For self-control, should we just focus on chosing our desires or should we also chose our situations?
Should we worry about why we are put in a particular situation? Or should we just worry about being good? No, one part of trying to choose wisely is also choosing our situations as much as possible. I can take an extreme example.
Somebody is an alcoholic and they are trying to recover from alcoholism. And if their house is right next to a bar, now, no matter how much resolution they make, it's just very difficult to sustain that because the path for indulgence is so easily accessible. So to some extent, we need to analyze, should I stay here? If I'm serious about recovering, then I shouldn't stay here.
So we need to change the situation. I gave a talk at Google recently in Silicon Valley. So I was telling, it's interesting, Google is such a big institution that even the Google employees didn't know about the experiment that happened there itself.
Apparently, they had found that a lot of employees in Google were having health issues, diabetes and many of them obesity related. So they consulted some health specialists and they suggested that in your cafeteria, all the sweets, all the desserts, the chocolates, everything that is there, just cover it with non-transparent paper, not paper that tells and advertises what is inside and not just transparent glass or plastic. And they found that they did it for six months and just by that, about 33% of consumption of desserts went down.
And from their perspective, that means they have to pay less in health insurance. And so the point is that for us, if I am here and a particular indulgence is here, if there is no obstacle between me and that thing, then I'll just gravitate towards that. And I can say, why don't I have the willpower to resist it? Willpower is a finite resource.
We don't have infinite willpower. So if some temptation is here in front of us and we are here and we are resisting the temptation. So each moment that we are resisting the temptation, if we are not having some positive focus, then that contact with the temptation is gradually eroding our willpower and eventually we'll succumb.
So asking why we are in a particular situation and checking whether that situation can be changed, that is always helpful. Now, it may not always be possible and certainly we shouldn't blame the tempting situation. We shouldn't justify our lapses as we can't outsource the responsibility for our lapses to the tempting situations.
But it's helpful if we can consider why we are in a particular situation and whether we need to be in that situation at all. Sometimes the best way to deal with temptation is to not deal with temptation. Does it address your question? So now what is the net surfing? So much time, if you are spending too much time on net surfing, maybe just have some filter or something like that, by which we don't have to continuously battle.
I want to just check. What happens is we are doing some studies and we get a notification. Your friend has updated their Facebook profile photo.
And then you say, oh, what photo? Let me look at it. You look at one photo and say, oh, maybe let me look at one more and one more. And what we thought would be maybe 30 seconds becomes three hours.
And then we beat ourselves. Why did I waste so much time? So now it's not social media is not bad, but it does need to be regulated. So maybe having some controls, it's always helpful.
Any other questions?