Make Commitments

[14] When you make a commitment to another person, you establish what psychologists call a contingency of reinforcement; you've automatically arranged for a reward if you comply and a punishment if you don't. It puts some pressure on you, and that's often just what you need.

[15] For instance, if you want to exercise more, arrange to do it with a friend. If you don't show up, your friend will get angry, and that may be just the ticket to keeping you punctual. Decades of research have demonstrated the power of this strategy. For example, in 1994 Dana Putnam and other researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University showed that patients who made written commitments were far more likely to take prescribed medicine than patients who hadn't. Mary Lou Kau and Joel Fischer of the University of Hawaii reported a case of a woman who got herself to jog regularly by setting up a simple arrangement with her husband: he paid her quarters and took her out on weekends whenever she met her jogging goals.

[16] There's good news here for all of us. We can meet many of the demands and overcome many of the challenges of life with simple skills--straightforward practices that anyone can master and that don't require willpower--in other words, with skill, not will.

許下諾言

[14]當你向別人許諾時，你就形成了心理學家所說的“后效強化”這么一種情況。一旦實現承諾，你自然早已準備好得到嘉獎；如果食言，面臨的就是懲罰。這將給你帶來壓力，而通常這也正是你所需要的。

[15]比方說，如果你想加強鍛煉，那么就安排和朋友一起鍛煉吧。假如你到時沒露面，你的朋友就會生氣，這或許正是督促你守時的一種手段。幾十年的研究已證實了這一措施的效力。例如在1994年，弗吉尼亞理工學院和州立大學的達納·帕特南等研究人員證明，作出書面承諾的病人遠比未作書面保證的病人更能按醫囑服藥。夏威夷大學瑪莉·盧·考和喬爾·費希爾報告過一位婦女的案例，這位女士使自己堅持慢跑鍛煉的方法就是和丈夫達成了一項簡短的協議----無論何時，只要她實現了慢跑目標，丈夫都給她一些零錢，并在周末陪她出去玩。

[16]對我們大家來說這都是好消息。要滿足生命中這諸多要求并克服眾多挑戰，我們只需運用簡單技巧——而這些技巧是任何人都能掌握并且無需意志力的實踐操作——換句話說，只用技巧，而非意志。