striving. Unfortunately, the prior study of shielding of ongoing goal striving has been neglected in that research. One study regarding this question was reported by Achtziger, Gollwitzer and Sheeran . It was shown in that study that implementation intentions can even assist people to shield goal striving from unwanted thoughts and feelings, such as cravings for junk food and from distracting thoughts. Two field experiments, concerning dieting (Study 1) and performance in sports (Study 2), have shown that there was a significant positive influence of implementation intentions on protecting ongoing goal striving. Participants who formed implementation intentions were more successful with long-term dieting, as well as concentration and performance in a tennis match. The focus on "If-then-plans" is the prevention of distracting thoughts and an efficient accomplishment of cognitive, motivational and emotional barriers of goal striving. As these studies were run in "everyday" situations outside of an artificial laboratory, they possess a high external validity, and thus display the importance and meaningfulness of implementation intentions for everyday life. Limitations As reported by Theodore A. Powers and colleagues, implementation intentions seem to have a negative effect on the performance in people who score high on socially prescribed perfectionism. References External links Implementation Intentions and Procrastination, Psychology Today Page on Peter Gollwitzer at New York University (includes PDFs of many of his research papers) Publications by Todd Rogers at Harvard University Planning Intention Motivation Strategy