When faced with temptation, people think they have only two choices: to give in or to give up. Some recent research that we have conducted suggests a third possible strategy: postponement, but to an unspecified time.

This strategy works because while you are not denying yourself pleasure, you are also not giving in to the temptation now. You simply say to yourself: I can have this later. We distance ourselves from the temptation and, as our research shows, this actually decreases the desire for the item over time.

At the time of peak desire (i.e., when the temptation is right in front of you), postponing consumption reduces the motivational conflict between give-in and give-up (vice versus virtue). This allows the desire for the temptation to diminish naturally, which enables the person to forgo consumption. Thus, postponement is a “cooling-off” strategy. In the relatively long-term (i.e., a week later), people can continue to forgo the temptation because they continue to desire it less and less.

Importantly, we have shown that postponement must be nonspecific. Don’t say “I’ll have that cake tomorrow or after dinner.” Simply say “I can have the cake later.”

Vanessa Patrick is a professor of marketing at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston and Nicole Mead is a professor in the Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics.