I had a similar experiment with sardines, and I found I'm a fan of King Oscar brand. 

Also, in my quest for sustained motivation, I read a book I'd recommend. I'm pasting my review below. It's long. 

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"Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." - Young St. Augustine

I recently read Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister. This is my book report, and I think you should check it out.  

Why did I read this book? I realize at thirty-four that I have not succeeding in reaching personal goals of which I know I'm capable. While I have no complaints about my quality of life, I want more satisfaction in my accomplishments. The cause of my shortcomings has become clear. After searching several related book sites, the reviews pointed me here. 

Is this another preachy self-help book? No. It is remarkably story and data driven; it's a series of entertaining anecdotes tied into historical and current scientific studies on human and animal self-control. Baumeister balances findings from hundreds of research studies with biographical stories and direct interviews with the likes of David Blaine (Magician and endurance performer), Henry Morton Stanley ("Livingstone, I presume?"), David Allen (Getting Things Done), Amanda (Fucking) Palmer, and Aaron Patzer (mint.com). 

In my summary below, I'm skipping the science and personal accounts and picking only my favorite bits of directly practical information. These tips are the results of repeatable behavioral studies, so they should be applicable and helpful to most people with few exceptions. 

What is willpower? 
Psychological perspectives on this have shifted historically, but real life studies show that Freud was wrong. Willpower is a single and limited reserve, a bank of self-control, and it is depleted through all forms of stress and then restored through time, rest, and glucose. The capacity of the reserve can be stretched through self-discipline, and the refilling sped by nutrition and mental peace. 

How does willpower become used up? 
We use willpower when we force ourselves to get up when we want to sleep, by commuting in traffic, putting up with coworkers we don't like, not eating everything we want to, trying to be nice during conflict, or exercising when we'd rather lie down. Even making decisions such as choosing which phone to buy depletes willpower. Retail stores are designed with this in mind. We become compulsive after a session of making brand and price choices. 

How do you build and conserve willpower? 
Read on. 

• Pick your battles. Limit your time doing chores that feel like drudgery. You'll put off starting chores if the time to completion seems indefinite, and you'll most likely exhaust your willpower reserves and derail your productivity by trying to power through a long task in one sitting. Quitting from mental exhaustion leaves you with a negative feeling about your progress. Consciously decide to stop before overexertion and pick up the task later just as you would with any other healthy exercise. 

• Instead of creating a long "to-do" list; make a "to-don't" list. Know what drags you down most, and plan to avoid those chores at times which you regularly have poor self-control. Instead of dissecting your task list and setting a granular level of prioritization, pick the top three items and focus only on them. Put the rest out of your mind. Instead of listing large, complex goals like "Learn Objective C", list only the next practical step towards the goal such as "Log into Lynda.com and click the 'programming' category." Having simple, non-vague steps in mind reduces the stress of planning that often intimidates us to the point of procrastination. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspense#Zeigarnik_effect

• Procrastination isn't necessarily related to perfectionism as is often assumed. Research shows a much stronger connection to impulsiveness. Procrastinators tend to put off a difficult chore that may offer a long-term reward in favor an easier action and an immediate reward. I've come to think that I work best under pressure, such as waiting until the night before a paper is due, but this is a common self-observation among procrastinators. Again, studies show that work done last-minute is of lower quality than that of people who distribute work over time. 

• When estimating the time and effort needed to complete a task, realize that people generally err positively when judging their own potential. Our personal best and worst case scenarios tend to have an optimistic bias and disregard our own historical behavioral tendencies. "I can do this in like ... two hours. Sure." We tend to judge other's potential less favorably. Get an outside perspective to overcome this planning fallacy. 

• Successful people don't use their reserves of willpower to rescue themselves in emergencies; rather, they use it to develop safe strategies and routines. They use it to create good habits. These people arrange their lives so that they avoid problem situations. They prepare to play offense so they don't need to react defensively. Set up your life accordingly. Don't expect that you'll magically have more time in the future. Don't be over-confident with expectations of your future willpower. 

• Sleep deprivation has a nasty effect on willpower. 

• To break a habit, change your daily routine. Even if the habit is not directly related to the routine, facing the day with a fresh and conscious approach derails your behavioral pattern. You can also use purposeful procrastination to keep yourself from a negative habit without depleting your self-control. Instead of telling yourself, "No, I won't do this thing I'm itching to do", say that you'll do it a little later. This strategy has proven to be successful because it causes less mental stress than simply asserting self-denial. 

• Studies show that people exhibit better self-control in an orderly environment. Clutter and filth has a negative effect. Simple but frequent tidying can help break a cycle of poor self-control. If you just can't make yourself clean up, go somewhere that's already clean and uncluttered when you need a boost to get your work done. 

• If you find yourself avoiding your current priority task by choosing other, lower priority tasks, it may help to set a limitation of "this or nothing". Tell yourself that you don't have to perform the priority task, but you can do nothing else productive during the time specified. Rather than jumping from task to task because your lack of focus allows you to quickly rationalize new priorities, choose to only be lazy - or - perform the designated task. Remove other less important tasks as options that can excuse you from the primary task. 

• Sabotage your weaknesses. Recognize them in spending, eating, web-surfing, drinking, shopping, etc, and create a strategy during your moments of personal strength to save yourself during weakness. Put away the credit card and take only a measured amount of cash when going out. Buy health food in bulk and junk-food in single-serving packages. Use a self-restricting surfing access timer. Decide to drink only on certain days or only X days/week. You may override these limitations from time to time, but they can help you to create positive habits that become routine with practice. 

• Track yourself and make the information public to friends. Get in the habit of recording metrics of your activities. Record daily weight, spending, time, etc and let friends review the data on a consistent schedule. Self-accountability is much less effective a motivator than accountability to your roommates, your church-group, Twitter or your Facebook wall. Knowing that your activity will be monitored not only gives momentary strength, it will later give you an unambiguous view of your past and allow for honest future planning. 

• I like bullet points. 

• When planning steps to reach your goals, include frequent, small rewards. Even a seemingly paltry pat on the back gives the brain the measure of validation needed to repeat the behavior and form a positive pattern. 

It has taken me a long time to realize that I need practical help building discipline. I've always had a reluctance to using mental tricks or changes to my environment designed to improve my concentration. I idealized a self who would be able to overcome his limitations purely and by sheer will. I wanted to reach this perfectly controlled self the "right" way instead of finding cheap loopholes to productivity. Fortunately, I've come to understand that I'm not that special; I'm like most people in this regard, and these studies of human behavior are applicable to me. 

Is this working? It's only been a few weeks since finishing the book, and my story can only be anecdotal, but yes. I started running every other day. I'm cooking more often and eating my greens. I'm spending more time reading, and I finished this damn report!

Please, please, please remove the line "Maybe in some cases you punish it if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do."  Please don't promulgate this dangerous misconception.  Training is encouraging a behavior, and there are 2 ways to do it.

• Positive reinforcement means you give a positive reward after a desired behavior, and that encourages the subject do the behavior more.
  
• Negative reinforcement means you take away a negative thing after a desired behavior, and that encourages the subject to do the behavior more.
  

Notice that in negative reinforcement, the reward takes place after the behavior has already happened.  Also notice that in negative reinforcement, you are encouraging the subject to do the behavior more, not stop the behavior.  A classic example of negative reinforcement has a constantly electrified floor, and when you see the desired behavior, you turn the electricity off.  You don't turn on the electricity if you don't get what you want, you turn the electricity off when you do get what you want.

Can you see the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment now?  Negative reinforcement is a training technique that encourages a behavior.  Punishment is not a training technique, and can never successfully make a behavior occur, nor encourage more of a behavior.

Hey Tynan,

Just wanted to let you know that whatever you're doing with SETT/your website/whichever is causing my RSS feedreader to flip out. Your articles - from this one to your latest one - keep popping up as being 'changed'. Look into it if you would, or just keep making the adjustments you need to, to work on SETT :-) Just wanted to let you know

Also, when I posted this as 'guest' the popup message is missing a word: "Now we need to who you are to post this."

All the best!

Excellent post and excellent photo. When it comes to training myself, I have a slightly different approach, however. I find that having an element of pleasure inherent in the activity is critical for long-term success. If, for instance, I don't like sardines, I'll just eat mackerel instead. The health benefits are pretty much the same, but the better taste and texture make it more pleasurable to eat. Same thing for exercise. If one form of exercise is pure torture, but another, fun one provides the same or almost the same benefits, I will take number two. 

Perhaps this has to do with age. I am 44 and the idea of living a puritan lifestyle in order to gain some future benefit is no longer as tempting as it was when I was 20 or 30. Now, I am more focused on finding a balance between present and future benefits.

While I agree with a lot of this, I do have a couple of qualms:

1) Looking for a shortcut isn't always a fruitless endeavor. Say you're trying to lose weight. Conventional wisdom tells you to exercise more and eat less. That strategy seldom works in the long term. In this case, the shortcut, whether it be veganism, paleo, or whatever, can serve as both a better strategy than CV and as a motivator. Trying new things is fun!

2) Furthermore, what if your system and your end goals no longer align? For example, I used to study Korean because I lived in Korea. I started my studies as soon as I knew I'd be moving there. And though I had a reasonable amount of success, I eventually gave up. Not because I thought it was an impossible language, but rather, I didn't think the time investment would be worth the payoff. So I stopped training and "failed." Yet in the grand scheme of things, I don't see it as a failure.

Like, it's cool that you're eating sardines, but what's the real payoff? If you're enjoying the process, great — that's enough to make it worth continuing. However, if it's an ordeal you're putting yourself through daily for no reason, I have to wonder what the point is. (Perhaps I'm doomed to failure because I ask too many questions.)

In any case, good luck with the sardines :P

Tynan, this only becomes a simple strategy once you're already Tynan. You have to set immense store by keeping your word to yourself before the thought of breaking it is a huge motivator just by itself. Before that point, you're likely to fail to keep your commitments to yourself, because that's what you're used to and it doesn't seem like it's a big deal to break them. It's much more likely to work if you add several other strategies into the mix, like precommitment and success spirals, until you're confident enough in yourself to always follow through.

You also need to develop the habit of noticing and admitting failure. Failure is really bad. Each failure is another piece of evidence that you can't do this. You already have tons of counter-evidence to suggest that you can, for any value of this, but that's not true for most people. Starting with things like very clearly defined goals, plans for achieving those goals, whitelisted excuses, public accountability, and scheduled review are going to help here to keep you from weaseling out of commitments to yourself. Weaseling is another habit that most people need to break first.

Once you rock at self-motivation and you've sharpened your awareness of your own personal commitments, then yeah, you can get rid of most of those things and simplify it to the mental model you suggest above. A pro swimmer doesn't need water wings or a coach; she just swims. A beginner who tries to just swim will either drown, or come close enough that he'll give up. Meanwhile, the pro swimmer is confused at why the beginner is having difficulty.

Sometimes there is still a place for the extra motivational strategies even when you're already a motivation hero, like when you want to get yourself to do things that are much harder than you have done before. This is what I wrote my book on (The Motivation Hacker). But yeah, I agree that for most goals, you don't need complex strategies once you have the habit of achieving goals.