precommitment

One is a mild precommitment: not keeping sweets or tobacco in the house, for instance.

Similarly, anger can be used as a precommitment device.

One of his best-known ideas is "precommitment."

Schelling precommitment as strategy in social and self-control, for example burning your bridges by buying gym membership to help motivated self win over lazy self.

Schelling suggested a number of strategies for dealing with this issue in his paper, such as precommitment, use of bright line rules, delay tactics, or creating a pre-arranged deal between selves.

In order to overcome this tragedy, people can use the precommitment strategy: the individual makes a decision in advance, which is difficult or impossible to change at a later time (Rachlin & Green1972).

At least as influential, however, is his very different work with David Kreps in 1983 showing that "Quantity precommitment and Bertrand competition yield Cournot outcomes" and thus providing the canonical modern foundation of Cournot equilibrium as the result of capacity pre-commitments.