How Precommitment Can Help Us Meet Our Goals

Meeting goals requires willpower, motivation, and commitment – but there is also a strategy called “precommitment” that can help. Read on to learn how.

If you have ever tried to lose weight, or put away a little money for a rainy day, you know how the story goes: You start with the best intentions, stoke your motivation, and tell yourself this time you will be successful, only to fall off the wagon a few days later. And you might ask yourself, what happened?

Meeting goals requires willpower, motivation, and commitment - but there is also a strategy called "precommitment" that can help. Read on to learn how.

The answer starts with the way we make decisions. According to Molly Crockett of the University of Cambridge, every decision we make requires a weighing of options. Some options may carry higher reward value than others, and some options require utilizing a little willpower, or employing what is known as a “precommitment.”

A precommitment is essentially an action we take to avoid facing temptations that may derail our goals. For example, we may avoiding purchasing unhealthy food to keep ourselves from eating it, or put money into savings accounts with hefty withdrawal fees to avoid the allure of using it to buy something we might not really need.

To test the effectiveness of precommitments, Crockett and her team recruited healthy male volunteers and gave them a series of choices: they had to decide between a tempting “small reward” available immediately, or a “large reward” available after a delay.

For some of the choices, the small reward was continuously available, and subjects had to exert willpower to resist choosing it until the large reward became available. But for other choices, subjects were given the opportunity to pre-commit: before the tempting option became available, they had the ability to prevent themselves from ever encountering the temptation.

So did using a precommitment strategy help subject resist the temptation of small rewards and hold out for larger ones?

Not just was a precommitment strategy more effective than using willpower alone, Crockett and her team also found that the most impulsive people (those with the weakest willpower) benefited the most from precommitment (Crockett et al., 2016).

“Our research suggests that the most effective way to beat temptations is to avoid facing them in the first place” (Crockett, 2016, para 3)

And precommitment also appears to employ a different area of our brains. Precommitment specifically activates the frontopolar cortex, a region that is involved in thinking about the future. Additionally, when the frontopolar cortex is engaged during precommitment, it increases its communication with a region that plays an important role in willpower, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Crockett et al., 2016).

Perhaps it’s not surprising that when we think about how we might respond to tempting options, we also think about the long term consequences of these options, and are better prepared to make better choices – perhaps by gaining a little leverage on ourselves.

Related Online Continuing Education (CE) Course:

Behavioral Strategies for Weight Loss is a 2-hour online continuing education (CE) course that exposes the many thought errors that confound the problem of weight loss and demonstrates how when we use behavioral strategies – known as commitment devices – we change the game of weight loss. While obesity is arguably the largest health problem our nation faces today, it is not a problem that is exclusive to those who suffer weight gain. For therapists and counselors who work with those who wish to lose weight, there is ample information about diet and exercise; however, one very large problem remains. How do therapists get their clients to use this information? Packed with exercises therapists can use with their clients to increase self-control, resist impulses, improve decision making and harness accountability, this course will not just provide therapists with the tools they need to help their clients change the way they think about weight loss, but ultimately, the outcome they arrive at. Course #21-13 | 2016 | 31 pages | 15 posttest questions


Professional Development Resources is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Professional Development Resources maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Professional Development Resources is also approved by the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC ACEP #5590); the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB Provider #1046, ACE Program); the Continuing Education Board of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA Provider #AAUM); the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA Provider #3159); the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR Provider #PR001); the Alabama State Board of Occupational Therapy; the Arizona Board of Occupational Therapy Examiners; the Florida Boards of Social Work, Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy (#BAP346), Psychology & School Psychology (#50-1635), Dietetics & Nutrition (#50-1635), and Occupational Therapy Practice (#34); the Georgia State Board of Occupational Therapy; the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors (#MHC-0135); the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker & MFT Board (#RCST100501); the South Carolina Board of Professional Counselors & MFTs (#193); the Texas Board of Examiners of Marriage & Family Therapists (#114) and State Board of Social Worker Examiners (#5678); and is CE Broker compliant (all courses are reported within a few days of completion).

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Re-Thinking Motivation

Re-Thinking Motivation

Self-control, or specifically, willpower, has been dubbed a limited resource. The more we use it to complete one task, the less we have for the next one, and by the end of the day, willpower may be so drained that those impulses we seek to resist don’t have much of a chance.

But what about the things we are motivated to do? Interestingly, a new study done by researchers at University of Toronto shows that self-control may be highly influenced by how motivated we are.

As Dan Randles, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Michael Inzlicht’s lab at U of T Scarborough notes, most studies on self-control depletion have been done in the lab, and some, including studies on glucose, may not translate so easily to real life conditions.

Working with Iain Harlow, Vice President of Science at the adaptive learning company Cerego, Randles and Inzlicht gathered data from more than 16,000 students who completed voluntary learning and review exercises over several months using Cerego’s adaptive learning platform. The researchers found that people experience worsened ability while doing a single difficult memory task, and that their performance begins to decline around the 30-minute mark with a notable drop in performance around 50 minutes.

However, the researchers found no evidence that ability to complete the task decreased throughout the day, and in fact found that motivation to complete it actually increased (Harlow et al., 2018).

One explanation for this, Randles notes, could be that we have several longer-term goals to achieve and that we’re sensitive to putting in enough effort to complete them all. So too much effort in one task may rob other important goals (Randles, 2018).

This may be just one of the ways that we mistake the role – and the determinants – of motivation. And because motivation plays a central role in our lives – often moving toward our goals – understanding motivation and the forces that act upon it becomes imminently important for clinicians who work to help clients reach their goals.

Related Online Continuing Education (CE) Courses:

MotivationMotivation: Igniting the Process of Change is a 3-hour online continuing education (CE/CEU) course that explores how we can tap into, ignite, and harness our motivation to create lasting change. Motivation today is one of the most coveted traits, thought to underlie our business success, athletic prowess, and even weight loss. But just how do we motivate ourselves? How do we ignite and harness our own motivation to achieve our goals? How do we call upon our motivation when we need it the most? And how do we keep motivation alive to create the lives we want? This course will explore these questions, and many more. We will begin with a discussion about why clinicians need to know this information and how this information can be helpful in working with clients. Next, we will look at the research behind motivation, decipher between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and explore the roots of what keeps us motivated now, and over time. Lastly, we will learn the powerful skills needed to create a spark – that is to teach your clients to ignite and harness their own motivation to face fears, make decisions, take action, and create lasting change. Exercises you can use with clients are included. Course #31-03 | 2018 | 46 pages | 20 posttest questions

Motivating Children to Learn

Motivating Children to Learn is a 4-hour online continuing education (CE/CEU) course that provides strategies and activities to help children overcome their academic and social challenges. This course describes the various challenges that can sidetrack children in their developmental and educational processes, leaving them with a sense of discouragement and helplessness. Such challenges include learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, behavior disorders, and executive functioning deficits. Left unchecked, these difficulties can cause children to develop the idea that they are not capable of success in school, precipitating a downward spiral of poor self-esteem and – eventually – school failure. The good news is that much better outcomes can result when parents, teachers, and therapists engage children in strategies and activities that help them overcome their discouragement and develop their innate intelligence and strengths, resulting in a growth mindset and a love of learning. Detailed in this course are multiple strategies and techniques that can lead to these positive outcomes. Course #40-44 | 2018 | 77 pages | 25 posttest questions

In the Zone: Finding Flow Through Positive PsychologyIn the Zone: Finding Flow Through Positive Psychology is a 2-hour online continuing education (CE) course that offers a how-to guide on incorporating flow into everyday life. According to the CDC, four out of ten people have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Further, the APA reports that most people suffer from moderate to high levels of stress, and according to SAMSHA, adult prescription medication abuse (primarily to counteract attention deficit disorders) is one of the most concerning health problems today. And while clinicians now have a host of resources to mitigate distress and reduce symptomatology, the question remains: how do clinicians move clients beyond baseline levels of functioning to a state of fulfillment imbued with a satisfying life purpose? The answer may lie in a universal condition with unexpected benefits… This course will explore the concept of flow, also known as optimal performance, which is a condition we are all capable of, yet seldom cultivate. When in flow we experience a profound and dramatic shift in the way we experience ourselves, our capabilities, and the world around us. Our focus sharpens, our strengths are heightened, we feel an intense sense of euphoria and connection to the world around us, and we often realize capabilities we didn’t know were possible. For clients, flow doesn’t just help them become more capable, it dramatically improves their lives – teaching them not just to expect more from themselves, but how to cultivate the very conditions that make expecting more possible. This course, packed with exercises, tips, and tools, will demonstrate just how flow can be incorporated into your everyday life, and used to help your clients move from simply surviving to a life that harnesses and builds upon their own unique potential to thrive. Course 21-11 | 2016 | 30 pages | 15 posttest questions

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Professional Development Resources is a nonprofit educational corporation 501(c)(3) organized in 1992. We are approved to sponsor continuing education by the American Psychological Association (APA); the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC); the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB); the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA); the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA); the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR); the Alabama State Board of Occupational Therapy; the Florida Boards of Social Work, Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy, Psychology & School Psychology, Dietetics & Nutrition, Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, and Occupational Therapy Practice; the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker & MFT Board and Board of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology; the South Carolina Board of Professional Counselors & MFTs; the Texas Board of Examiners of Marriage & Family Therapists and State Board of Social Worker Examiners; and are CE Broker compliant (all courses are reported within a few days of completion).

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