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When it comes to making wise choices – getting up early to run, resisting the third cocktail, not messaging that ex you want to cut ties with – it often feels as though we’re two people living in one body. One of your personalities, Virtuous You, heads to bed confident of leaping up at 6am, or arrives at the party certain you’ll limit yourself to one drink – but the one who’s actually faced with the option of diving back under the covers or accepting the next negroni is weak-+willed Hedonist You, who can’t imagine what Virtuous You was thinking! If your self-disciplined personality could bring the other into line, life might run more smoothly – but that’s the problem: when the moment of truth arrives, Virtuous You is nowhere to be seen.
However, all is not lost. With a little ingenuity, your two selves can communicate. The easiest way is for Virtuous You to make environmental changes, making it more di.cult for the hedonist to misbehave, like a kindly parent installing a stair gate to stop a toddler from hurting themselves. Remove unhealthy food from your house, for example, and it’ll be much harder to binge on junk in the middle of the night; prebook the taxi home for 10.30pm and it’s more likely that you’ll actually leave at that time. A harsher tactic is ‘strategic precommitment’: write a cheque to an organisation that you dislike, then make a friend promise to send it if you break your vow.