Start + Stop = Success

Have not been attacked by yellow jackets (unlike a dear friend of mine, while planting fruit trees!), but find myself this morning with a very large bee in my bonnet.  Good start control, good stop control & success.

It all started with an article on Huffington Post - Become A Successful Midlifer By Managing Your Self-Control.  It discussed a study that considered "dispositional self-control," testing a sampling of 10-year olds, then tracking them through their mid-20s.  With the youngsters, it focused on study habits, ability to work on specific tasks, participating in sports, belonging to school clubs & other extra-curricular activities.

It's no surprise that they found the children with developed "start control" & "stop control"  (aka ability to start & perseverance to continue to completion) were significantly more likely to achieve success as adults.  Reading "Having greater ability to control their thoughts, feelings and behaviors as kids led the participants to show fewer acting-out behaviors as teens, to do better in school and ultimately to become poised to have more productive and satisfying adult lives," had me reverting to my own inner 10-year old, saying 'DUH!" and wanting to puke.  Explain to me - again - why I am challenged to get things DONE.  Tell me something that's not as obvious as the nose on my face.  

And it's downright quibbling to say that there's any serious distinction between self-control, perseverance, "start control" and "stop control."  To add insult to what felt like the injury of wasted time reading a nothin'-new-here article, a scant 1/6 of the entire piece talked about setting things right as an adult.  This has got to be right up there with one of the most DUH! things I've ever read:
There are reasons to be hopeful that you can expand on your self-control and abilities to persevere even if these were never your forte. Perseverance can become a highly rewarding mental state if, as you put your mental energies to completing a task, you allow yourself to enjoy the fruits of your hard work. 

The next time you're ready to give up on a tough task, then, recognize that there are many practical and emotional benefits to sticking with it. Like the young adults in the Converse et al study, those benefits might eventually translate into greater career success. Even if you don't see a direct payoff, though, you'll at least feel that you tried. In the long run, your inner satisfaction will benefit from knowing you gave it your all.

So, the way to develop better start/stop skills as an adult is to consciously start & stop more effectively.  And HuffPo thinks this stuff is ground-breaking enough to give it space?  Hey, I know that my start-stop control is a teensy fraction of Dave & Candy's, the most successful - on many levels -people I know.  How do I ramp it up?  No help here.  BUT it did get me curious & doing an online search.  

Which led me to an article - by the same author! - in Psychology Today ~ Prop Up Your Perseverance and You Can Succeed at Anything  channel your inner can-do attitude and watch your successes soar.  

Wait - not just an article by the same author, but the SAME article.  Well, almost - longer, more indepth, actually HELPFUL.  

Went back to the HuffPo article - had I missed a link to the longer article, some reference to it? Nope, not a peep.  Praise be for being curious for more, or I would have missed the meaty stuff that can actually make a DIFFERENCE to people like me, who didn't develop essential pick-the-right-task and then stick-to-it until done skills as a kid.

Is there a possibility that I can seriously turn around my woefully deficient, yet deeply yearned for, selection & perseverance skills?  Stay tuned.  Apparently, there's another pair of helping hands on my horizon, belonging to Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D.!