What is self-control strategy?

Example: You decide to stop eating cookies after dinner. Night one, you tell yourself you will simply not eat the cookies in the pantry. You last forty minutes before you walk to the kitchen, open the cabinet, and eat three. Night two, you repeat the resolution with more conviction. You last an hour. Night three, you throw the cookies away before dinner. You do not eat cookies. Nothing about your desire for cookies changed across the three nights. What changed was the availability of the option. On nights one and two, you were running a willpower contest between your present self and your craving — a contest your craving won because it did not tire, while your willpower did. On night three, there was no contest. The craving fired, found no target, and dissipated. You did not become more disciplined. You became more architectural. You stopped fighting the temptation and removed the thing being tempted toward.

This concept is part of Choice Architecture in the How to Think curriculum.