having a tantrum. It's natural. It's our job to teach them other ways to deal with it.

You do not have to give people reasons to be violent, because they already have plenty of reasons. All you have to do is take away their reasons to restrain themselves.

Not getting enough sleep has assorted bad effects on mind and body. Hidden among these is the weakening of self-control and related processes like decision making. To get the most out of your willpower, use it to set aside enough time to sleep. You'll behave better the next day—and sleep more easily the next night.