Self-Control
3 Science-Based Hacks for Successful Self-Control
Metacognitive knowledge is important for self-control.
Posted December 17, 2024 Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
Key points
- Self-control refers to resisting urges (e.g., eating ice cream) to achieve goals (e.g., weight loss).
- We can use metacognitive knowledge about self-control to improve control.
- Three types of metacognitive knowledge are strategic, task-oriented, and personal knowledge.

What do the following have in common?
- Stopping yourself from buying a high-performance laptop because you want to save up enough money to take your family on a nice vacation.
- Snacking on baby carrots, instead of chocolate ice cream, so you can stick to your diet and lose weight.
- Resisting playing your favorite video game in order to study for the finals and keep your scholarship.
These situations all involve exercising self-control. Self-control is the ability to resist urges and to behave in ways that align with one’s ideals, values, and objectives.
Research shows high self-control is associated with happiness, life satisfaction, health, and success in life (e.g., romantic relationships, school, work).
How to achieve high self-control?
One approach requires changing your metacognitive knowledge about self-control—assumptions about what is involved in self-control and what factors influence it.
Published in Current Opinion in Psychology, a recent paper by Hennecke and Kulkarni explains how metacognition can be used to boost self-control.
Three types of metacognitive knowledge
There are three types of metacognitive knowledge: strategic, task-oriented, and personal knowledge.
- Task-oriented knowledge: Involves awareness of a task’s demands. For instance, anticipating that a new exercise program might be physically demanding, organizing your financial paperwork may be tedious, or starting a diet could be emotionally draining.
- Strategic knowledge: Entails knowing self-regulatory strategies and tactics. For example, knowing that one way to stick to your diet or exercise program is by thinking about positive consequences (e.g., losing weight and looking slim, feeling good, being healthy).
- Personal knowledge: Refers to your own beliefs about what self-control is (e.g., its weaknesses/strengths) and how your ability to exercise self-control compares with other people’s. For instance, people who believe self-control is an unlimited resource may set more goals for themselves.
How to use metacognitive knowledge to improve self-control
Here is a list of questions that can help you get started.
Personal knowledge:
- What are your beliefs about self-control?
- Can self-control be changed?
- Is self-control a limited resource or unlimited one?
Task knowledge:
- What characteristics of the task require self-control?
- In what way is the task demanding—for example, is it repetitive, boring, unfamiliar, disorganized, fast-paced, or unpredictable?
- Is the task physically demanding, emotionally draining, mentally challenging, or a combination of these?
Strategic knowledge
- Can you change the situation or the environment?
- Is it possible to alter the activity itself?
- Are you able to use any attentional or cognitive strategies? (See the next section for details.)
Using strategic knowledge to optimize self-control
Situational strategies
These techniques involve changing the environment or altering the task. One such technique is known as task enrichment, which is especially effective when the chore in question is fairly simple and repetitive.
For instance, if you are folding and taping up moving boxes, stuffing envelopes, or washing dishes, enriching the task by listening to music or an audiobook may help.
In contrast, when the task is complex and requires your full attention (e.g., studying for midterms), you may want to reduce external stimulation—for example, wearing earplugs in a noisy environment.

Attentional and cognitive strategies
These include distraction, goal setting, thinking of the consequences, and rewarding yourself for task completion.
One of the most effective emotion regulation strategies for successful self-control is reappraisal. Reappraisal involves changing how you think about a situation to change how you feel about it.
To illustrate, suppose you need to have a little talk with your child to resolve a misunderstanding. But you are also feeling depressed, thinking that all these misunderstandings (“the third one in just one week!”) make you a bad parent.
What might help is using the technique of reappraisal: Perhaps being a good parent does not mean that there are never any misunderstandings. Maybe a good parent is someone who is open to learning and growing.
You can also reframe the talk as an opportunity to get to know your child better and communicate more effectively.
Interpreting the situation in this new way can reduce anticipatory anxiety and feelings of depression. In addition, it may help you feel more grounded, confident, and in control during the talk.
For additional strategies for achieving high self-control, you may want to consult a post where I discuss 19 ways to perform tasks one might find unpleasant or difficult.