Do As You Say: Temptation Bundling
“All I have to do is answer 10 e-mails a day and I will always be ahead of schedule. Ugh, but I fucking hate answering e-mails.”
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Kneeling before you is your new favorite pet, an adorable newbie sub. This is the third time in as many days they are getting punished for not journaling. They are crestfallen at their lack of will.
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There are times where sheer will power is just not enough. You strive, you plan, you intend, and yet you still fail. Greatness is achieved through perseverance in the small steps towards an overarching goal. What separates those who achieve the micro successes to dominate at life and those who falter at the first hurdle?
Rockstars in the boardroom and in the kink scene utilize temptation bundling.
The general way of building positive habits is to reward the behavior after the action is completed. Behavior modification is a powerful tool in a professional’s repertoire but there is a pitfall. Some tasks are so odious that forgoing the reward can be justified as an acceptable loss. When this happens the next step is temptation bundling.
Temptation bundling is “coupling instantly gratifying ‘want’ activities with engagement in a ‘should behavior’ that provides long-term benefits but requires the exertion of willpower”. That’s right, no delayed gratification. It’s rewarding your sub by letting them wear your panties only when they journal. It’s rewarding yourself with a foot massage from your sub only while you answer e-mails or eating Pinkberry while [coughwriting your massively delayed articlecough] answering e-mails in the office.
What makes this habit modeling of self-control very effective is that you are given permission to indulge. Did I mention there is no delayed gratification? Katherine Milkman, operations and information management professor at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylavnia, authored a study on temptation bundling because will power was something she struggled with herself. In her experiments students were rewarded with listening to The Hunger Games when they worked out. One group could only access the iPods with the books at the gym. A second group loaded the books on their personal devices and told to only access them at the gym. The most dramatic results came from those who could only access the book at the gym coupled closely with those who were the busiest.
Great! It works in a vanilla setting. Does it hold water in a D/s power dynamic? It sure fucking does. At the end of the study, a lottery for iPods loaded with similarly tempting audio books was held for all study participants. Winners were asked if they wanted to take the iPods home or pay the researchers to hold them at the gym. A majority of participants chose to pay the researchers to restrict access regardless of which group they were in. One measure of success of a D/s power dynamic is the sub allowing themselves to be shaped by mind tricks while knowing mind tricks are being employed upon them.
Oh? Still not convinced? Well, D types have been practicing this all along without realizing it. With D/s sexual intimate play involving orgasm, there is often an action or ritual that MUST be done while the submissive is sexually stimulated. In true kink fashion, this requirement is generally something the submissive dislikes or even loathes! Eventually this abysmal requirement becomes not only a habit but can be looked forward to. So we’ve just paired something rewarding, orgasm, with an odious task; butt plug, choking, begging for orgasm, spitting, barking like a pig* etc. *Not a typo ;)
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Now that we love temptation bundling, how do we go about it?
1) Pick a LOCKED task and reward pair. As powerful of a tool as it is, temptation bundling loses effectiveness when it becomes too diluted. The key is that the task must evoke the feeling of the specific reward and vice versa. Do not choose a reward for multiple tasks. Returning to the audio book, if you used it to reward working out, checkbook balancing, and pulling teeth you might be giving gum jobs before you’ve lifted a single weight.
2) Pick a compatible task and reward. I totally understand that death metal is your go to guilty pleasure but it’s a bit distracting from your daily meditation habit.
3) Pick a reward that you could lose time doing otherwise. A hidden benefit is that this builds will power to not only start doing an odious task BUT ALSO stop indulging an alluring reward. I highly doubt you’re going to be answering e-mails for 9 hours straight while you binge watch American Horror Story.
4) Make a schedule for temptation bundling. Remember that temptation bundling is a technique to boost will power. In our fast paced world, as pleasurable as it is for your sub to wear your panties, that may not be enough allurement to remember to journal. A schedule ensures that there is time set aside for the odious task but also gives you or your sub something to look forward to with anticipation.
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By utilizing temptation bundling you’ll have the key to unlock the will power to be dynamically responsive to e-mails and develop your sub to the best version of themselves possible. Now go indulge and get to work!
- Domina Chase
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