You’ll walk past the office donuts six times today, and each pass reactivates the cue — food cues trigger dopamine in anticipation, and merely seeing food raises salivation and ghrelin. The solution isn’t to resist six times; it’s to make the decision once, early, and treat it as settled. That has a name in the research — an implementation intention — with a medium-to-large effect across 94 studies. But the form matters more than the resolve: plans framed as “I will not” rebound, while replacement plans (“I’ll keep walking to the coffee machine”) hold.
This companion explores repeated exposure, the one-decision strategy, practical tactics, and the mismatch between your biology and free food. (6 min read)
Known defects on this page:
- our own workshop voice shows up mid-article A few pages talk about our library instead of the world — the reader meets our workshop voice mid-article
- decision fatigue is presented as settled science Pages assert decision fatigue as settled where the science is contested
- We overuse the em dash in our prose. We use the em dash more often than easy reading allows, and we are changing how we punctuate.
Written by AI, directed and approved by me. How this is made →