Mandy Oaklander | October 03, 2026

You might identify as a person who does—or doesn’t—have a lot of self control. But it’s not a fixed trait, and there are easy ways to improve yours. In her new essay for TIME, trauma psychologist Joan M. Cook explains exactly how to build up your stores of self-control.

TODAY’S TOPICS

How to rein in your impulses
A physical therapist’s work-from-home setup
Got a question for us?
A chilling allergy

SATURDAY READ

How to have more self-control

By Joan M. Cook

DrAfter123—Getty Images

The ability to manage one’s thoughts, regulate emotions, and restrain impulses is key to a happy and healthy life. People who have good self-control often have higher psychological well-being, more academic and on-the-job achievements, and healthier relationships. Low self-control, in contrast, is a core contributing factor to numerous problems, including substance abuse and impulsive buying.

Any of us can succumb to the limits of in-the-moment willpower. We see that box of cookies on the counter and we reach for one, and then two. Most of us can learn how to think before we act and even engage in self-restraint in high-stress situations. But if we aren’t taught to practice self-control early in our lives, it can be harder, though not impossible.

Walter Mischel, a psychologist who taught at Stanford and Columbia, conducted some of the most famous studies on delaying gratification in the late 1960s and 1970s. Decades later, he published a book expanding on this research: The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. For those unfamiliar with the original study, in brief, children ages three to five were presented with a marshmallow and given two options. They were told they could eat the marshmallow immediately, or, if they waited for 20 minutes and didn’t eat the marshmallow, they could have two marshmallows.

Read the full essay here.

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AT HOME WITH AN EXPERT

How a physical therapist sets up her home office

Christine Annie

Christine Annie’s home office is a work in progress—and her neck gets a vote. When the physical therapist noticed an ache from turning between her laptop and monitor, she started mirroring the laptop’s display on the larger screen directly in front of her. She positions the monitor so her eyes are an inch or two below its top edge, helping her avoid spending the day looking down. Her other desk essential is an adjustable chair, set so her feet rest on the floor and her knees sit slightly below her hips.

“I’m always optimizing it,” she says. “If I start feeling something, I’m like, well, what do I need to do to make it better?”

Even a carefully arranged workspace calls for regular breaks. Annie switches between sitting and standing, walks around during phone calls, and gets down on the rug about once a day to stretch or do exercises like bridges and pelvic tilts. Sometimes, she squeezes in a few squats beside her desk to help ease stiffness.

Leaving space in her office to move means a break doesn’t require a trip to the gym—or much of a production at all. “Ultimately we should be getting away from our desk a little bit more,” she says. —Angela Haupt, Editor, Health & Wellness

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